The Omni Group

“Wow, your customers are nerdy!”

That was a friend’s response recently when I mentioned that logarithmic axes are the number-one feature request for OmniGraphSketcher.

The way I see it, our customers understand that logarithmic scales are the best way to present many types of data and ideas. Stock prices, advances in technology, and many other phenomena tend to change by multiples rather than additions. Logarithmic scales show each doubling as a constant distance, so you can compare percent changes without large differences in absolute size getting in the way.

So I’m very excited to announce that OmniGraphSketcher 1.2 for Mac and OmniGraphSketcher 1.5 for iPad are now available, with full support for logarithmic axes!

You don’t even need to know anything about logarithms to use this feature. You just turn it on via the axis inspector, for either or both axes. (The resulting charts are sometimes called lin-log and log-log.) There is no step two!

These logarithmic axes are designed to follow best practices in information visualization, and they work seamlessly with all the other features of the app, such as dragging, nudging, snapping, sketch recognition, axis manipulation, and scale-to-fit. And because logarithmic scales are more likely to span many orders of magnitude, we now support much larger and smaller numbers (up to 10³⁰⁰ and down to 10^-300), more decimal precision (up to 13 digits), and scientific notation (so you can use numbers like 3 x 10²⁰⁰ without typing 200 zeroes).

Given that the known sizes of physics only range from about 10^-35 meters (the Planck distance in quantum theory) up to 10²⁶ meters (the size of the observable universe), we figure that +/- 300 orders of magnitude should be plenty.

At least for now.

As part of these updates, we’ve also refined the algorithms that draw axis tick marks and tick labels. When there is not enough room to label every tick mark, we now consistently label every other tick mark, or every 5th, or every 10th, etc. If we skip a lot, we’ll automatically use major/minor tick marks to make it easier to see which tick marks are getting labeled.

On logarithmic axes, we show just the first five numbers between each power of ten when possible, then only the powers of ten themselves, and then evenly-spaced powers of ten. OmniGraphSketcher makes all of these decisions for you, so you never have to think about it.

And did I mention that your axis ranges don’t have to end on powers of ten? Suppose your data values fall between 8 and 200. In many charting programs, the best you can do is this:

But we think logarithmic axes should be just as flexible as linear ones, and we want you to be able to switch between linear and logarithmic scales seamlessly. Again, we’ve done the work so you can get what you’d expect:

Last but not least, we’ve added a really nifty new feature called line interpolation. As you know, OmniGraphSketcher lets you draw lines freehand even if you don’t have exact data to back them up. This is great if you have a rough idea of a trend or want to visualize several possible scenarios. But wouldn’t it be cool if you could also turn your sketched lines into sampled data points for analysis or re-plotting in another program? That’s exactly what line interpolation does. It samples at each horizontal tick mark (x-value) to convert your line into a data series.

The reason we’re introducing this at the same time as logarithmic axes is because it lets you see how the shape of a line differs in linear vs. logarithmic space. Regular lines in OmniGraphSketcher simply connect two or more data points as smoothly as possible, so intermediate values do not necessarily stay the same when you convert between linear and logarithmic scales. Line interpolation solves this by letting you anchor some of the intermediate points. Now you can easily demonstrate, for example, how a straight line in logarithmic space becomes an exponential curve in linear space:

Download the latest versions of OmniGraphSketcher from the App Store (Mac, iPad) or from our online store (Mac); or use the built-in software update to download automatically.

And let us know what you think!

(If you want all the details, check out the release notes for the Mac and iPad versions.)

At Omni we've noticed a trend that would make Sigfried and Roy jealous: it seems everyone is rushing to get their very own king-of-the-jungle. Y'see, Apple made it so easy to adopt their brand new Lion operating system—by offering it as an upgrade through the Mac App Store—that folks are clamoring to get a Simba to call their own. 

Alright, pop culture references aside, it's really cool to see so many of our customers taking up a new operating system so quickly. As you can see from the following OmniGraphSketcher file, the percentage of Omni customers using Lion within the first 10 days of its release is nearly the same as those who began using Leopard within the first 100 days of its release. That's quite a curve, if you ask us. 

But some of you might want to ask how we're getting these magical metrics. Well, when you update an Omni app, we get some anonymous system data (if you allow it). This helps us to see the adoption rate of new OS or hardware. It also helps us to see when there are so few users on a particular OS or hardware platform (the PPC architecture, for example) that it might be reasonable for us to stop supporting it. From this type of data we get to confirm our instincts to quickly add Lion features to our apps before the OS ships, and our customers get their favorite apps chock-full of cool Lion features faster than they might if we were just guessing at this stuff. 

Though it may not be as thrilling as a Vegas show with giant ferocious cats, we think this trend is quite encouraging and hopefully you do too. 

I'm very pleased to announce that all of our paid apps are now available through Apple's new Mac App Store! The Mac App Store is the most convenient way to buy our software, letting you purchase, download, and install our apps with just one step, and easily update our apps at the same time as you update other apps you've purchased from the the store.

But to be clear, the Mac App Store is not the only way to buy our software:  we'll continue to offer direct sales and updates through our own website as well.  Through our website, we can offer much more flexible terms and options: trial and beta downloads, upgrade pricing, and discounts for volume, bundle, and educational purchases.

No matter which way you buy our software, you'll be getting the same product:  all of our Mac App Store apps are exactly the same as the apps we sell through our website (except for a few minor changes made to work with the store).  We'll also keep future updates to our apps in sync—apps you've purchased directly through us will continue to update themselves as they always have, while App Store updates will appear on the App Store (after a slight delay due to the App Store's review process).  And either way, you'll have the same great support from our team here at Omni.

—

A few quick questions that I know a few people are wondering about (because I've already been asked!):

"Why doesn't the App Store recognize that I've already purchased an Omni app?"

The Mac App Store only supports software which you've purchased directly from it.  That's even true of Apple's software, as I found out this morning while testing Keynote.  And unfortunately, there's no way for us to tell the Mac App Store that someone has already purchased one of our apps.  (Though really, that wouldn't be fair to Apple since they wouldn't get their 30% of the purchase price to help support the store's infrastructure.)

There's been a bit of confusion over this point, since the App Store does notice when the exact same version of the exact same app is already installed:  it displays "Installed" instead of a price tag.  But that doesn't mean it will update that software: as soon as the version number changes (on either side), it reverts to showing you a price tag for that app instead.

"If I'm purchasing from the Australian Mac App Store, why are your prices so much higher than they are through your own website?"

On our website, we sell all our products in our local currency—and since we live in Seattle, that currency happens to be US dollars.

For the Mac App Store, we don't set prices directly; we choose a price tier which Apple uses to choose a price for each region.  We've chosen the price tier which is closest to our own online store pricing (just a few cents different in our local currency), but exchange rates fluctuate and this week you might happen to get a better deal buying directly from us than you do when purchasing locally.  Please feel free to take advantage of that if you wish!

"Where do I find your apps on the Mac App Store?"

We've added links on each of our product pages, or you can go straight to the Mac App Store's page for the Omni Group.

"Does your 30-day money-back guarantee apply to Mac App Store purchases?"

Absolutely! But please remember that the 30-day guarantee is not intended to take the place of a trial period: we pay 30% of our App Store sales to Apple whether or not we refund a purchase. If you'd like to try one of our Mac apps, we have two-week trial downloads available on each of our product pages. (If you need more time than two weeks, please contact sales@omnigroup.com for an extended trial license.)

—

As always, if you have a question I didn't answer (or any other feedback you'd like to share), please let me know! Either leave a comment here, or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).

Today we're releasing OmniFocus 1.8, a free update for anyone using OmniFocus for Mac. OmniFocus 1.8 includes numerous updates to improve the user interface, workflow, and reliability.

The 1.8 update will now clean up automatically when switching views, moving items to their proper locations, just like OmniFocus for iPhone and OmniFocus for iPad. Filtering is improved with the more flexible View Bar. All items, including groups, projects, and Inbox items, can appear in Context-mode lists, making them easier to find. Also, groups and projects can now become next actions, so there is no need to switch to Planning mode to finish up a project.

Perspectives can now be easily shared as files, by simply dragging them out of OmniFocus. As introduced in OmniFocus for iPhone, a new bookmarklet can send web pages to the Inbox from a web browser.

Synchronization is faster and even more stable. Additionally, due item alerts can be synchronized alongside the OmniFocus database as a calendar.

For more information, including complete release notes, please visit the OmniFocus download page. If you're already using OmniFocus, you can Check for Updates from the OmniFocus menu to automatically download and install this latest update.

We hope you enjoy OmniFocus 1.8!

Dear Diary,

What a long strange trip it's been. I, OmniFocus 1.5, after months of hard work from my users, engineers, ninjas, and test pilots, have finally gone final. I'm available for download on the OmniFocus page!

Today was great.

• I synchronized to another copy of OmniFocus and OmniFocus for iPhone.
• I changed my Styles with my cool, new Style Preference Pane.
• I brushed up on my Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
• And, I showed off some of my slick bug fixes and interface polish.

You can find a detailed list here, uh, ...Diary.

I am so grateful to all my users who helped out along the way.

Thanks for your support!

Love, your BFF,

OmniFocus

Good news, everyone! As the cryptic title suggests, OmniFocus 1.0.1 is now available. Here's a list of the haps:

• Stability
  • Updated our error handling support to catch more cases where there is a possible problem and promote it to a crash, so that we can then fix it. Since OmniFocus always keeps its data in a saved state, the net effect of this is that any such exception won't be able to cause data corruption.
  • Copy a workaround for a bug in Mac OS X 10.5 that can cause a crash when using the keyboard to navigate between cells in the outline.
  • Fixed exception where committing editing on a row caused that row to be collated into a different group.
  • Fixed a few glitches in the AppleScript suite that could cause scripting errors.
  • Fixed exceptions when parsing some European date formats. Updated the date parsing to log details about the date format if there is a problem parsing a date, allowing the user to more easily gather the relevant information in the future.
  • Fixed an occasional hang when performing a manual check for updates when no updates are available.
  • Clicking on a link to a recently deleted task will no longer cause an error.
  • We now ignore and log exceptions raised from Growl.
  • Fixed bug causing the available/due soon/overdue timer to fire too often in some cases.
  • iCal syncing will now deal with unnamed calendars.
• Interface
  • The Perspectives menu now always has options to make a new perspective or save a snapshot of the current view settings into the current perspective.
  • The Clear Perspective command has been folded into the Revert to Default View command, so you don't have to take two steps to get back to normal.
  • Actions created in context mode should no longer appear to be missing their project, once it is assigned.
  • Updated usage of shadows in the interface to match changes made in Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Empty projects with a start date will now get the normal project icon once its start date passes instead of getting stuck with the 'pending' badge.
  • The flag icon should now show up appropriately in HTML exports.
• Miscellaneous
  • Various small updates to the online help.
  • Turned off some debug logging in the Clip-o-Tron 3000.
  • Software Update will now only show you builds on the same track that you are running. So, if you want to see sneakypeek builds, you'll need to manually download one sneakypeek build from the main OmniFocus site.
• Internationalization
  • Fixed several issues that would prevent internationalization. No localizations are in place, but those are in progress for a future release.

Exciting news! OmniFocus has won a Best in Show award at the Macworld Expo this year. Oh man, I LOVE Best in Show. You know, "Now tell me, which one of these dogs would you want to have as your wide receiver on your football team?" -- seriously, such a great movie.

Er, wait. Wrong Best in Show. This is the annual Macworld feature presentation that honors those products that have pushed the boundaries of innovation, quality, and overall creativity. Well, that's even cooler than a mockumentary about dog shows. Here's what the good people at Macworld wrote about OmniFocus:

"Plenty of Mac programs will help you manage your to-do list (including a few that are built right into OS X), but OmniFocus ($80) is one of the nicest ones we’ve seen. Like many of these to-do apps, it’s optimized for the Getting Things Done task-management system: That means Omnifocus makes it easy to capture new to-do items anytime one occurs to you, and it lets you assign to-do items to both projects and contexts (the latter being GTD-speak for where or how you’ll accomplish the job). Omnifocus also integrates nicely with OS X: it’ll sync with iCal, you can add tasks via e-mail, and you can search your to-do list with Spotlight. You can view your upcoming tasks from multiple perspectives—by project, context, as part of a project-planning outline—yet the interface is nice and clean."

Wow, right? BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. Not only that, but it seems OmniFocus also received an Editor's Choice award from The Mac Observer. TMO's first Editor's Choice Awards include 12 products that they feel represent the best of the best of the products being shown at Macworld, and we're thrilled to be included on their list. They wrote:

"As with seemingly all of The Omni Group's products, the company has developed a very Mac-oriented solution with OmniFocus that works very well, is easy to use, and is a cut above competing products."

Congratulations to the other Awards winners, and a huge thank you to Macworld and The Mac Observer for the honors!

"OmniPlan has a clean, smooth interface, and all of its controls are available from easily accessible control panels. You can control and tweak almost every aspect of the design; this makes for a superior on-screen experience. The program offers the core, basic feature you’d expect to see in project-management software: the ability to easily create project schedule outlines in Gantt format, with activities and milestones indicated. You can also add and track resources (both people and things) and view a workweek calendar. The application’s set-up and tracking functionality is solid and straightforward, allowing you to quickly and accurately schedule an entire project." ...read more.

Reviewed 4/13/2007.

"...among all the great outliners and idea organizers available, The Omni Group’s OmniOutliner Professional 3.0 is the one that’s absolutely indispensable to anyone whose livelihood depends on clearly assembling and presenting his or her thoughts..."

Read the full article here.

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