The Omni Group

Howdy, everybody! With a new release of iOS and new iPhone hardware, there’s been a ton of excitement and news this week; fun times!

In addition to all the cool new stuff Apple’s released, we’ve been able to build a few things using their toys that we hope will also be pretty exciting; I wanted to take a few moments and tell you about one of them. Specifically, the new location-based notifications we’ve added to OmniFocus for iPhone 1.12 and OmniFocus for iPad 1.4!

One of the first things we added to OmniFocus was time-based reminders; it wasn’t too long after that that folks asked for location-based ones as well. In fact, the first request we got for location-based reminders was back in May of 2007, before we’d even shipped version 1.0 of the Mac app! Over the years, we got more requests, especially once OmniFocus for iPhone and iPad appeared - wouldn’t it be great if the device you were carrying around in your pocket could tell where you were and remind you of the things you needed to do?

The first couple versions of iOS mostly made use of location data on maps. It was useful - you could create a context for a pharmacy you used, add the address, and see a dot on the map if any actions needed doing. You had to remember to look at the map screen, though. With iOS 4, it started to look like the pieces we needed to add the feature were coming together - that version of the OS had the ability to monitor location information and notify an application when the device was in a certain area. We did some preliminary work towards implementing location reminders; the feature worked and didn’t use much battery charge, but it became apparent it wasn’t as fast or as accurate as we hoped. We decided to pause work on the feature.

We were pretty excited by some of the changes Apple made in their recent hardware, though; they found a way to improve the accuracy of location monitoring without using more power. Specifically, the iPhone 4 (and 4S) include a feature called “region monitoring”, which lets them track the devices’ location via GPS without running down the battery. iPad 2 models with 3G also have this capability. Unfortunately, devices released before then don’t have a low-power way to monitor their location as accurately, so they won’t be able to use this type of reminder in OmniFocus. (The Reminders app included in iOS 5 has the same limitation.)

Still, if you have a device that supports it, the location reminders can give you an extra nudge, helping you to complete actions you might otherwise forget. Because battery life is a top priority, though, it’s important to remember that the location is only being checked from time to time. If you pass through an area quickly (by driving past it on the highway, for example) you may not get an alert. It’s also important to note that the regions being monitored are fairly broad - the smallest “distance” setting still corresponds to about one city block, and things get more broad from there. Hopefully in the future we’ll have never-fail pinpoint-accuracy location monitoring, but we’re not quite there yet.

Since we shipped this feature, we’ve gotten questions from some customers that are seeing the “your location is being monitored” indicator more often than they used to, and it’s true that it’ll show up more often. As long as you have an available action in a context with a location attached, OmniFocus will stay subscribed to location information, activating that indicator.

The folks that are concerned by this are usually worried that their battery will be drained more quickly, and in previous versions of iOS, that would have been the case. In iOS 5, though, you shouldn’t have to worry as much. Behind the scenes, iOS 5 is handling things. We can’t know the exact details of how it works, but Apple’s stated goal was to be reasonably accurate while minimizing battery drain. The location monitoring indicator is mainly to help you manage your privacy; avoiding battery drain was a useful side-effect. But in iOS 5, the device is better able to conserve the battery.

It may also be helpful to know that OmniFocus’ map view also shows the indicator: that view determines your location more precisely than the location reminders do - you will see some battery impact there. In fact, shortly after shipping the iPhone update, we discovered that the Map view doesn’t remember to stop monitoring your location after you close the view; that actually can cause battery drain! Thanks to the folks that reported this problem - we’ll get an update out that fixes that as soon as possible.

For more details on location reminders, check the new help pages; they’re accessible from the Settings screen in each app. In the meantime, I hope this post helps you decide if location reminders will work for your purposes. Have ideas, suggestions, or concerns? We’d love to know what you think! Drop some comments here, or email our support ninjas; you’re also welcome to ask questions in our forums or on Twitter. Thanks, everyone!

If you're like us, nearly all of your OmniFocus actions seem to want to go in some leviathan-context called "Computer" or "Online" or something equally unhelpful. Here is one way to break that huge context down using hierarchical contexts in OmniFocus. Instead of organizing actions strictly by where the work needs to happen, this approach also considers the kind of work your brain needs to do in order to get them done. That way, when I'm sitting in front of the Mac or the iPad wondering what to work on, I can choose based on where my mind is, instead of paging past tons of stuff that seems too boring or too demanding.

• Work — This used to be called "Mac", before the iPhone and iPad. Now this sort of work can happen pretty much anywhere. Nothing goes directly in here, only in the subcontexts. The subcontexts are arranged roughly by ascending cognitive expense.
  • Maintenance — Mindless stuff like shuffling files around, paying bills, and fixing little problems on sites.
  • Study — Research, Googlin’, finding out stuffs I need to find out.
  • Communication — Contacting people by email or chat.
  • Planning — Serious thinking, outlining, drafting ideas, and so on.
  • Design — Grafflin’ & Photochoppin’.
  • Writing — Production writing tasks for things that need to be written well.
  • Code — Coding tasks that are likely to require a warmed-up brain.
  • Translation — Making things that are in Japanese not be in Japanese anymore.
• Input — Videos; music; articles that won’t go in Instapaper.
• Output — Informal blog posts ("macrotweeting") and such that don’t require intense thought.

This strategy is probably common knowledge among serious GTD theorists, but I still run into folks who are surprised by it. The inspiration for adopting it myself came from my DavidCo GTD coaching session a while back. This context arrangement (in addition to the standard Home, Errands, et cetera) pretty seriously improved the way I work. I hope it yields some usefulness for you too.

When the iPad was announced last year, I posted that we were planning to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad. We've just submitted OmniOutliner for iPad to the App Store, the fourth of those five apps:

I've been looking forward to OmniOutliner for iPad all year: OmniOutliner is the app I turn to whenever I want to collect and structure my thoughts (it's where I'm writing this text right now!) and it's great to be able to take those outlines with me and work with them on my iPad.

Now that OmniOutliner for iPad has reached GM, we're busy putting together some screenshots and an intro video which explain how the app fits together, and we look forward to posting those to our main website as well as more information here. For now, though, let me share this teaser video:

We don't know exactly how long it will take for OmniOutliner to be reviewed, but hopefully not more than a week or two. If you'd like to be notified by email the moment OmniOutliner is available on the App Store, you can subscribe to our low-traffic OmniNews mailing list or to our OmniOutliner Users mailing list. And, of course, you can watch this space—or follow @omnigroup or @omnioutliner (or me, @kcase) on twitter.

Meanwhile, let me briefly give some updates on our other projects! But first, an important reminder: our plans do change over time, so please don't rely on things happening according to today's particular snapshot of those plans.

• OmniPlan v2 just went into beta, adding multi-user collaboration over the air (through Apple's MobileMe or our own Omni Sync Server, or your own private WebDAV server). For more about that, see last week's blog post. Once we wrap up this beta, we'll finally be ready to start on the last of our “iPad or Bust!” projects, OmniPlan for iPad.
• Our free Omni Sync Server has been in beta since last summer, and it's been working quite well: over 18,000 people have signed up and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. This will remain a free service for all Omni customers when it leaves beta; if you haven't tried it already, I encourage you to give it a spin!
• OmniGraphSketcher for Mac has a major update now in beta which adds support for log scales—important when you're trying to compare trends in data which might be orders of magnitude apart. We're also working on bringing that work over to the iPad app.
• We're very close to submitting an update to OmniFocus for iPhone, adding the very popular Forecast view which was introduced in the iPad app. (Here's a screenshot.) Our test pilots found a few bugs around the edges that we need to squash before it's ready to ship, though, so it'll probably be another week or two before it's submitted (and another week after that before it's reviewed).
• For OmniOutliner 4 for Mac we've taken apart our entire outline architecture, rebuilding it on top of more modern OS X infrastructure such as CoreAnimation and bindings. The rebuilt outline architecture from OmniOutliner 4 reached a major milestone last week with our public beta release of OmniPlan 2—and now that OmniOutliner for iPad has been submitted, we can focus more of our direct attention on OmniOutliner 4.
• We're planning some major updates to OmniFocus for Mac, polishing up its user experience to match the ease of use and aesthetics of the iPad edition, adding the Forecast and Review modes which we introduced in the iPad app, and adding support for syncing projects with OmniPlan.
• And finally, we're looking forward to updating our apps to take advantage of the new features Apple is introducing in Mac OS X Lion, such as the Versions autosave architecture, built-in Resume, and full-screen apps.

As always, I'd welcome any feedback you might have: leave a comment here or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).

UPDATE: I just realized that I forgot to mention the price! OmniOutliner for iPad will be $19.99.

If you'll pardon the horn-tooting for a moment, we'd like to take the opportunity to flatter one of our teammates. Omni's UX lead Bill recently spoke at the Voices That Matter conference here in Seattle. At last fall's VTM: iPhone Developers conference in Philly, Bill spoke about Designing Graceful, Gracious Interfaces for iPad alongside other notable tech folk. Though he didn't have as cool of a getup as this speaker, we think he put forth a valiant effort and are perfectly comfortable with calling him a hero from time to time. 

In recognition of his contributions, not only to our apps, but to the ongoing dialogue about User Experience in software development, we would like to share some of Bill's thoughts with you. For those of you who couldn't attend the conference, here's his keynote presentation (paired with some audio from one of his practice sessions). If you find this sort of stuff as inspiring as we do, perhaps we should all arrange for a party-bus to the next conference - an omnibus, if you will.

Designing Graceful, Gracious Interfaces for iPad from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

Now available on the App Store, OmniFocus for iPhone v.1.9 improves the basic workflow by offering immediate access to View settings that display Next, Available, Remaining, or All items. It also improves the experience of choosing dates and setting up repeating items, and contains many other improvements to the interface.

A detailed list of changes is available on our forums; as always, we'd love to know what you think! Drop a comment below or on the forums; if you need help, give us a call at 800.315.6664 (OMNI) or email our support ninjas and we'll be happy to help. Enjoy, folks!

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).

Our devices have voices.

And they have these voices to let us know everything from "someone is trying to get in touch" to "it's your move in [popular letter-adorned tile placement game]". When they speak, it sometimes sounds like they're saying "FIRE!" when they mean to say "You've got some spam to delete, buddy." Sometimes it sounds like they're whispering "Hey, there are kittens batting at dandelions in a meadow." when they really mean "No, seriously, FIRE!" And more importantly, any sound that is repeated with enough frequency will turn itself into a distant peep that you ignore or an in-your-face racket that turns you into The Hulk.

These were the challenges we considered when creating a notification sound for OmniFocus for iPhone and iPad. The job of the OmniFocus notification sound is to alert you to items that are due. So not only is it an alert, but it's an alert that lets you know you have some work to do — talk about a potential double whammy of irk.

So how do we combat this? There are a few things that make sense to do: keep it short; make sure it's in a range suited for the device's speakers; don't repeat it a bajillion times; and make sure that its voice lands somewhere in between DEFCON One and DEFCON Fun.

This gets us pretty far. To take us the rest of the way, we relied on the comfort found in familiarity and a voice that says simply, "I have something for you."

Here comes the music theory:

For the enforcement of familiarity, we chose a chord that has the same root and inversion as a sound with which many of us are well-acquainted: the Mac start-up chime. (The low low fifth is eliminated to accommodate the device's speakers.) It's not likely that most people will be able to say "Hey, that's like the start-up sound!" or even have a conscious response to it, but it's ubiquitous enough that the sound should *ahem* strike a chord. To make sure we find the right words to say, and for further familiarity, we had the root come in a touch late. With the third on top, this creates the notion of a descending major third or the same ding-dong sound a doorbell makes. The timing is different, of course, to make sure you don't look at the door when OmniFocus tells you it's time to take the trash to the curb or your Really Big Project is due.

All that said, everyone's ears are conditioned differently and our hope is that, in the end, it's unobtrusive without being too shy. Really, we just want it to be useful. 

Thanks for taking a minute to read about our one-second sound. If any of this resonated with you, please take a listen and feel free to drop a note in the comments. (Might I recommend F#?)

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