OmniFocus Sync: It's ALIVE

The Blog

by Ethan on May 9, 2008

If coding were furniture making, we'd have heard the sounds of intense hammering, sawing, planing, the tap tap tap of the chisel, and, I suspect, occasional splintering and smashing of prototypes from Tim's office over the past few months. Sawdust would have piled high to the rafters and we would have stood outside the craftsman's door, waiting for the masterpiece to emerge.

In reality of course we heard mostly the gentle sounds of typing, muffled wails and occasional high volume electronica beats early in the morning, but masterpiece is the right word for the result.

Here's a shot of the prefs pane from the alpha build of OmniFocus that is, right now, this very minute, running on my desktop. I can now leave my laptop at home and have all my data sync up using not one, not two, but three different sync options.

Click the image below to view LIFE SIZE.

Still internal alpha for now, but we're planning on having this in the public sneaky peek before the release of Duke Nukem Forever or whenever Ken gets tired of waiting for it to be done.

Comments

Huzzah!

Thanks, Ethan! You guys rock! :D

MacDork

05.09.08 4:01 AM

Great i was waiting for this!

Jeroen

Jeroen

05.09.08 4:47 AM

Ooh… that mysterious black blur looks an awful lot like an iPhone. :D

(Or perhaps I'm just projecting…)

SkylarP

05.09.08 5:48 AM

Now, you just need to get that server code working again, so that you can use a web-page as well as sync between machines. Sounds like a server for OmniFocus could easily be done! :)

-Allen

a11en

05.09.08 5:51 AM

Cool - I've been waiting for .Mac sync. This will be awesome. I like OmniFocus, but I'll happy not to be doing the manual flash-drive sync between home and work every evening and morning.

Eric

05.09.08 6:04 AM

I've recently switched away from OmniFocus back to the good old paper-based GTD system simply because I didn't always have my MacBook with me and without all that lifeline of information I was lost on what to do next. This news has me excited again; ditto for the upcoming iPhone treats.

Any idea if what happens with the iPhone will follow for the Touch? I'm here in Canada and I can't get a supported iPhone so I'm stuck living the iPhone dream vicariously through my Touch.

kaptaink

05.09.08 6:11 AM

Weird. I was just thinking today “I wonder if Omni has done anything about sync yet”, and here's your post. Woo! I honestly haven't been using OmniFocus that much since sync was holding it back from being a “trusted system” for me. I've tried a few solutions, but they were too much of a hassle.

Please hammer on this a lot. Sync is notoriously hard to get right and I really want to be able to trust this.

Aaron Lees

05.09.08 6:13 AM

I see that hidden little iPhone icon. Come on kids, release the goods!

BZ

BZ

05.09.08 7:20 AM

Its great to see you guys are working on the iPhone app/sync. With availability in June, OmniFocus will finally go mobile. Although we know OmniFocus as desktop app, it is very possible that the tables will turn where the desktop app becomes purely a place to see your tasks (getting things done) while the iPhone becomes the entry device where you organise, plan and archive your tasks.

I would like to point out (not that you are not aware already) there will be a huge amount of GTD iPhone apps out there within weeks of app store going live. I hope, I really do, OmniFocus for iPhone will be the best GTD app out there. Its a hard task but if anyone can do it, you guys can. Please, do not disappoint, we want the best GTD app!

Filip

05.09.08 7:24 AM

[...] is — right between “General” and “Data”. You Omni guys are sneaky. The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus Sync: It’s ALIVE: Here’s a shot of the prefs pane from the alpha build of OmniFocus that is, right now, this [...]

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus Sync: It’s A

05.09.08 8:29 AM

Get this into a Sneaky Peek

As is the common theme with the comments here, it is hard to get fully involved with Omnifocus without sycning

-Jeff

Jeff Bergier

05.09.08 12:13 PM

Very cool. I'm still missing web access for punching in some tasks on the go. It would be nice to have the ability to sync to such a server. Who knows, I might even be willing to pay some monthly fee for this…

Zviki

05.09.08 6:11 PM

Praise !

Honestly, folks, this is so far up my list of desired OF features that I haven't even bothered to figure out what numbers 2..N are.

This will change the way I use OF, namely by allowing me to start using it for all my work tasks as well. If this came in June around the same time the iPhone app is released, you can charge whatever you want. I'm in!

Keep up the great work, and thanks for listening to the users, we appreciate it.

Will

05.10.08 1:35 AM

I…I…I think I love you.

::sniff::

John Irvine

05.10.08 3:23 PM

Sooooooo pleased you've added webdav syncing and not just .mac, having just dropped my .mac membership. Great work guys!!!

Victoria

05.10.08 10:37 PM

[...] internal alpha has syncing to .Mac, WebDAV, and Disk. It also appears there is an iPhone sync - which would make tasking during meetings [...]

» OmniFocus sync

05.11.08 12:14 PM

waiting this for omniplan. It will be fabulous to synchronize this app in workgroup mode.

coco

05.11.08 7:07 PM

[...] A jó hír az, hogy már ott tart a dolog, hogy a számítógépek közötti szinkronizáció m?ködik, és nem szégyellik megírni a blogjukban sem: OmniFocus Sync: It’s ALIVE: [...]

Házon belül már m?ködik a

05.12.08 12:42 AM

Believe it or not, this post has put me over the edge…I have wanted to do it for years, but was waiting for the right productivity solution…now it's here: I am finally ready to give up my PC for a MAC. That's how good this news is. No joke! Tony

TonyP

05.12.08 1:17 PM

When you ship it. I will buy a second Mac. Been using just my Airbook for now, Going to get the new iMac for the desktop.

George Crump

05.14.08 7:59 AM

+1 for webdav love

dogboy

05.14.08 2:28 PM

How About Syncing Todos with Circus Ponies Notebook app? Right now, with the clipping service, I can add the Todos into Notebook but, when I mark them as completed, I have to mark in both apps. :(

Brett

05.15.08 4:21 AM

Great stuff!

But how about getting in sync with Jira, Trac or another server based task-organizer.

I'd love it if I could use OF as a client to Jira, keeping everything where I want it (= all over). Seems like the natural thing for me…

traneHead

05.16.08 7:35 AM

Since you are going with the Apple iTunes distribution system, does that mean you cannot release betas to install on iPhone via the Jailbreak/Installer application for the iPhone that already exists?

Rich Cook

05.17.08 1:44 AM

Hopefully this will allow us to share and delegate tasks to other people via WebDAV. Or maybe allow me to send a task/action to a collegue via mail/IM.

Wouldn't it be nice if GTD app vendors would agree on a common XML spec to allow interchange between different apps?

MacLemon

MacLemon

05.19.08 5:48 AM

Rich: that is correct.

Brian

05.19.08 7:31 AM

that's so groovy - can't wait ...!

thanks for listening :-)

Nigel

05.19.08 7:27 PM

[...] most of our attention has been focused on OmniFocus 1.1, where we’ve been adding support for synchronization, and on writing OmniFocus for the iPhone. We plan to release both OmniFocus 1.1 and OmniFocus for [...]

OmniFocus Continues to Thoughtfully Enhance Life:

05.21.08 6:16 AM

Synching AND iPhone support. You guys read my geeky mind. These are two things that were on my wish when I started using this program. Now if I can only find a way to actually get all those actionable items done…

Josh R

05.21.08 9:07 AM

In case Apple asks or you guys have any doubt: YES, OmniFocus does indeed drive iPhone purchases. I'm not a 100% Apple person by any measure, and have been using my Treo simply because it works best. But Omni/iPhone sync will be a knife in my venerable Palm relationship.

Kimago

05.22.08 1:32 PM

And this is the reason why I've just bought Omnifocus. Great stuff!

Noel Chidwick

05.22.08 7:15 PM

Great to hear you have this in alpha testing. Will make OmniFocus really useful for me, since I move between 3 different machines at times.

And very much looking forward to iPhone support!

Joe W

05.24.08 12:46 AM

How about Leopard's To-Do service integration? That way all my To Dos would be available system-wide, and sync automatically.

Guntis

05.24.08 7:28 PM

I am also a strong supported of JIRA and other task manager… Is there a chance for us to get a sync (or the possibility to write one ourself) to such on-line task managers ?

Daniel

Daniel Da Cunha

05.25.08 6:50 PM

Is there any way of letting us know if the iPhone sync will be “Leopard Only?” Leopard is somewhat problematic with my music software on a Dual 2 G5.

Dan

06.02.08 2:21 AM

Team Member

Dan: iPhone sync works on both 10.4 and 10.5.

Ken Case

06.02.08 5:51 AM

I sure hope this is coming in June with the new iPhone… I mean, not *with* it, but at the same time. This will be the ultimate GTD system ever.

Can't wait! Thanks omniguys!

Yann

06.03.08 12:36 AM

I vote for Jira integration too! (saw little one on forum with ommi plan)

kayrat

06.03.08 3:38 AM

SOON! Please.

Tiger

06.04.08 6:51 AM

[...] As you know, we shipped OmniFocus 1.0 in January—to critical acclaim, including a Best of Show award at Macworld Expo. We immediately started working on adding synchronization support for OmniFocus 1.1 (while simultaneously adding support for additional languages to the OmniFocus 1.0.x releases). Ethan talked a little bit about this on our blog in his post “OmniFocus Sync: It’s ALIVE“. [...]

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus news update

08.22.08 10:19 AM

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