The Omni Group

any chance of a combo discount? I'll need to pick up the desktop app and the iphone app.

Sync via WebDAV is cool, but service discovery via Bonjour would be even cooler…. iPhone gets on WiFi at home, it sees the advertisement from the desktop, authenticates (cert, maybe?) that this is a service he wants to sync to, and automatically does so.

The App store is showing the new iPhone app priced at $19.99. I like what I am hearing, but Omnifocus is already a little pricey for a GTD app. I don't suppose those of us who have purchased the Mac OS X app could get a discount?

No bundle-style discount for those of us with OmniFocus already?

Great work, I can't *wait* to give it a spin!  I'll be picking up my first iPhone in the coming days and this will be one of the first (non-free) apps I get!

Sounds very cool. But does it work with iPod touch at all?

I'm really happy to see that it will be available on launch day. This is the one app I've really been waiting for. Twenty bucks sounds reasonable to me. Omni has always delivered a high quality product in the past. Now get to work on Omni Outliner!!!

Kudos once again to the Omni Group for releasing a fantastic, amazingly polished counterpart to the desktop application. Easily worth the $19.99, IMHO.

Couldn't you have offered a discounted version of iPhone OmniFocus that would have worked after entering your Mac license?

Also, could you please publish a white paper that shows that you can do with a standalone iPhone OmniFocus and then what else is available if you're also using OmniFocus on a Mac?

Thanks.

What the heck…there was never any indication that this would be a standalone, separately-purchased product. I was expecting it to be free, an add-on to make life easier for your existing (and steeply paying) customers. As others have mentioned, EverNote isn't charging for their product (and they didn't already get $70 out of their customers).

You could at least give a $20 credit to the OmniGroup store or something to people who've already purchased the OS X version of OmniFocus.

If you'd said from day one that it'd be $20, I wouldn't have batted an eye, but this comes as a surprise. I've been anticipating a free product for months now, and am disappointed.

Way to stick it to your most loyal customers.

I agree with geektronica here. Although 20 bucks is very reasonable for the standalone app, I see this as an add-on to the mac app I've already bought and paid for. We should be able to use it within the already purchased licence.

Floatingbones: Apple doesn't want applications to require application after purchase; a plan like that would also be a way for developers to circumvent the 30% cut that Apple takes.

Inevitably, there would also be folks that bought the wrong version on the App Store, end up with something they couldn't use, and be unhappy.

I'm wondering why you chose to put the Preferences inside the application, instead of into the iPhone's Settings.app, as Apple seems to suggest you should. Any particular reasons for doing this?

Bart: version 1.1 is available here.

LKM - last time I heard one of the developers talk about this, they said Apple's recommendation was “Either in the app or in Settings.app is fine, but don't do both. One or the other.”

Of course, ken may hop on and correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

Geektronica: We didn't intend to disappoint anyone, so I'm really sorry that we did so in your case.

Reviewing everything we've posted over the months (well, most of it, anyway) it looks like we mentioned the not-free on our forums, but I can't find a spot where we did so on the blog. For future products, we'll try to do better.

Mactiller: Similarly, we're really sorry. We have to work within the structure that the App Store provides, and it doesn't support discounting in the way you're looking for.

@brian: I went back to look it up. In Apple's Mobile HIG, it says:

“Another important facet of the single application model is the way you handle application-specific

preferences. On iPhone OS–based devices, users set preferences in the Settings application. Your

iPhone application can supply such preferences, but this means that they must quit your application

when they want to access them in Settings. If you follow the standard guidelines and offer settings

that users need to set once, and then rarely, if ever, again, the user experience of your application

should be smooth.”

It seems to say that you should put preferences in Settings.app and make sure that users don't need to change them often. Of course, as of now, many applications don't observe this rule, so perhaps I'm misinterpreting Apple's words, or perhaps the guideline is poorly thought out.

I was just wondering about your thought process; why did you decide to keep the prefs in the app?

Ah, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Hi,  I'm setting up my OmniGroup trial programs and I'm having difficulty syncing my OmniFocus on my mac with the one I've purchased on my iPhone.  I don't really know how to set up “Sync wirelessly with OmniFocus 1.1 on your Mac (via MobileMe or generic WebDAV)”

I would like to be able to just plug my iPhone into my computer and just how so many other applications sync, I want OmniFocus to sync as well.

Is this possible?  I don't want to have to pay $100 for MobileMe/.Mac and I have no idea what a WebDAV is other than what Wikipedia just told me.

Thanks, Harry.

Brian: Omni Group will get gratuitous dings on the iTunes Store for this product that have nothing at all to do with the quality or performance of the iPhone product.

The App Store pricing model presumes that the iPhone products have no connection with software running on other device. That seems like a flaw.

I don't know if people deserve being thrown a bone for buying your product for multiple platforms, but they do expect it. And I don't quite know a fair and equitable way to throw those bones.

Juan: I'm not aware of any other applications that read our file format. It's all stored in zip-encoded XML files, so it's theoretically possible, but I don't know how much use that would be to you.

No plans at this time for OmniFocus for non-mac platforms, I'm afraid.

Harry: I should probably clarify a little more. MobileMe is one option, but it's not the only option. Head over to our forums, look at the “Read Me First” post in the OmniFocus Sync forum. It has information on a couple of options that cost less than MobileMe.

Will you be introducing Perspectives on the Ipod Omnifocus?

Price is fine. Any details on iPod Touch features (i.e. value w/o iPhone).

OUT - my point is that OmniGroup already made money when I bought OF for Mac. Never were we lead to believe that the iPhone app would need to be purchased separately.

Here's how you could have made OF for iPhone free for existing customers: make two versions - one standalone, one that syncs with OF desktop. Both could have the exact same features and sync with MobileMe for backup and such; the only thing you'd have to do is disable the “create a new database” feature in the iPhone version for those of us who already bought OF desktop, so the only way to use it would be to synch from the desktop version using an existing database.

If it's a great app in its own right, I don't have a problem with selling it for $20 in the ITAS, but this wasn't what I expected. In the announcement post, the question of pricing was raised but never answered.

Having complained about that, I gladly shelled out $20 for OmniFocus for iPhone.

I am a new user, seems good so far.

Improvements would be:

1. When I have an action, and I want to now link it to a project, the keyboard pops up, blocking most of the screen, making it difficult to select from my already established project names. It SHOULD NOT pop up unless i tap in the top text entry area, as in every other iphone application.

2.It would be nice if actions to phone someone could somehow be linked to the address book, so the full name could pop up quicker as I enter it, or I could dial from your list of names.

Thanks,

Steve

I suggest lowering the price of the desktop app, on the assumption that most of your users will be buying the iphone app.

Rick, I know perspectives on the phone is one of the more popular requests in our feature request database. Popular requests are more likely to make it in sooner, but I don't know anything specific.

Don't listen to the 'I think $19.99 is a little steep' crowd.

I paid for Omnifocus (a family license) and I *happily* paid for the iPhone version. Your program has many times over made back the money I paid in time and productivity.

Charge for your work! Charge well, charge fairly and most importantly, *make more*.

Oh - and make the start up on the iPhone a bit quicker (or provide a fast entry sub-app).

I think the point that us “whiners” are trying to make is that it would have been nice if the iPhone was considered a device under the family license. We own family packs of both OmniFocus and OmniWeb, and we were happy to pay for both of them, but this quite frankly feels like a slap in the face.  Especially when one looks at the developers of 1Password, who made their app free for a short time so their *loyal customers* could get it. I'm not saying OmniFocus for iPhone should be free, but I most certainly do think the iPhone should be included as a device in a family pack license.  And the fact that is isn't has left a bad taste in this customer's mouth.  If that's whining, then so be it.

the problem with the app store is no preview or refunds. So if I'm scanning comments here, a bit concerned, and want to try I'm spending 20.00 regardless. That's my issue and something OO can't help me with.

Ok,

I just synced desktop > laptop > iPhone and back. That's worth $19.00 alone. If there's another app that does that, I don't know what and presume it's not free.

Also,

While the gtd connection is there, I don't use OF for that at all.  It's a thought collector/distributor for me and running my business.  Find an interesting URL, send it to OF with OSX services. An email to act on, same thing. The marketing of OF as a GTD app, sure, but there's a lot more it does and can do; especially with a shared, synced DB.

ok, check this out ... in near real time, I sent emails from my iPhone to my desktop (with a—in the subject line), that trigged a script for OF to grab the email and make it into an action. Next time I loaded OF on my iPhone, the email/action was there waiting for me. Nice.

Need Outliner for the iPhone! Please !!!!!!!