Comments on: Marching slowly but surely towards beta

By: The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus screenshot and feature overview

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus screenshot and feature overview — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:38:35 +0000

[...] The last time I posted about OmniFocus, I mentioned we were thinking about potential early betas and the like—ways to share what we’ve built so far, without hosing your data or giving you a terrible first impression of our newest app. [...]

By: N Shah

N Shah — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:13:13 +0000

Count me in. Release away, both parties would gain as being a beta there is an implicit understanding that the product will have bugs and issues. However Omni will gain much from user feedback and the user will have a good idea as to how the solution has been implemented.

By: Duodecad

Duodecad — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:56:05 +0000

What Hendrik said. Of course you want whatever you let out to be reasonably solid, but the market really is heating up. I’m still loyally waiting for OF, but I must admit that every time someone mentions another new app, I do go check it out. I need *something* to use. I’d like it to be OF!

By: Stephen Chakwin

Stephen Chakwin — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:40:22 +0000

Don’t release it in incomplete beta format unless this means that it is stable, but lacks some features. The stakes are too high with this kind of app. The first time it crashes and destroys someone’s project or action list, it’s on its way to trash.

By: JKR

JKR — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:52:18 +0000

As much as I would love to get my hands on it now, I agree that there is a lot to be said for reputation - and be careful not to cause too much frustration out of those very high expectations. Most of us here presumably love the Omni products for one reason - they empower us to achieve high-quality outcomes very intuitively. I just recently did a rather complex graph and I didn’t really have to learn anything to get it done so easily with OmniGraffle. You don’t want to tarnish that reputation.

One option (rabies and all) would be to add some beef to the existing teaser campaign you have going on. Commit. Give us some of that UI. The main reason why so many of us cannot wait to get their hands on this is that more and more GTD stuff is coming out and it’s getting better and better, but we all asume that it’s not worth really committing to it if you guys come up with something really, really good. So why not make more concrete what it is exactly that we can expect? Work with a limited beta crowd, but keep the general interest high by sharing some of what’s out there. Do the iPhone strategy - that way you hear from the crowd what’s missing w/o having a product that then is obsolete and has caused a lot of anger.

Especially now that we have to wait for Leopard until OCTOBER!

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:53:31 +0000

Yes - release beta sooner - PLEASE!

By: Chen

Chen — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:38:02 +0000

To those who want perfection, again, we are talking about releasing beta software; not final candidate or GM.

I say, get it out into the wild before you lose your audience to something that may not be as good, but good enough. I think it is safe to say that the commentors to this blog are hard core, mature power users who understand this is beta - hopefully.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:08:47 +0000

I’ve been waiting for OF since it was initially touted and as some of the other comments above denote - the market is heating up and it’s all about traction. I own most of the other Ox Products, but if OF doesn’t hit my desktop soon - it’ll be back to Rolling Rock or iGTD for me.

If perfection was attainable, heaven would be a swamp. –Unknown (not me)

By: SB

SB — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:21:41 +0000

My 2¢: I will go against the grain, and say wait and go through the normal cycle. There are lots of good reasons to release early, but one great reason not to: if OF is bad, an early release will kill the project. As you can see from many posters, there are LOTS of GTD type apps for the Mac now, new ones seem to be released each week. But how many are worth it, and how many are just ‘me to’ apps or released way too early simply to ride on the wave of GTD popularity now. 90% are bad apps, you try them one time and immediately through it away. Omni is a big company, and this app has attracted a lot of attention, not all of it positive (daringfireball comes to mind). If you release a half baked alpha just to satisfy us Omni watchers, beware. Once you get fairly far along and OF is pretty stable, most features more or less in place, then put it out.

I would say to go a little slower then you did with OmniPlan (which I beta tested and now happily own) - it was pretty rough at the start, but the potential was pretty obvious and (for me, at least) worth the growing pains. But that is for a very specialized app that takes time to learn and understand how to use. OF is going much more mainstream, so I’d say to take it a bit slower, with a private first beta (or maybe two betas depending on the comments), then slowly widen the base.

I really look forward to this app, do a good job on it first and foremost. Oh, and for features : based on CoreData, easy to sync (isync, ipod, palm, iphone whatever), oh yea…a pro version that is a hosted web solution :p.

Take care, and keep putting out the good stuff!

-SB

By: Chenoa

Chenoa — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:53:27 +0000

While I understand that you gents and ladies are a probably a bit gun shy due to the spot light as well as some of the negative feedback when O.F was announced, I say put it out there now with strong caveats.

Like most of the commentors, I have been waiting for the right GTD solution and am anxious to test O.F - nothing out there now has satisfied me to date. Yes, a part of me prefers that it be baked longer. However, we are talking beta here, not Final Release.