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.

And, as always, work continues. Thanks to all of those who helped out during the SneakyPeek!

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.

“Turnbull: What’s the one app you couldn’t live without?

Ihnatko: Oof. If you only rely on one app, then you need to get out more. If we scratch from the list any app that comes with the OS (like a browser, a mail client, even a word processor), I’d have to go with OmniOutliner. I use it as a database, I use it for accounting, I use it for ordering ideas, I use it for snippets of information that otherwise defy categorization…it’s a Big Deal. My book publisher wants me to do another book for them, and in the space of three or four days, I’ve gone from “What do I want to write about?” to jotting down a few ideas to having a long and now somewhat organized book outline to send to my editor. All thanks to OmniOutliner.”

Read the full article here.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a diagram is worth a thousand pictures. Whether you’re presenting a sales strategy to your boss or explaining your newest invention to a friend, diagrams let you express relationships and concepts better than you can with words and images alone. OmniGraffle Professional 4.0, the latest revision of The Omni Group’s diagramming application, adds new features that will entice current users to upgrade and encourage everyone else to take a closer look.”

Read the full review here.

“If you want a traditional outlining program with a great user interface that’s versatile, powerful and plays well with other applications, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better tool anywhere than OmniOutliner 3 Pro.”

Read the full review here.