My task manager of choice on my Mac, iPhone and future iPad is Things by Cultured Code. I don’t think their applications even need reviews, but I’ll go over them nonetheless.
Mac
From the first time you open the mac application you will be sold. Its perfect interface is all you need to see before you know its exactly what you need.
As you can see from the amazingly well done screen shots on the mac portion of their site the UI is perfect and functional with perfect hot keys and organization that isn’t too complicated to wrap your head around. Spend 15 minutes with it, I can almost guarantee you’ll be sold.
iPhone
Although they are still in the process of implementing a great over the air sync feature, as you can tell from their amazing status page, is still flying at “Full Speed.” That is the only possible feature that I could as for that I don’t have. Two days after using the mac app I was sold on the $10 iPhone app(iTunes Link) and it was worth the money. Wireless sync isn’t too much to deal with and its fantastic to have everything I need and want to do in my pocket.
I was planning on taking all these screenshots with my copies of everything but their website has such great shots and explanations that it just wasn’t worth it.
iPad
After the first two amazing releases I thought they could wow me no more. Then when people starting flaunting their iPad mockups there it was. The most gorgeous application I’ve seen to date, the beautiful UI is just a start, not only is it gorgeous it’s amazingly functional.
Why?
So why the completely unrelated title? Why wasn’t this called “Things: an amazing ecosystem.” Although that title isn’t bad, it’s because of their recent iPad demo video. On the front page of the iPad portion of their site they have a video that I’ve probably watched at least 20 times. Every single time it grows on me more and more. Pause right now and spend 30 seconds to watch it…………………………………..Amazing right? Their video looks like something right out of Cupertino. The minimalistic background and feel is just like an iPhone or iPad commercial. They manage to show how amazing the application is quickly enough that they never lose your attention. Not to mention the perfect choice of music in the background. A trademark Apple commercial.
So they look like Apple, who cares? That’s what every developer tries to give their applications and websites an “Apple feel,” so why is Cultured Code different? Because Apple sucks at task management. They’ve tried and tried again but they’ve never done it well, not even close. Until iPhone 4.0 you couldn’t even sync notes wirelessly via MobileMe, the HUNDRED dollar service they offer to sync your data. Just a few months before that they just started letting you sync it with a wire. Before that they hardly even had task management. I’m sorry random to dos sitting in my Mail.app inbox or on the side of my iCal is no way to work with task management. Even someone completely oblivious of the GTD system by David Allen need way more than Apple offers. A task list is something that everyone needs but they don’t immediately think about. By acquiring Cultured Code Apple could integrate all of these applications right on to their hardware making an amazing experience for everyone.
Please hear me Apple! Everyone go out and get all three of their applications here! They’re worth every penny.
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