I can’t even begin to express how impressed I am with iGTD. I’ve been using it for less than two weeks, and the functionality amazes me. I can add tasks to my inbox via Quicksilver, and even (via special codes) indicate what project to associate the tasks with, the priority, the context, etc. But that’s not all that impresses me … the developer, Bartek Bargiel, has been adding features and fixing bugs at a truly remarkable rate for a non-commercial project.
Just to give you an idea … since my last post (”iGTD updated … again!“), Bargiel has released four more minor updates to the application. Two of those updates have been released since I started writing this post a couple of days ago.
Here are some of the cooler, juicier new features:
- If you are in Safari, Mail.app, or Finder, you can press F5 (or another pref key, specified in the iGTD prefs) to copy the text in the window (or file in Finder) to the currently selected task in iGTD. This is way cool, since I tend to copy text from Mail.app into notes on a regular basis.
- iGTD automatically backs up its data file now.
- Improved support for drag-and-dropping stuff into the iGTD window.
- Nested projects (Yay! 1,000 extra points for this!)
iGTD, though, isn’t the only app that’s now developing at a rapid page. Just this past weekend, Midnight Inbox 1.1 was finally released, a good three months after the last (very buggy) release. However, the folks behind Inbox deserve a little bit of a break … they didn’t just add a few new features and fix some bugs … they actually have completely rewritten the “back end” of the application, so that (among other things) it’s now using some sort of SQL-based data store to keep track of the data. The result is an application that is much, much snappier and a good bit more fun to use.
Prior to the release, the Inbox team promised that updates to the application would be released significantly faster after the release of version 1.1, and they’ve kept their promise thus far. In the last few days, they’ve updated it up to version 1.1.4, fixing a goodly number of bugs discovered after the initial release.
I’ve played with the new release a bit, and it appears, on the surface at least, that the vast majority of my complaints about version 1.0.x have been rectified. However, despite those fixes, despite the Cocoa-licious interface, despite the fact that I’m a paid and registered user of Inbox, and yes, even despite the way the guys at Midnight Beep seem to have designed an application that integrates into the GTD paradigm quite seamlessly … it’s not enough to make me want to switch back from iGTD … yet.
The reason is … I just can’t be wasting my time moving my task list from one GTD app to the next every time something that’s slicker and has more/better features arrives on the scene. I use GTD as an means to an end … not as an end to itself. I know myself too well by now to know that I can get caught up in the fun of poking around with nifty new apps and distract myself from getting my work done.
The bottom line is that iGTD is working for me … and there’s no need to fix what ain’t broke. Sorry, Midnight Beep guys … your app is cool, but I can’t switch back now.
That being said … they did the right thing by doing the massive rewrite, even if it lost them a few customers. Better take the time to re-work the project into something that’s more capable of handling the needs of its users, and better suited to a rapid release schedule than try to hold onto users while only incrementally updating things.
Good luck with Inbox guys. Looks like it’s going to be a nice app once it’s fleshed out completely!
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GTD, Mac Software, iGTD, Midnight Inbox
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