Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by teejmya 2179 days ago
Yes, this is the single app that locks me into Apple's platform these days.
2 comments

I'm similar. I have my own Eisenhoweresque productivity system for triage and prioritization implemented across ~10 perspectives, etc. I've been trying to adapt myself back to mainstream reality that Todoist or TickTick could handle for portability's sake but so far haven't succeeded. I like my own system, predictably enough.

The UI is beyond idiosyncratic, but the only web package I've found with enough power to replicate all my OmniFocus perspectives is The Amazing Marvin.

It is incredibly configurable across any number of productivity systems, and the query language for saved searches (aka perspectives) is straight up RPN with a metric crapload of task matchers and unlimited stack depth. Tag groups can be active parts of the UI that turn into task entry dropdowns, so you can make your OmniFocus tag system into actual user interface with exclusive tags. You can't be both UI and NI for example, so you can create an Urgent/Important exclusive group and make it a dropdown. It's stunningly effective in these ways and gives you so much more flexibility than Omni.

The only problem is literally every part of the app has different key mappings and UI affordances. It looks like it was cobbled together homegrown feature by feature and the design unfortunately really does show it.

It's worth a shot, but it does make OmniFocus look downright polished UI-wise. But man, the power of that system for configuration...super impressive.

For myself, it is OmniGraffle. Now I just keep an older Macbook Air around solely for diagramming.
Ahaha yes. I once run hackintosh in a VM, just to draw diagrams for an important homework.