[orangefarm]

Awesome to see more people work on integrated productivity spaces! I work on something very similar at Life (https://life.so).

Since you decided to include notes into your bundling as well (which I did not so far) I am curious: How do you expect people to switch their note-writing habits from Notion, Roam, etc. to your project? It seemed to me that the notes market is extremely competitive already.

The design looks clean and beautiful. Congratulations to your launch and I will try to sign up for early access later.

[jquintard]

Thanks.

Notes taking app tend to be very generic. You can type text, create bullet points and checkboxes. But they it is for you to manually move stuff from one page or section to another to "represent" another day, time or topic.

In Routine, every note (being a page or a task description) can contain text, bullet points, media etc. But every checkbox turns out to be a full-fledged task that can be scheduled, opened to enhance with a description (which in turn can contain subtasks) etc.

We've basically closed the loop. Every note can contain tasks. And every task can be enhanced with a note. And then we tight those notes and tasks to what is happening in your life.

If you are in a meeting, you can take notes that will be linked to this meeting and its participants. If you create a checkbox (action item) in such a note, it becomes a task that you can postpone for later or schedule right away.

Notion is best for teams and does not have this notion of task, nor is it well integrated with your calendar. Likewise for Roam which is more for people who love to take tons of notes: researchers, journalists etc.

[orangefarm]

Thank you for the explanation! I'm looking forward to trying it out in practice

[inthewoods]

Life.so looks very interesting. It does one thing I wish all task managements did: integrate calendar so that you can schedule tasks on your calendar. This, to me, is key to actually getting things done.

I would love to also have notes built into it - that way I won't be context switching and could (presumably) add tasks from within notes.

I've signed up for your app - looking forward to seeing it!

[jquintard]

Definitely agree. Looks like what you are describing is Routine (http://routine.co) :)

[inthewoods]

Yes but sadly I'm on Exchange - so it won't work for me right now. Otherwise I'd already be playing with it!

[alexandargyurov]

I built and app called Life Tracker[0] a while back, it's aim was to track your mood and have everything in one place. My blue sky goal was to reach something like life.so.

It's good to see people working in this space, though I feel as if sometimes the scope can be wayy to big. Everyone has different types of workflows, so I guess for a product to be used by a lot of people, it has to allow for as many possible custom workflows. Though at the same time keeping a simple design and easy-to-use interface.

It's hard for me to tell, is life.so Mac only?

[0] https://alexandar.me/lifetracker

[orangefarm]

Hey Alex, very cool project! What made you pause working on it?

You are making a great point. There is an inherent trade-off between customisability and simplicity. That is not necessarily a problem though because I think there are different target groups depending on where your product is on this scale. I like to think of productivity software as a pair of shoes where everyone has their preferred size and fit. That also allows different tools to successfully co-exist.

The desktop application is Electron-based, so porting it to Windows will be relatively easy. For mobile we go native though and that's why a native Android application will take some longer.

[alexandargyurov]

I like that analogy. Works nicely with having multiple products that do the same thing.

> What made you pause working on it?

I lost interest in building it, I still use it everyday but now I'm just waiting (hoping) that I'll eventually get back to it.

I've signed up to the beta, definitely keep me updated :)

[criddell]

Are you happy with how the application looks and behaves on the Mac?

Apple is clearly moving to having iOS apps work on the Mac. Do you think the iOS Routine app would work on the Mac?

[jquintard]

That's a very good point. Definitely Apple's direction.

I think it will take quite some time to reunite both world. But maybe indeed, eventually, we'll have only the iOS app that will run on both iPhones and macs.

Note thought that there will always be a big difference in experience. On desktop, we want the experience to be center-ed around the keyboard shortcut, the console and natural language.

On iOS (at least for most people), it's faster to use a well-crafter UI/UX than typing natural language. Though again, in the future, we might go in the direction of voice.

Time will tell :)

[criddell]

> On iOS (at least for most people)

Are you assuming a phone here or including the 12" iPad Pro with a keyboard?

[spooneuh]

Hi criddell, I'm the iOS dev for Routine. As of now, the iOS application is restricted for iPhone only. Regarding the iPad with keyboard it is definitely something we need to think about, as the usage is closer to a desktop than a phone. As of now, if we authorized the iPhone version to be used on iPad it would lack the main desktop feature : the console.

[orangefarm]

Reading all the negative sentiment on HN about Electron beforehand I was a bit concerned about picking it for the desktop app but now I am positively surprised to be honest.

I totally understand that Electron's memory footprint is not acceptable for very small apps that only serve as a utility. For Life though, which is supposed to replace 2-3 other apps, a memory footprint of ~300mb seems fine to me. In-app performance is also good.

I cannot say anything about the iOS Routine app because I have not tried it yet.

[jquintard]

Routine's iOS app is written in native Swift.

[turtlebits]

I was curious about your product so I signed up. I was dismayed to find that I was just baited into providing my e-mail to an "product not ready yet" situation, and you want me to spend 5 minutes on a survey, just to be considered for access.

I would have appreciated a "We're not ready yet, sign up to be on our waiting list". I immediately unsubscribed.