Now Bartek is the newest employee at Cultured Code and we’re already seeing the benefits with Things 1.2. Aside from even better keyboard navigation support, Things 1.2′s greatest improvement is the inclusion of Quick Entry Autofill, previously known in iGTD as the “F-key trick”. By using Quick Entry Autofill instead of the standard autofill shortcut, you can have your task autopopulated with the selected text and—if possible—a link back to the source when you invoke it from just about anywhere on the Mac. Also included are LaunchBar and Quicksilver plugins to allow easy, text-based creation of tasks for those who prefer that method. Things 1.2 also adds Spotlight compatibility, so you can search your tasks from anywhere. Read more about 1.2′s featureset.

To say I’m excited by Bartek’s addition to the Cultured Code team is an understatement. I’ve always thought that Bartek was a talented developer who needed an equally talented interface designer to complement him, and now he has that in spades. Hopefully we will begin to see bits of iGTD’s power and flexibility make their way into Things but refined and simplified by the Cultured Code team’s skill with interface design. I was getting mildly worried if Things would be able to keep up with applications like The Hit List or would begin to integrate more powerful features (like hierarchy) similar to OmniFocus; with the Bartek on board, I am now much more hopeful for Things’ continued appeal not only to those who like a simple and attractive task manager but also those who need a bit more power and flexibility than Things has historically offered.

Some of my personal favorite features of The Hit List include the tabs (which essentially allow you to save snapshots of the sidebar and navigate between them, something which Things is sorely lacking), the wonderful notebook-paper inspired themes, and the in-depth and easy to get into keyboard navigation. If OmniFocus or the recently released Things don’t quite scratch your task management itch, The Hit List will be well worth checking out. According to its early testers, The Hit List is stable enough for daily use despite being in beta and not yet feature complete. If you fall in love with The Hit List you can preorder it for $49.95; the price after release will jump to $69.95, and it is completely free during the public preview. For more information and to download the application, visit the Hit List public preview announcement.

Things’ visual appeal should be obvious, but there’s also some recently added features worth noting. One of my favorites is that Things has always sorted tasks based on the tags you’re filtering by, but as of the release candidates the Today view doesn’t segregate tasks by project so you can organize tags by priority across projects simply by tagging them. Other note-worthy features since I last posted about Things are a refined interface, global searching across the entire library, an iPhone app that at last supports tags, and a much clearer delineation between projects and areas. I strongly recommend Things for anyone who finds OmniFocus too complex and TaskPaper too limiting. Things is available for $49.95; for more information about recent new features see the release notes.

I strongly recommend TaskPaper even to people who think their needs are met by more complicated software. There is nothing like using a minimalist tool like TaskPaper for a couple of weeks to learn exactly what features you can live without and which you desperately need in a task manager, and for many people TaskPaper will be the solution that finally gets out of their way and lets them complete their tasks rather than fiddling with them. TaskPaper 2.0 is a free upgrade to users of TaskPaper 1 (although it now requires OS 10.5), or is available for $29.95 with a free trial.

For more details about the MarsEdit update, see the 2.2.1 blog announcement. For more info about Things see the release notes or 0.9.5 blog announcment. The other software didn’t provide much in the way of release notes.

Although I haven’t had a chance to try it yet (thanks to the aforementioned trip to San Francisco), I’m really excited to finally be able to hook up Things on my computer (which I use constantly) and Things on my iPhone (which I have launched once when I downloaded it). Unfortunately, Things touch still does not support tags or areas, but Cultured Code is promising those in the near future. For more information about Things touch 1.1, see the Things touch 1.1 announcement.

I can’t recommend Things highly enough. I’ve been using it since shortly before I recorded the screencast in November, and my opinion has only improved. Things is simply the easiest, most flexible solution to task management that I’ve found, I have a lot of respect for the developers’ creative vision, and the burgeoning Things community is great. For more information about the 0.9 release, see the blog posts on recurring tasks and the 0.9 release announcement or the release notes. Things is, as always, free to use until its release, and I’ve found it to be extremely stable. Bugs tend to be cosmetic rather than data-threatening.

Been a while since MacZot had anything halfway worthwhile, but TaskPaper is definitely a well-designed app. Although TaskPaper isn’t fully-featured enough for me, for some people it’s the perfect minimalist way to keep track of your tasks. Even if you don’t end up buying it, I highly recommend trying to use it for a week just to discover which features actually matter to you in a task management app and which you can happily live without.

I’ve written a page in the now-public Things wiki with a real-world tagging example if you would like some help designing your tag cloud for Things. Additionally, you can still watch my Things screencast if you’d like to see it in action before diving in yourself. Please note that some very cool features have been added (particularly the ability to link to email messages and other documents) since I recorded the screencast, though.

Personally, I’m really excited to be able to try iGTD 2 out next to Things to see how two different developers implemented a similar idea. I had mixed feelings about iGTD 1, but given how much I’m enjoying Things, I suspect that iGTD 2′s interface changes and general approach to tasks will make it a much more compelling task management app.

I’m honestly a little perplexed by the number of independent Mac developers releasing alpha software these days, complete with bugs and lacking promised features. I’m sure that the pending release of OmniFocus is the reason GTD developers are pushing their software out the door as soon as possible, but it still seems like a fairly dangerous move. Even software that is publicly released in beta form often gets seriously delayed as the developer becomes swamped by feature requests and duplicate bug reports, and I imagine the problem is far worse for hotly anticipated applications like Things and iGTD 2. I’m sure releasing alpha software results in an initial burst of interest, but I wonder about the long-term benefits.

There are some similar aspects to all GTD task managers, but I think one of the primary deciding factors whether or not a particular piece of software will work for you is how much structure you need or desire. With that in mind, here’s the GTD software for Mac OS X, ordered from most structured to least: Midnight Inbox, OmniFocus, iGTD, TaskPaper, iGTD 2 (early development), and Things (approaching public preview). If you’re like me and agonize over task managers, then this is a pretty daunting list (and if you count some of the less polished options, it’s nowhere near complete). However, with an eye to structure, I don’t think it is all that difficult to narrow the list down to a couple of applications that you should try.

Just what is “structure,” anyway?

Structure in a GTD app applies both to the metadata attached to tasks (do tasks have contexts attached? Tags? Priorities?) and to the workflow that the application’s interface encourages (are you encouraged to focus on projects, or focus on tasks that you need to do today?). Some applications give the user very specific information and a very specific workflow (the more structured apps), while others allow much more freedom (the less structured).

For some people, the highly structured apps will be the most appealing because the workflow and information attached to tasks makes perfect sense to them. For others (myself included), the less structured apps will be more inviting because they allow the user to craft a more personalized system (and are often less complex for users who don’t want to use the advanced features).

Figuring out whether you prefer more or less structured approaches to GTD is something everyone will have to do on their own. Odds are if a screencast or feature list for a given application makes you think, “Wow!” and start imagining what you could do with it, that’s the type of application for you.

But enough with generalities! Let’s take a look at the actual applications side-by-side.

Structure to live by: projects and contexts

Midnight Inbox ($35) is by far the most structured of the available apps, and it is also one of the few polished GTD apps available (and has been available for some time, unlike the still-in-development OmniFocus). Personally I think that using Midnight Inbox is like having David Allen standing behind you, twisting your arm, and shouting in your ear, “Do it my way!” That said, if a five-step, context-oriented task workflow makes sense to you and you’re willing to let the software know best and collect what it thinks you need to organize, then Midnight Inbox is worth a look. It’s certainly a polished-looking piece of software, and is one of the few GTD applications available as a stable, tested release.

Midnight Inbox’s biggest strength (which also happens to be its biggest failing) is that it can collect practically anything on your computer automatically (email messages, iCal to-dos, text documents in a specific folder, etc.) and encourage you to review them for actionable tasks. This can be really handy, but for myself I’d just end up frittering away all my time collecting, organizing, and reviewing tasks rather than completing them.

OmniFocus ($39.95 prerelease; $79.95 standard) is nowhere near as controlling as Midnight Inbox, but it is still highly structured around projects and contexts. Tasks have quite a lot of specific metadata attached to them, but are displayed in an easy-to-understand outline similar to OmniOutliner.

OmniFocus is another app where, for me, there’s a little too much complexity (bringing about a “I’m not getting any work done because I’m constantly playing with OmniFocus” type of workflow). In its defense, OmniFocus does provide an inviting interface to tempt you in, and with complexity comes great power. If working out of contexts and projects makes sense to you, then OmniFocus is probably your best option, if only because of Omni’s attention to detail, great interface design (overlooking, for the moment, their obsession with inspector windows), and dedicated support team.

An unfortunate result of OmniFocus being the only one of these apps that is produced by a larger company (compared to the individuals and small teams working on the other apps) is that its price will be less competitive when it finally goes release candidate. At the time of this writing, there’s a lot of pressure to just buy OmniFocus without really being able to experiment with the other options because the prerelease price is half what it will cost after January 8, 2008.

Then there’s iGTD (free). I have a love/hate relationship with iGTD. It has a lot of power, but terrible interface design. Balancing that out, it’s free, which is a pretty tempting price point. iGTD has a far worse learning curve than OmniFocus and is plagued by many of the same problems (as far as restricting you to contexts and projects). It additionally has a bad case of feature bloat which OmniFocus, while pretty overwhelming at first glance, has minimized.

If none of the other options look like they’ll provide the power you need to manage your tasks, then iGTD is very likely the perfect program for you. It integrates with just about everything (notably MailTags) and provides more metadata than you ever knew you needed. However, particularly given the brief glimpses we’ve had of iGTD 2, iGTD looks like it will be badly outclassed in the very near future.

Straddling the fence between the more structured and less structured apps is TaskPaper ($18.95 intro price). TaskPaper is by far the least complex GTD task manager available, and if all you need to do is jot down lists of tasks sorted by basic projects and tags, then TaskPaper is probably the perfect solution for you. TaskPaper doesn’t compete with the other GTD apps as much as it provides an interesting counterpoint in task management minimalism. It is extremely limited, but a perfect step up from plain text lists for some people. Unfortunately, its tagging is only really effective when used similar to OmniFocus/iGTD contexts

I’ve actually been using TaskPaper as my primary task manager for the last few weeks just to see if I could, and it’s been an interesting experience. On the one hand, using TaskPaper made me realize that I don’t need a really complicated solution. On the other, it turned out that some features from the other GTD apps are things that I want. I highly recommend using TaskPaper for anyone who has tried a number of GTD task managers without being able to pick one. It’s an experience that really helps clarify your needs.

Laid-back structure: focus and tags

As much as I wish it were otherwise, the two less structured GTD apps have not yet been released to the public.

Although there has yet been nothing except preview screenshots and short screencasts, iGTD 2 (forthcoming; free) is looking like a solid step in the right direction for iGTD. iGTD 2 looks like it will abandon the standard project/context framework supplied by the many other apps in favor of tags and “focus.” Focusing on tasks, a central component of both iGTD 2 and Things, is basically looking at tasks based on general shared characteristics (such as tasks that need to be done next versus tasks that need to be done today).

Not only is iGTD 2 much less structured than other available apps, but it looks like it will be pulling on some of the immense power of iGTD, but filtering it through an interface that is far, far superior. The tabs and saved workspaces in particular are a pretty ingenious approach to viewing complex assortments of tasks. I also think that its attempt to use natural language for its interface elements is bang on target, and may well help iGTD 2 to dip into the more casual task manager crowd that iGTD is currently alienating through its complexity.

And finally we get to Things (forthcoming; pricing as yet unannounced), the least structured of all the task managers. Like TaskPaper, one of Things’s goals is to simplify task management. However, unlike TaskPaper, Things still provides a lot of potential power through its versatile and intuitive tagging system. Things doesn’t yet provide feature parity with some of the more structured applications; what it provides instead is an elegant and easy-to-use system for sorting and accomplishing tasks that scales to the complexity the user wishes to have.

Things still has a definite structure, of course; it provides an interface that expects your workflow to include steps like collecting tasks, organizing tasks, and then completing tasks like most of the other GTD managers. Tagging (and Things’s intuitive tag filtering) is what allows more freedom in Things structure than within, for instance, OmniFocus’s strictly defined metadata.

Which solution?

If you know whether structure appeals to you or not, you should hopefully now have a better idea of which GTD apps are the most worth the time it takes to evaluate. Thinking about task managers in terms of how they structure tasks and workflow is a much different way to think about software than most people are used to (feature comparisons are much more standard), but I think it’s one of the most important things to think about for an application that is so intimately related to the actions that you take in your life.

Of course, features are important, too. The applications with the most features (and thus the most complexity) are probably iGTD and OmniFocus. Things and iGTD 2 are difficult to evaluate based on features because neither is feature complete yet. Midnight Inbox is fairly feature-rich but in an all-in-one-solution way, and TaskPaper almost doesn’t have features at all (in a good way).

The truth of the matter is that it still isn’t possible to compare OmniFocus vs. Things vs. iGTD or iGTD 2. Until we have at least a 1.0 release candidate for all of the main contenders, it will be very hard to compare features and performance, which is why I avoided trying to compare specific features of any of the applications.

Just looking at the software that’s publicly available, iGTD and OmniFocus are the best choices if you need a feature-rich application, and TaskPaper is the best stopgap for people with simpler needs. Depending on how many features Cultured Code is able to cram into its public preview version of Things, Things may also be able to serve some people before it is released.

Although I’m really looking forward to the less structured software (I do love my tags), if you prefer a structured solution to task management you may be able to find the perfect application without much more ado. Whatever your preferences, good luck! Finding the task manager that works for you can be a difficult and time-consuming process, so I hope that this general comparison has helped you slim down the options somewhat.

What excites me about Things is the flexibility that it provides with its tagging system. OmniFocus appeals to me a lot (I used Kinkless for a while so it’s familiar, and, let’s face it, Omni rocks hard and long), but I’m not so much a fan of the way it structures tasks. Contexts make sense as a way to view tasks, but they aren’t terribly flexible and honestly don’t really suit me personally that well. iGTD 2 actually looks very promising, but that’s because it appears to be moving in a Things-like direction (that is, relying on tags instead of on mountains of metadata like the original iGTD).

The Things development team told me that they tried to remove as much complexity from task management as they could, providing the user just with the basics they needed in the spirit of “getting things done”, but that they added tags as a way for more advanced users to apply more powerful approaches to task management. Although what the final version is like remains to be seen, I honestly think that Things is on track to provide this kind of scalable power, and am very happy that I was allowed to play around with an early development version.

In any case, Cultured Code is hoping to provide a public preview of Things in the near future, so if you’d like to try it yourself soon (rather than watching me drone on about it), head over to the Things website and sign up for their mailing list.

This is definitely an exciting teaser for the future of what is currently the top GTD contender (in my opinion; your mileage may vary). iGTD is not without flaws, as I have remarked myself, but iGTD 2 looks like it will be a solid competitor for more polished newcomers to the field like OmniFocus and Things.

I can only imagine the conversation at Omni: “Damn it, this project has been sapping our resources with no return for far too long.” “Hey, how about a Christmas bonus? I wanna buy a pony.” “Oh fine, we’ll sell a promise for less than the real thing and you can have your freaking pony.” In any case, while I’m currently hoping that Things will provide my GTD fix, OmniFocus is clearly going to be a standard-setting GTD application and is well worth checking out.

For more information, and to download the demo, head over to the MacUpdate Promo page.

For more information, see the blog announcement.

Although iGTD will eventually be merged back into a single application that is compatible with both Tiger and Leopard, the developer wished to get the fix out as soon as possible. For more details, please see the 1.4.5.6 announcement.

Off-topic, apologies for the lack of updates recently; I moved into a new apartment Monday, and was only able to get the internet hooked up Tuesday (making me wish that I, too, had a hammer and knew how to use it).

For more details about the updates, or to download them, please use the links above (all except Yep have blogs or release notes).