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Disappointing "updates" - Asana & Todoist
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Sep 24, 2015 at 04:43 PM
Hi Ken,
That’s supposed to be the point of the terrifying Podio, isn’t it… ;-)
I agree with you. And to be fair, there are a number of apps that are moving in that direction. OmniFocus Pro, for example, although the cost is “exciting”. And 2Do can be adjusted to a near-infinite extent. Others allow you to display certain fields only (I believe Nozbe does that, for example). But it would be great to find an app that gives you total control over the whole thing.
I suppose that’s why I used Ulysses as a task management app for a while: because I could decide on a set of conventions for indicating certain priorities, dates etc. that suited me personally, with plenty of room for notes. As it happens, the lack of reminders and date-based filters put me off, eventually (although I could probably have created the latter, thinking about it). And then I “rediscovered” TickTick, and the visceral feeling of “thank goodness!” was a vigorous reminder that sometimes, an app doesn’t have to be gorgeous to be all that you need.
Having said which, I do like the “new” Todoist and have been fiddling with it. It’s not - perhaps - quite tempting enough to get me to change, but it’s definitely nice, and I’ve put a lot of tasks in there to see how easy they are to track. TickTick still wins on the ease of use front, however, based on the Visibility of Tasks criterion. But I’m a sucker for nesting…
Posted by dan7000
Sep 24, 2015 at 05:15 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
Hi Ken,
>
>That’s supposed to be the point of the terrifying Podio, isn’t it… ;-)
>
>I agree with you. And to be fair, there are a number of apps that are
>moving in that direction. OmniFocus Pro, for example, although the cost
>is “exciting”. And 2Do can be adjusted to a near-infinite extent. Others
>allow you to display certain fields only (I believe Nozbe does that, for
>example). But it would be great to find an app that gives you total
>control over the whole thing.
>
IQTell is/was super customizable and powerful. Toodledo has some good customization too.
FWIW the killer feature for me is being able to see how many of hours of work I’ve committed myself to for each day in the next week or so, so that I can determine whether I am in danger of missing a deadline or if I need to delegate something or negotiate an extension. That doesn’t seem to be something a lot of other people need but it’s absolutely necessary for me. The apps I’ve used for that mostly had other huge drawbacks and a lot are now defunct:
- Taskline (outlook plugin, still exists but outlook-only)
- Taskk (web only, defunct)
- Timeful (basically ios only, never worked great, defunct)
- Focuster (new, promising, but web only and doesn’t easily show what I need)
- Sheldonize (similar to focuster)
- Watership Planner, TimeTo and Leadertask (all windows-only, first 2 not in active development)
- skedpal (new, currently windows only but they keep promising ios - could be the best one eventually)
and now, after years of ignoring it:
- Nozbe. Which has all the ease of use and features of more typical task managers but also has task durations and a neat feature that simply adds up the number of hours scheduled for each day. It also has realtime two-way sync with google calendar so if my tasks are packed tightly I can schedule them out and make sure they will work and will fit in around other events.
Still looking for the perfect solution to this use case though, so if others know of one let me know!
Posted by Ken
Oct 6, 2015 at 04:58 PM
Well, it appears that Asana was not content enough to just release some minor updates. They recently released a whole new look, including, you guessed it, a new logo. I am still wading through their changes, but it seems that the FOTM is certainly bright tropical colors and radio button checkboxes, a la Todoist. While I am generally content with very basic (muted) colors for my software, I do not mind some freshening up, but unfortunately the contrast has been dramatically reduced in Asana’s left column. They decided to color the column a darker shade of blue, but the font color is not a true white, and is not nearly as easy to see. Some folks have called this issue out, but it seems like a rash of defenders has come to the defense of Asana and their changes. It is a shame that intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of changes cannot be easily had in their forums since this was an easy issue to address without having to dial back the entire update. One thought that did cross my mind as I was looking at their new icon/logo on my phone, some companies like Wordpress (whose app site near Asana and Todoist on my phone) seem to do just fine with their updates without needing to reinvent their brand and write long blog posts about the rebranding process. A bit too much sizzle for my tastes, even if the steak has been improved.
—Ken
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 7, 2015 at 02:51 PM
Ken,
Though the new look seemed familiar (in that it mimics other similar apps), I found it less intuitive than the old interface, so I took advantage of the “Take Me To Old Asana” feature. And I agree that the left panel of the new interface is difficult to read—my colleague commented on that, too, without my prompting.
I do like the changes as applied to the iPad app, however.
Steve Z.
Posted by Ken
Dec 19, 2015 at 12:55 AM
Two updates on items discussed in this topic.
First, it appears that Podio may be a dead man walking. There were discussions about Citrix no longer having it in active development, but of course they do say that folks should continue using the program and that it is not going anywhere now.
Second, it seems that Todoist no longer unofficially supports turning a task into a note with a preceding asterisk. The test tasks that I just tried to type appear as a normal task.
Easy come, easy go.
—Ken