Apple OS X Mountain Lion: I Just Upgraded

On Friday afternoon, I decided to upgrade my MacBook Pro to the new Mountain Lion OS.  I had planned to wait, but after reading about one dozen highly positive reviews I became too curious about the new OS to wait.  

Buying Mountain Lion was easy.  It was $20 at the Mac App Store.  The download, however, took over two hours.  I'm not sure what the hold-up was.  My office network is usually quite fast, thus I assumed Apple's servers were a little overloaded from a rush of Friday afternoon downloads.  Once downloaded, though, everything installed smoothly.

Overall, I like Mountain Lion.  My MacBook seems to be much faster now that it's installed.  I haven't experienced any unusual problems with applications I regularly use.  Among these are:

• Word 2011
• Outlook 2011
• OneNote (through a Windows Virtual Machine)
• Omnifocus
• Evernote (Mac desktop client)
• Picasa
• Chrome
• Filemaker 12
• Pages 

My copy of Mindjet warned me that it may have trouble with Mountain Lion (and thus to save work frequently), although I have yet to encounter any problems.  

I'm very happy with the new Pages interface with iCloud.  It's now quite easy to leave a document in the iCloud folder and have it easily accessed by Pages on my iPad.  I'm also looking forward to syncing Notes through iCloud. As for the rest of iCloud, I haven't made much use of it.  I can see the utility in the keeping the Calendar and Address book on it; however, all of my contacts and calendar items are already synced through an Exchange server.   I don't use Mail, but rather Outlook 2011 as a mail client.  Because I don't use the built in Apple productivity apps, Mountain Lion's new marquee "Notification" center is pretty useless to me.  

Mountain Lion's built in productivity apps look nice, but since I also use a PC and most of my company uses PCs we have found that the Exchange server works best for us.  Also, this means that I'm not bound to any proprietary system for syncing phones, tables, and computers as Exchange works with Apple devices and Windows PCs as well as Android and Windows based mobile devices.  Generally, most of my files are stored in formats which would work on a Windows platform (the main exception being those in Pages and those on programs from the Omni Group).  

The above being said, I still prefer to work in the Mac OS environment and plan to do so as long as it's practical.   I've been quite pleased with Mountain Lion on the MacBook.   While I haven't used most of the touted bells and whistles (i.e., the 200+ new features) I have found already that it is providing a fundamentally faster and better platform for the applications I use frequently.  And, I'm very pleased at the ease with which I can work on Pages documents between my Mac and my iPad.  

More to come as I keep working using the MacBook...

Software: OmniFocus for Mac, iPad, and iPhone

I wrote in a post a few weeks ago that my Things for Mac had decided to stop syncing with Things for iPad and Things for iPhone.  I rely on productivity software for my business (Prism Risk Management), as well as for non-profit service and personal use.

For reference, here's my Apple set-up:

• 2011 15" MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Lion 
• iPad 2 running the latest update of iOS5
• iPhone 3GS running the last update of iOS4 before the debut of iOS5
• The copies of Things productivity software (by Cultured Code) are the lastest available for all of the devices listed above.  

Between the devices and software listed above,  I cannot make Things sync.  [note: maybe a more technically inclined person can, but as a tech enthusiast business/lawyer user I cannot]   This is bad for me, as I relied on Things for iPhone to enter in tasks which came up while I was out at happy hours, events, informal meetings, lunches with friends, and while riding my bike.   Instead of emailing a task to myself, I would enter it into things and it would pop up across all devices after syncing.  I use the iPad during meetings and working lunches, thus Things came in handy there for entering lists of action items; however, since I usually have a legal pad with me at meetings, it is easy to work around a faulty iPad app.   It is the iPhone/Mac link which has been most critical.  

I'm done with Things.  I have switched over to OmniFocus for personal and non-profit items in addition to business tasks, and I have started to use it for everything (as opposed to just for longer project oriented lists).  

I like OmniFocus better all the way around.  With syncing, it's main advantage over Things is that it syncs to a cloud server which controls the master file for all of your devices running OmniFocus (just like Evernote).  There is no need, as with Things, to get all devices connected to the same WiFi network and then open the application on all devices.  With OmniFocus, you press a button and your updates are sent to the OmniGroup's central server.  If you then drop your phone in the lake, your updates are still going to show up across devices.  

Besides the cloud aspect of OmniFocus, it is generally a more powerful program than Things.  You can make voice notes to attach to tasks on the iPhone app.  You can also attach files, documents, etc. to individual tasks, set up tasks as sequential or parallel, make hierarchies of tasks, and set up start as well as due dates.  Tasks will pop up on your iPhone screen at an assigned time in order to actively remind you to do them.  Across Mac, iPhone, and iPad you can assign tasks to projects to a project and to a "context" (i.e., category.  One advantage Things has is that you can add multiple tags to a task, and thus cross reference it through multiple categories.  That was nice, but my need for syncing takes priority.  

Things is a cool program across its Mac, iPhone, and iPad permutations.  It is elegantly simple and easy to use.  But for the syncing failures, I would still get some use out of it.  However, as a person who comes up with a lot of ideas and gets a lot of requests (which need to be given to myself as reminders) while in informal and social settings (where I'm only carrying an iPhone), the syncing function is critical.  For me: OmniFocus delivers, Things does not.

Disclaimer:  As I mentioned above, I am a business owner/lawyer and not a particularly technically inclined person.  This post is about my personal experiences and is not reflective of Things for Mac, iPhone, or iPad or Cultured Code products in general.  You should investigate these products for yourself and follow the advice of IT professionals or knowledgeable software reviewers.  If I figure out how to sync Things, I'll let you know.  

Software: Things Isn't Syncing

A few months ago, I decided to try a couple of productivity programs.  I picked Things for Mac and OmniFocus, as they both seemed very appealing for slightly different reasons (they are both based on the Getting Things Done, "GTD", system).   I put a each program on my MacBook Pro, and then downloaded the corresponding apps to my iPhone 3GS and iPad2.   After a few months of use, I found that Things was great for single task entries (business, personal, and volunteer related) while OmniFocus was better suited to business related task lists related to larger projects.   This wasn't surprising, as the descriptions of the products indicated that this would be the case.  OmniFocus is cool, and I'll post about it another time.  Today I'd like to air my issue with Things.

What really got me hooked on Things was the ability to whip out my iPhone and write a note to myself.  E.g., I'd be at a happy hour and someone would ask me for something, so I'd put an entry in Things.  Furthermore, I often have my iPad out during meetings, and if a task I wanted to assign myself came up I'd enter it into Things for iPad.  I would then sync Things between the iPhone and iPad and MacBook (to do this, you have to open things on your Mac and then open the Things app on the device you want to sync).  What I found was that while I would enter tasks into Things on the mobile devices, I would actually sit down with the Mac to execute the list.  I got used to this system.  My productivity spiked.  And then, the damn thing stopped syncing.

I don't know what has happened, but for the past few weeks every time I have opened Things for the iPhone it reports a failed sync and then crashes.  The iPad is just as uncooperative, and after the iOS5 update (which erased all of my apps) Things is empty and it won't sync.   I have looked into the problem, and I can't tell if it's an upgrade issue with iOS5.  I have Lion on my MacBook and iOS5 on the iPad.  I'm going to buy an iPhone 4S instead of putting iOS5 on my current phone.  But, regardless of the lack of iOS5 on the phone, I have installed all of the current upgrades across devices and checked settings.  Things still isn't working.

So, all I can tell you is that Things for Mac rocks in conjunction with Things for iPhone and iPad.   If you are distracted by constantly having to deal with business issues, Things is like a trusted personal assistant. But, Things as a stand alone on each platform doesn't do much for me.  I'm putting tasks I think of while out of the office onto OmniFocus sometimes, but more often than not I'm just writing myself reminders in Evernote.  Once Things sorts out the syncing or I figure out the solution, I'll post about it.  In the mean time, I'd recommend OmniFocus or Evernote for personal productivity over Things.