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Search results for "2do"

2Do Is Going Free (with In-App Purchases)→

Fahad Gilani, developer of 2Do (one of my favorite task managers on iOS), has decided to adopt a ‘free with In-App Purchases’ model after years of a traditional ‘paid upfront with free updates’ app. He writes:

It’s about choices, or the lack thereof. I’m disappointed to say this, but after having to continually support and develop 2Do on various platforms for over 8 years, the free updates model has begun to lose its lustre. Folks that know me (and there aren’t too many of those in the wild), know how I really feel about subscriptions, in-app purchases and anything that nags the user for more money than they’ve originally paid.

Past several years what I’ve truly been waiting for is a solution that’s in-between in-app purchases, subscriptions and paid upgrades. Instead, what we got out from this year’s WWDC was “Subscriptions for all!”. I don’t know about you, and your opinion on this may differ, but I’d personally hate to see the 10+ apps I use frequently to turn into a $2.99+ monthly subscription. I appreciate that there’s a difference between a Service and an App, but nowadays everyone’s begun to portray their app as a service. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not comfortable with that thought; even as a developer.

And here’s how it’s going to work, starting with Android and moving to other platforms:

In short, even after the trial expires, the app will continue to offer all of its features, except for Sync, Backups and Alert Notifications (i.e. turn into a dumb, but useful to do list). In order to enable those, the user could upgrade to the full version by paying once.

Nothing changes for folks that have already purchased the app. You won’t have to pay again (on Android there isn’t currently a way to determine if you’ve already paid for the app, however I’ll figure something out so it remains free). The app will still be priced the same, only the model changes a bit to allow it to be previewed for free.

This comes a week after The Omni Group has announced that all their apps will become free downloads with trials and unlocks handled by one-time In-App Purchases. I sense a trend consolidating for developers of productivity software on iOS; I hope Apple is okay with this use of In-App Purchases and that it’ll scale in practice. If this allows developers of pro iOS apps to build better sustainable businesses for years to come, I’m all for it.

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2Do 3.8.1→

I’m a big fan of 2Do, and today’s 3.8.1 update packs some neat additions that heavy users of the app should check out.

Besides new settings for due dates and default collection lists, 2Do now comes with new search presets for dates, which will allow you to create smart lists for tasks due today, tomorrow, this week, and more. You can also look for tasks that have been completed within a specific date range – useful to build filters to see how much you’ve been productive in, say, the past week.

There are enhancements for automation with URL schemes, too: you can now perform quick searches without creating a smart list every time (imagine the possibilities with Workflow and Drafts here), and – this is something a lot of users were asking for – the URL scheme has a new parameter to pick an existing project/checklist to add a new task to.

2Do keeps getting more powerful on each release. You can get version 3.8.1 here.

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Ben Brooks on Moving to 2Do→

Ben Brooks has a spot-on comment on task managers after his move to 2Do:

That is: if you are using every part of the task management system when things are light, then problems will arise when things get busy. It’s not that OmniFocus was overkill for me, it’s that it was too rigid. That rigidity is great when I am suffering decision fatigue from the amount of work I have, but it is a burden when I am not suffering that fatigue.

Further: when you aren’t busy your task management system should be easy. The system should scale, not permanently be operating as if you are the busiest person in the world all the time.

At its core, this is what I love about 2Do: its flexibility makes it either extremely simple or incredibly advanced – or both at the same time if you just switch views in the app. Unlike other task managers, 2Do adapts to your needs.

(Side note: after Email to 2Do, I wouldn’t mind paying for all sorts of optional add-ons in the app.)

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How Email to 2Do Has Improved My Daily Email Workflow

In my review of 2Do in December, I dedicated one of the last sections to Email to 2Do, the then beta plugin to capture incoming email messages as tasks in the app.

Here’s how I described Email to 2Do:

With Email to 2Do, Gilani has built an invisible email client into 2Do to directly access your email inbox and turn messages into tasks. Without having to rely on a web app that looks into the contents of your email to read text from messages, 2Do locally and securely connects to common email providers (including IMAP servers) without exposing information to third-parties – just like Apple Mail. Then, 2Do periodically checks for new messages that match a specific syntax, and, if it finds one, it turns it into a task in your inbox.

With this implementation, you don’t see any of the client part; you don’t configure mailboxes or even see individual messages into 2Do. You just configure your account (if you use Gmail, all it’s done over OAuth), choose how you want messages to trigger 2Do, and you’re set.

The gist of the idea hasn’t changed in the past two months: Email to 2Do is an email client built into 2Do that doesn’t display an email-like interface to the user. Its sole job is to connect to your email inbox and monitor new messages as they arrive. If they match rules assigned by you in the Settings, they will be saved as tasks in the inbox or another designated list.

For anyone who’s been trying dozens of task managers since the opening of the App Store in 20081, it’s easy to see how Email to 2Do is such a genius, deceptively simple idea. For years, developers have tried to come up with extensions and custom integrations to circumvent the lack of communication between email clients and todo apps – often with laudable results. 2Do’s Fahad Gilani has instead gone in a parallel direction: what would a task manager do if it was capable of reading emails natively? Instead of bringing task management to the email client, could email itself become a feature of the task manager?

With Email to 2Do now publicly available as part of the app’s 3.8 update, it’s time to revisit its functionality and elaborate on how it’s been working out for me so far, as well as how it could be extended in the future.

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Why 2Do Is My New Favorite iOS Task Manager

There’s only one thing I like more than switching todo apps: writing about it. On the surface, it surely seems like I’ve been doing a lot of both in the past year.

In reality, while I have been guilty of periodically changing the way I organize my tasks in the past – going as far as trying a different app each month – I’ve made an effort to stick with a system, learn it, and use it as much as possible over the past three years. Since 2013, I’ve only replaced my task management app of choice once – when I moved from Reminders to Todoist upon realizing that my life got too busy for Apple’s basic app.

I liked Todoist for reasons that made sense at the time: I was preparing our multi-article coverage of iOS 8; I wanted a task manager that lived in the cloud and could be used to collaborate with other people; and I was intrigued by the idea of filters. Todoist served me well for months, and I was happy to see that others were also rediscovering a service that had been around for quite some time and built a profitable business. If you’re looking for a task manager that does more than Wunderlist and is built for teams and external integrations, Todoist still is my top recommendation.

Around early July this year, I realized that my daily work routine wasn’t the same as the Fall of 2014 and that it was also about to change again with the launch of Club MacStories and my iOS 9 review. On the verge of major alterations to my workflow and personal schedule, I always want to reassess and optimize how I get work done so that I don’t end up fighting a system that’s supposed to help me. Life is ever-changing, and there’s no point in thinking that our approach to manage it should perpetually stay the same.

Primarily out of curiosity but also with a hint of app boredom, I installed 2Do on my iPhone and iPad while I was in Positano1. I had no idea it would become the task manager I’ve felt the most comfortable with since getting an iPhone eight years ago.

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  1. One of my favorite places in Italy. ↩︎

Email to 2Do→

2Do is the task manager I’ve been using since August. I’m planning to write about it – the app is just so feature-rich, I’m still exploring all its possibilities. In the meantime, 2Do’s developer has announced today an optional $2.99 add-on that will soon enable 2Do users to capture emails directly from the app.

Email to 2Do is an optional one-time-only purchasable add-on that you’ll be able to buy ($2.99) and configure in zero time, starting v3.8. For those unconvinced, we’re so sure you’ll love it that it’ll come with a free trial period of 14 days (which other iOS app does that?). The possibilities are endless. You could create a special email address for 2Do and remotely forward or send emails to this address for 2Do to pick up behind the scenes and convert to tasks. You could even use this with IFTTT! Currently we plan on supporting all major IMAP service providers, including but not limited to: iCloud, Google, Outlook, Yahoo! and of course your very own custom IMAP server.

2Do has always remained true to its core goals – which has been to provide you with tools that work with services you choose for yourself, not the other way round. 2Do syncs with the service you’re comfortable with, and will now integrate seamlessly with an email address from your service provider of choice.

No todo app has ever really perfected the email capturing experience – the disconnect between email clients and apps on iOS is too big to overcome it with URL schemes or IFTTT workarounds. 2Do’s email feature sounds like an integrated approach – an actual email plugin into the app that checks for messages saved in a certain way, transforming them to tasks.

I’m curious to check this out. In the meantime, you can request access to the beta here.

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The iPad at 10: Emerging from the Shadow of the iPhone

The trouble with looking back over a long period is that time has a way of compressing history. The clarity of hindsight makes it easy to look back at almost anything and be disappointed in some way with how it turned out years later.

We certainly saw that with the anniversary of the introduction of the iPad. Considered in isolation a decade later, it’s easy to find shortcomings with the iPad. However, the endpoints of the iPad’s timeline don’t tell the full story.

It’s not that the device is short on ways it could be improved; of course, it isn’t. However, the path of the iPad over the past decade isn’t a straight line from point A to point B. The iPad’s course has been influenced by countless decisions along the way bearing consequences that were good, bad, and sometimes unintended.

The 10th anniversary of the iPad isn’t a destination, it’s just an arbitrary point from which to take stock of where things have been and consider where they are going. To do that, it’s instructive to look at more than the endpoints of the iPad’s history and consider what has happened in between. Viewed from that perspective, the state of the iPad ten years later, while at times frustrating, also holds reason for optimism. No single product in Apple’s lineup has more room to grow or potential to change the computing landscape than the iPad does today.

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