Core Program Is Excellent, Pro Perks Not Worth It

I’ve praised this app from the moment I bought it. I won’t repeat all that, but I will briefly say, in short, that this is an excellent program. I have no problems with the core program. This 3-star review is aimed solely at the “Pro” upgrade.

Now, I told myself I wasn’t going to pay the equivalanet of original price for a measly upgrade, but I came into some money and thought I might as well give it a shot. It’s one of the most important apps to my college career, after all. I bit the bullet and did the deed. The main reason it was appealing to me was the option to create custom perspectives, which are touted as giving users a seemingly endless amount of possiblites for customizing their Omni-workflow. Well I’m here to tell you that it isn’t as game-changing as it is made out to be, mostly because there are so few meaningful filtering/sorting/viewing options that justify the $39.99 price of an upgrade. Basically, I wanted to create a perspective that showed ONLY deferred items, sorted by project, so that I could have a place for the tasks I wanted to do at night (I called it “nightlies”… I was very excited). I quickly found out that the customizability of the “custom" perspectives was very limited. I couldn’t do any of what I wanted. Perhaps Im trying to grasp for something that isnt there, but why not? Why can’t I make it so that the perspective only shows a specifc context, or excludes the tasks that don’t belong as opposed to just showing me everything else the other perspectives do? I’m disappointed, guys. Nightlies will never come to fruition.

Honestly, the options for custom perspectives only provides me with the means to create a slighty-rearranged view of everything presented in the other perspectives… it should be DEEPER than that for so steep a price! The upgrade’s inclusion of Applescripting might make it more valuable to others, but I don’t know how to write scripts nor do I use them in my workflow. I wanted perspectives that would allow me to change my Omnifocus experience, even if only slightly. I’m peeved because the feature seems to be little more than a tacked-on afterthought. Hopefully more customizability is allowed in future updates, but for now I’m regretting shelling out the money for so little value in return.

Buy the regular version, wait for the pro to become more developed. As it stands now, it isn’t worth the price.

Jon David Tucker about OmniFocus 2