Saturday, May 16, 2009

Things 1.1/Things Touch 1.3.5: Area Sync

Things Touch 1.3.5 has been released along with Things 1.1 and, among a heap of bug fixes and UI improvements, you'll find a new feature for syncing Areas of Responsibility from your Mac to your iPhone (it's not yet possible to create Areas in Things Touch). The feature requires Things 1.1 on the Mac side, which was officially released today, but has actually been available (sans release notes) for about a week (assumedly waiting for Things Touch to make it through App Store approval).
Another new addition (which is more exciting, to me) is full AppleScript support in Things on the Mac. I haven't had a chance to dive into it yet, but it's a topic I discussed with Cultured Code at the last Macworld Expo and I'm excited to see it come to fruition. People using Things in any kind of group setting will appreciate the reconsidered approach to task delegation, as well.
For those who aren't familiar with Things in general, I'll take a quick step back. Things for the Mac has been a staunch competitor in the Mac task-management colosseum. Battling it out with OmniFocus and newer gladiators like The Hit List, it's been recognized by many for its simplicity and elegance. Things is powerful and flexible, while remaining reliable and simple. Things Touch is its iPhone companion, usable on its own or synced with Things Mac.
You may be asking, what's an "Area of Responsibility?" This is one of the features of Things which was hardest for me to grasp. It's not quite a GTD context, and it's not a folder for projects. Basically, Areas provide a flexible means of handling tasks which aren't part of a "project" and aren't necessarily sequential in nature.

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