-
iPhone
,Computer
,linux
,BSD
,Productivity
Some plaintext-productivity love with Taskpaper
I finally got my plaintext-todo-system together. It was a bit cumbersome because I did and could not want to use Dropbox, but it works now. The problem is that some of my machines either run FreeBSD or OpenBSD and all the plaintext-productivity apps on iOS either require Dropbox or iCloud[footnote]To be honest, I do not understand why so many iOS-apps expect a Mac on the desktop. Do so many iOS-owners also own a Mac? I would expect that most actually own a Windows-machine[/footnote]. I have a Nextcloud but the Nextcloud-client on iOS does not really integrate into iOS and nearly no one offers to sync with something else than iCloud or Dropbox on iOS.
But there is a really good git-client on iOS: Working Copy. And there is a really good markdown-editor, that also has taskpaper-support and integrates with some workarounds with Working Copy: Editorial[footnote]It does not integrate as Textastic but that might come in the future[/footnote].
The final piece that was missing where some reminders which work somehow automagically. There is a way to create iOS-reminders in Editorial from Taskpaper-files but there I would need to run a workflow in Editorial manually to create them. And I wouldn’t get a mail in the morning with a summary of tasks that are due, overdue etc. But I have now some scripts and cronjobs which create the mail and will send out push notifications via Pushover[footnote]I use Pushover because our Icinga2, the monitoring system we use at work, already uses pushover to send notifications when an alert is coming up.[/footnote].
How does it work?
I created a git-repo on my server. And have it checked out on my clients and in the home-directory of my user on the server. When I change something on the clients, I commit and push to the server. On the server there is cronjob in the crontab of my user running every minute to pull the repo. Additionally there is a cronjob running a python-script that checks if a task has an alarm set. If one is set, it will send the task as message to pushover, which sends a push notification to my iPhone. At 4 am in the morning there is an additional cronjob that runs a script that will generate a summary mail and sends it to me via e-mail.
The scripts expect the following tags, so that they can work:
- @today or @due[YYYY-MM-DD]
- @alarm[YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM]
The basis is the Taskpaper-Parser from github-user kmarchand. My push-script is a derivate from the script[footnote]Please forgive me since I am not very knowledgable in the arts of programming and just hacked around to get a works-for-me-thing[/footnote]:
[code language=“python”] from datetime import datetime, timedelta from collections import namedtuple from dateutil import parser import sys import re import httplib import urllib
tpfile = sys.argv[1]
with open(tpfile, ‘rb’) as f: tplines = f.readlines()
Flagged = namedtuple(‘Flagged’, [‘type’, ‘tasktime’, ‘taskdate’, ‘project’, ‘task’]) flaglist = [] errlist = []
project = ''
for line in tplines: try: if ‘@done’ in line: continue if ‘:\n’ in line: project = line.strip()[:-1] if ‘@alarm’ in line: alarmtag = re.search(r'@alarm((.*?))', line).group(1) tasktime = datetime.time(parser.parse(alarmtag)) taskdate = datetime.date(parser.parse(alarmtag)) #print(tasktime) #print(taskdate) flaglist.append( Flagged(‘alarm’, tasktime, taskdate, project, line.strip())) except Exception, e: errlist.append((line, e))
today = alarm = overdue = duethisweek = startthisweek = None today_date = datetime.date(datetime.now()) today_time = datetime.time(datetime.now()) time_tmp = datetime.now() - timedelta(minutes = 1) today_time_less1min = time_tmp.time()
for task in flaglist: if task.type == ‘alarm’ and today_date == task.taskdate and today_time > task.tasktime and today_time_less1min < task.tasktime: alarm = True #print ‘\t[%s] %s’ % (task.project, task.task) conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection("api.pushover.net:443") conn.request("POST", "/1/messages.json", urllib.urlencode({ "token": "APP-Token", "user": "User-Token", "message": task.project + " " + task.task, }), { "Content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" }) conn.getresponse() if not alarm: print ‘\t (none)’ [/code]
It is simple, it could be probably far more elegant but it works for me™.
In addition there is a simple shell-script[footnote]I am running it on my FreeBSD-server, thus the path to python is /usr/local/bin/python2 - when you are running Linux the path is probably /usr/bin/python2[/footnote]:
[code language=“bash”] #!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/python2 /home/user/python/tpp.py /home/user/taskpaper/Work.taskpaper > /tmp/taskpaper.mail /usr/local/bin/python2 /home/user/python/tpp.py /home/user/taskpaper/Personal.taskpaper >> /tmp/taskpaper.mail mail -s ‘Your Daily Taskpaper Summary’ my@mailaddress.org < /tmp/taskpaper.mail [/code]
And here is my crontab:
[code]
-
-
-
-
- /bin/sh -c ‘cd ~user/taskpaper && /usr/local/bin/git pull -q origin master’ >> ~/git.log
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- /usr/local/bin/python2 /home/user/bin/tpp_alarms.py /home/user/taskpaper/Work.taskpaper
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- /usr/local/bin/python2 /home/user/bin/tpp_alarms.py /home/user/taskpaper/Personal.taskpaper 0 4 * * * /home/user/bin/taskpaper_mail.sh [/code]
-
-
-
Since I am running FreeBSD on my server I have to rely on a crontab and cannot use systemd-timers.
On my computers I am an avid vim-user and I use taskpaper.vim for having syntax highlighting and some additional shortcuts for marking tasks as done or today etc.
In Editorial I use the Working Copy-workflow.
It is all very simple and not very elegant. But it works and brings me the funtcionality I was missing from using apps like Todoist or on the “local” level Taskmator. And everything runs on my own machines except the delivery for the push notifications. But the only chance to get there my own solution would be to develop an iOS-app because you can’t get in any other way push notifications to your iOS-device. And if I should switch back to Android at any point, I still can use pushover. I pushover goes down, I hope there are alternatives… ;)
-
iPhone
,Computer
,micro
Great that I didn’t request a refund for the shell I bought. It was a pbcak-error (and maybe a UI-problem) and not a software-problem.
And on that matter I can recommend Blink for iOS as a mosh-client.
-
iPhone
,linux
,micro
,BSD
Btw. any ideas which password manager besides LastPass works on iOS, Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD (sync with Nextcloud)?
-
iPhone
,Computer
,Rechnerkram
,linux
,ios
,android
,macos
,switching
Switching and Linux, macOS, Android and iOS
TL;DR: Yay Linux, Nay Android. Let’s stay with Linux but switch back to iOS.
Recently I am thinking about getting a new computer and phone and whether I should go back to macOS and iOS. I am using Linux and Android for a couple of years now and I am thinking recently about getting new devices. Let’s talk about computers first.
macOS and Linux
macOS is a really nice operating system. It is not open source but thanks to homebrw etc a lot of open source-software runs on it and the command line environment works as expected. Besides that you get a lot of commercial software from big and small companies that you either get on Linux or which you just do not get in that quality on other operating systems[footnote]An example would be OmniFocus…or anything else by the OmniGroup. Or OpenEmu which rocks still a lot more than RetroArch or EmulationStation[/footnote]. Additionally you do not need to tinker with them. Most of the time stuff just works.
But for one I like using open source software even though not everything works always. Just yesterday I tried using the proprietary NVIDIA-driver on Fedora 25 and failed miserably which led me to re-installing the system[footnote]which took like 15 minutes plus installing a bit of extra software and updates…thanks to enough bandwidth that’s not taking long as well.[/footnote] but eventually I will get it to work or the open source-driver might even be working well enough which I actually didn’t test yet. Or podcasting doesn’t work as smooth for me as it does on macOS. But I am getting it to work eventually. And nowadays most of the normal stuff just works. Especially when you are using Ubuntu. 16.04 was a “just works”-experience, even after moving my SSD from a Thinkpad X201 to a Dell T3500 with two NVIDIA-cards and a Xeon. The upgrade to 16.10 worked as well. I guess I wouldn’t have there any problems with podcasting, too. Playing games is possible nowadays as well with Steam etc. My recent problems came from trying to get NVIDIA-drivers to work in Fedora 25 which I like for some reason more than Ubuntu. The only thing that I dislike about Linux is that there is no backup-solution like Time Machine. TM is just awesome. But for most of the other stuff modern Linux-distributions just works. And there is even a simple solution for backups but it is not as good as that for macOS. All in all the pros of Linux, be it that it is open-source or that I can run it on commodity hardware just outweighs the cons of macOS with its high prices and hardware that is not servicable at all anymore.
iOS and Android
Android is quite nice in the customizability-department and there is some stuff you can’t do with iOS. For example syncing a single folder in my Dropbox with a single folder on my device, or doing the same with Bittorrent Sync. But nowadays I don’t use capabilities like that really a lot. I like to customize my device though. And buying games for cheap via HumbleBundle is great. And now comes the big “but”. And it is updates. First I owned a Moto X, now an LG G4. Both companies said that they will release updates a short time after Google released the updates. This didn’t happen. In addition Android seems all in all less secure than iOS. I am not even talking about installing apps from outside the Play Store. That’s a matter of using your brain. But the Play Store has from time to time malware and the Stagefright-stuff is frightening. If I am not mistaken I have several public known security bugs on my phone which aren’t patched by LG in a timely manner. That sucks. And the devices by Google cost now as much as iPhones and have an update guarantee of two or three years max. And I cannot install a custom ROM that might get more often updates since that would break my warranty because I would need to unlock the bootloader of my phone. And I already had a warranty case with this phone. I don’t want to risk to unlock my phone and then have a hardware-problem.
Since I do not need to use a computer nowadays in combination with an iPhone, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get a high quality device with a more secure OS than Android. I don’t buy the 100€-Android-devices anyway. I won’t necessarily buy the newest iPhone but the next phone I want to get is definitely an iPhone. Bye bye Android.
P.s.: I’d really like to try Ubuntu Phone but I don’t see a cheap way to do it. I don’t want to shell out 100+€ just for trying out a phone-OS which I might not like.
-
Opinion
,iPhone
,Rechnerkram
OmniFocus 2 for the iPhone - an opinion
Actually I wanted to write a review about OmniFocus 2 with screenshots everything. But there are already several of them, just to link to two.
So no screenshots, just my experiences from the last days. OmniFocus 1 was designed pragmatically and worked very well. You could input tasks fast, you could check them off fast, got an overview with the Forecast-feature. All in all it was a very good companion app to the OS X-application. Without it though it was a very good Todo-app since it has start and due dates, repetitive tasks, projects etc.
Its main weakness was it looks. It had a charming look reminding us how stock-iOS-apps look when there is nearly no custom design. And it synced but the sync always felt slow especially in comparison to one of the main competitors Things.
OmniFocus 2 worked on exactly those two weaknesses. It got completely redesigned. The overview-screen put Forecast into a more prominent place, which is great. You can immediately see how many tasks are up today in the coming week. The same applies to tasks that are flagged or in the inbox. You can easily get to Projects, Nearby and Contexts and everything in the nice look of iOS7. A very bright white and beautiful colors. I really like the new look of it. But we will see how it will hold up over the years. Since OF1 did not get so much design-love over the years, I do not expect that OF2 will get that much love over the time. But for now it is looking awesome. The first time that it looks better than Things.
The other weakness is syncing. OF2 has, thanks to iOS7, the ability to wake up from time to time and sync. Henceforth when you really use it as a companion-app and do not look all the time at the phone just to see if that icon-badge appears and if the data is there but do the stuff you are supposed to do, you will see that magically all your tasks are there when you look at it on a break or when you come to the tasks that have to sync over to it. The sync is not immediate but it just happens. I can’t say how fast but it is usually a couple of minutes but can also take half an hour in my experience. To be honest, that didn’t turn out yet as a problem. I wrote today my shopping list at home, and when I arrived at the supermarket the tasks where there. I noted some stuff down in OF, get going and when I was where I had to be to do the tasks, they were there. When I noted down tasks on the iPhone while out and returned home to my running computer the tasks where there. The sync is still not fast, but it works in the background and the tasks are usually there when you are happen to be in a place where you need your synced todo-items.
Another nice feature is when putting in a new task there is a “Save+"-button, which will add the task, you are noting down and you get immediately a new task to add.
So far, so good. What are the downsides? Right now there is no Textexpander-support because Textexpander needs a new framework and that didn’t get released in time for most devs for adding it to their apps. I guess it is the same for the people at Omni and it will return. The app doesn’t have landscape-support, but I actually do not care. There is still no review-functionality. That’s the one I miss the most because I could do it then when I am already lying in bed or when I am commuting. The app is really bright, so it is not so nice to be usable at night. I hope that gets fixed in the future. For starters you can put the Invert Colors-function in the Accessibility-settings onto the triple Home Button-click and you get a dark OF2 that looks really really good.
Putting in tasks got a bit weaker in this version. Number one is that in OF1 is that task-details that belonged to each other were visually grouped together (like start/due-dates). That isn’t the case anymore. They are sorted the same way but it is just line after line. The other thing I do not like is putting in a start/due-date. The dialer comes up and there are some shortcuts for +1 day/week/month/year present but you have to tap the line with “Due” or “Defer until” to return to the screen where you can put in other details. That is confusing and even so I entered already some tasks I can’t get accustomed to it and it doesn’t feel that this will happen so fast. A next-button or something would be nice.
The next thing I do not like is that the pretty much default gesture for moving back a view in iOS7, a swipe from left to right does not work unfortunately. From what I read it was either an oversight because you have to actively activate it again when you are adding a custom animation like Omni did, or it was a design-decision, which I would not like. I got really accustomed to moving back views via a swipe. And it is so omni-present in iOS7 (pun intended).
Last but not least the price. Imho the app is worth $10. But since I am using it daily for several years now and got free updates, it felt ok to pay the 20 bucks, even so it is a lot of money for me (in general not relative to other apps). When you are really looking at it, it is only a visual update with background syncing. Those are nice additions but not worth a complete re-purchase at a relative high price for an app that is mainly a companion app to a pricey but great todo-app. If you have the money, please support Omni, buy the upgrade and thus they will be able to put out other great applications. If you are short on money, save up for it. You can wait. The app doesn’t add any functionality, which justifies an immediate necessary update right now (like a review-functionality would for example). Support Omni when you have the money, but it can wait. OF1 still works in iOS7, thus you are not missing that much. And when you have the money, pay for it and be delighted by the new looks and the background-sync.
-
Opinion
,iPhone
,Computer
,Rechnerkram
,ios
,culturedcode
,david allen
,gtd
,omnifocus
,omnigroup
,os x
,things
OmniFocus and Things: A comparison
tl;dr
Things for design and and an ultrafast sync but you have to follow a certain way to be able to work with it and it can clutter up fast. OmniFocus for flexibility and when you have more than a dozen active projects but it’s not as nice looking.
Introduction
This text shall be about OmniFocus and Things. It is not definitive and I probably miss features since I will write here as objective as possible how those two Mac-applications and their iPhone-counterparts present themself to me and to my workflow.
I guess the best is to tell you where I come from. In 2005 I got introduced by a colleague to GTD (“Since I am using it, my desk is always tidied up and I always have backup batteries for my Bluetooth mouse”). He lent me the book, I read it and I was sold.
I started with a modified moleskine (something like this), used a Hipster PDA but was never really happy with the solutions. On my Mac I tried iGTD, kGTD (the precursor to OmniFocus, essentially a pimped OmniOutliner-document) and some other stuff. When Things became public I used it happily and when they released the iPhone-version I was in heaven. I had a look or two at OmniFocus (henceforth OF) when it got released but it looked always ugly and far too complex.
So I used Things and was always happy but I got unhappier. The always promised over-the-air sync (henceforth OTA-sync) didn’t get released, the updates were slow and stuff like the tagging-UI on the iPhone drove me nuts. So I had again a look around and suddenly OF didn’t look that bad anymore and I bought with it over two years ago the iPhone-app, too. I also bought an ebook about it and read loads if articles because I wanted to get the most out of it.
So after approximately three years I switched from Things completely to OmniFocus. Now it is two years later and because of the looks of Things I was still interested in it and recently I decided to give it another chance.
And what I found I will write up here.
Mapping features
There are some features which are similar in both apps but different enough that I have to explain them here to make the rest of the article easier to understand.
Contexts vs Tags
Things uses tags, OmniFocus uses contexts. When you know GTD, you know that a task should usually be associated with a project and a context. A project is something you try to achieve (clean up the garage, publish a podcast etc) what needs several steps. The single steps of a project are the tasks. A context is depending on definition a location (home, work, at the computer, at the phone) or state you are in (highly focused, zombie). In OmniFocus you can only add one context per task. You can have them divided like Errands and then a ton of subcontexts like the supermarkets but that’s it. One context per task, as it is written in the book. In addition you can add a duration, and a flag to a task.
Things on the other hand has tags. Therefore you can add unlimited tags to a task and use it for durations, priorities etc. tags can also be hierarchical like the contexts on OF, two levels, that’s it.
I will write more about the weaknesses and advantages of both later.
Start Dates vs Scheduling a Task
In OF you can set a start date for a task. That means that the task will be marked as inactive until it reaches it start date.
In Things you can schedule a task which means that it will be marked as scheduled (kinda like inactive) and it turns up in a daily review sheet when it reaches the date and then you can decide what to do with it. The two main options are “show in today” (a view for tasks in Things for tasks which are due, overdue and you decided on todo today) and later (reschedule it) but you can also modify the task in any way you like.
For the purpose of this articles when I speak about start dates I mean in terms of Things the scheduling of a task.
Inactive vs Someday
In OF you can set a context (all tasks with that context are inactive), task or project to inactive. Depending on your filters it won’t show up then. There is a similar feature in Things which is called Someday. You can place a project or a task there and it will be removed from the side bar and the projects view on the iPhone and will turn up only when you switch to the Someday-view.
When I talk about setting something inactive I mean in terms of Things that I move it to someday.
The Design
Things looks better. No doubt about that. The desktop-app and the iPhone-app are well designed in terms of looks. OmniFocus on the Mac has support for themes and there is a plethora available and I even use custom icons from Icons & Coffee but nothing gets OmniFocus to look as polished as Things. On the iPhone it is not even themeable. But at least the OmniGroup gave it nicer looking icons on the Mac and on the iPhone which is at least something. The OF2 α looks better than OF1 but it still is not at the level of Things. Looks are important for me because I want to look at nice things when I use something all the time.
Entering Tasks
Both applications on the Mac have quick input windows which work fine and have auto-completions. There are workflows for Alfred for both which work fine. The only difference is that I can’t add a start date in Things but I can do so in OmniFocus.
On the iPhone both apps have a universally available button for pulling up the “enter a task-sheet”.
But they differ in some ways and here the way both apps work start to diverge.
OmniFocus
When OmniFocus does a “cold” start aka wasn’t in the background, it always optimizes the database. When your database has a certain size, this can take up to a minute in my experience. Since I am archiving my tasks on a regular basis it’s often a max. of a view seconds. Anyway in this time the sheet misses the ability to put in a project or task. So, that can be annoying.
If OmniFocus was in the background you can do everything incl. making recurring tasks and it even lets you attach a photo or an audio-recording. The only thing missing is a way to add a duration.
When entering a project or a context, a new view is pulled up that lists all projects or all contexts and you get a fuzzy search that searches while you type. I usually only need to type in a few letters and it is filtered down to a point where I see what I search.
Maildrop
When you use the Omni Sync Server as a way to sync your todos OTA (you can also use your own WebDAV-server), you can use the OmniFocus Mail Drop (which you find in your sync server account page). This means that you get a mail-address and when you send something to this mail address it gets added to your inbox when you sync the next time. The subject becomes the task, the body a note of the task.
I use this often when I am on my phone and find some interesting piece of software or video which I want to have a look at, when I am on my Mac. And app.net-, twitter- and RSS-clients and browsers on iOS have usually an easy way to share something via e-mail. It’s really fast. And as I noticed it is kind of a dealbreaker when I have a look at other todo-apps.
Things
In Things on the iPhone I can add a task, set a due date and project it belongs to, add tags and a note and schedule it. No way to make it a repeating task, add a photo or audio recording.
In addition for adding details to a task (like tags, note, due date) you have to do an extra tap to open the details. It feels like they discourage entering those details when you are entering a task. It might feel a bit cleaner than with OF but it also discourages you to think about it already when you are putting it in the first place imho. When you have a task in the inbox and get its details-view, you can move it but need to push the edit-button to add tags for example. One more thing thatched me think that CulturedCode (henceforth CC) discourages you to use those. When I used Things a lot I often didn’t enter tags on the iPhone, one reason was that it is hidden until you actively want to use them.
When I started to use OF I suddenly started to actively use contexts because it was right in front of me and I thought about where I actually have to do this. And therefore I could filter for it easily later.
The next problem with Things is that tags and projects are list views without a search. You can reorder them (and have to do so manually) to have the most used tags on top but I wouldn’t enter sub-tags of Errands for several supermarkets for example because it clutters up the list and I need ages to find what I search. And remember you also do priorities and durations with tags. But that’s missing one of the big advantages of tags: I can apply multiple of them to one task in contrast to OF. But I wouldn’t add a lot because it clutters up the list. It’s not a problem on the Mac though because there tags auto-complete when you add them to a task.
The same problem have projects. When you have more than let’s say 15 projects it becomes a hassle to get to the correct one. This will be a problem in the next section of this article, too.
Folders, Areas of Responsibilities and Projects
In both applications you have projects and they work similar. They group tasks (OF bad even the ability to enter sub-tasks to a task but I did not yet find a real use case for me). In both cases they can have notes, start and due dates, can be repeated and scheduled.
The first important thing to note is that projects in Things cannot contain recurring tasks. CC says that projects are something definite that is not ongoing and thus they shouldn’t have recurring tasks. They probably never had a project which took up only a short while like a few weeks where you had to do a specific task every day of the project.
But in Things you have Areas of Responsibility. You can group there projects and recurring tasks. So for big projects the best thing would be to create an Area of Responsibility and add there the smaller projects that are part if the big one and recurring tasks which belong to the big project. But I wouldn’t want to create an Area for a small project.
In OmniFocus you have folders to organize your projects. I use them like Areas in Things and have folders like “home”, “work”, “university”, “administration” etc.
One big difference is that tasks in Things can actually have no project associated with them, while in OF it always has to have project. My “project-less” tasks are in a project called “Misc”. When I moved from Things to OF I had to get accustomed to this and when I tried Things again I had to get accustomed to the fact that tasks do not need a project and therefore the project Misc. is not necessary. Btw. most of my repeating tasks live there. So it is actually a minor annoyance that Things doesn’t allow repeating tasks in a project. But it will be one of the pieces of my conclusion.
There are two more differences regarding projects and their organization.
Parallel and Sequential Projects
In OF projects can be parallel or sequential. In a parallel project you can do the task in any order you like, the top most is the “next task” though (important for filters), while in sequential projects only the top most task is the next one.
I have for example projects when I have get a bill from the doc with the following tasks: write the letter for the insurance, put in an envelope and write the address on it, bring it to the post office, wait for the money on the bank account (due a three days before the bill is due), transfer the money. The waiting for-task is an inactive task (like all my tasks with the waiting for-context) because I won’t do anything until I get the money or I really have to transfer the money. So all tasks after that are inactive as well which is good for filters when I want to see only active tasks. But when the inactive task becomes due it will turn up anyway in my due tasks.
In Things however there are only parallel projects in terms of OF. Which can be quite annoying. To explain that I have to explain a view in Things. I will get into more detail about views later.
There is a view in Things called Next. In there are all tasks listed that are not in someday, ordered by project and at the bottom are all scheduled tasks (except on the iPhone where a scheduled repeating project is listed with the other projects but I guess that’s a bug). Now I have my project with the bill from the doc. Guess what, the task after the waiting for task is listed there, as well as the project itself. Even so there is no task that is actually active right now. So it just clutters up the next view.
I thought for a long time that sequential projects are not necessary but when they help to filter stuff and get an overview they are quite some help. I already had also the case where I had a parallel project and suddenly couldn’t continue until I got an e-mail from someone. So I added a waiting for-task, made the project sequential and all tasks became inactive and some perspectives (the term for special view in OF) became cleaned up.
At last there is the side bar. Both applications, OF and Things have a sidebar where they list projects and in the case of Things some special views (Today, Next, Someday, Schedule - but more about that later). Things doesn’t have folders but the aforementioned Areas of Responsibilities.
In OF I Put my tasks into projects and most projects into folders. And I can fold the folders and the projects are removed out of the view. I see only the folder.
In Things there are no folders. So the more projects you have, the more projects you see in that sidebar. Putting a project into an Area doesn’t allow you to remove it from the sidebar. Clicking on an Area just shows you all projects and tasks associated with it. If you have a lot of projects, at some point eve. The areas get out of the sidebar and you have to scroll. More clutter. It works fine when you have only a few but I tend to have rather more than view because I have projects for each podcast-episode (that’s two), big blog entries that need research, several projects for my master thesis, upcoming birthdays of friends and relatives, home projects, administrative projects and so on. If you think a bit about it, you can get really fast to a lot of projects. And it is easy to clean your views up in OF, in Things it is not possible.
Templates
Both applications don’t allow template-projects but I will shortly describe what my solution to the problem is.
Templates in OF
I have a folder Templates and in there a couple of inactive projects (one for tidying up the apartment, one for paying a doctors bill, one for a new podcast-episode etc). Usually they are done like “Doctors bill [date of bill]” or “Retrozirkel [episode name]” (the podcast I am part of). When it’s time, I duplicate it, make it active, change the part of the name in the brackets and move it into the according folder. Afterwards I add due dates to the project and the tasks if necessary.
Templates in Things
In Things I have the templates stored in Someday and tagged them with “template”. The rest is the same as in OF, I just remove additionally the word template of course and move it to the according Area.
I like the folder a bit more because I can fold it up and don’t have them clutter up the someday list. But since I do not have that many templates, it is not really a problem in Things. But I can see that it might be really annoying for a power user of templates.
Contexts and Tags
I wrote already in the introduction and in the part about entering tasks about contexts and tags. Here I want to discuss how they actually work out.
To freshen up your memory, contexts in GTD are some kind of location where a task can happen. The word location is pretty broad like “home” or “phone”. There are new ideas out there that move contexts from location to something like state of mind since many people can do their work everywhere. Nowadays you are pretty much all the time online, so why have an online-context? And you carry your phone all the time with you, so why a phone-context. And our phones can do most of the stuff our computers can do, so a computer-context becomes redundant, too. Therefore you can come up with contexts like “focus” or “zombie” (you know, right after waking up and before your first coffee). But I think you get now the idea.
Contexts
OmniFocus uses contexts which can be hierarchically in two levels. I have as written before a context called Errands and sub-contexts of supermarkets and other shops. Or I have a library-context and several sub-contexts which bear the name of the library. In OmniFocus I can go now to the contexts-view and select “Errands” and it will me show all errands. When I select “Errands/Postal office” it will show me all those. In a search for Errands all tasks within the current view that belong to the context or one of its subcontexts.
Unfortunately OmniFocus doesn’t allow multiple contexts. Why multiple contexts you might wonder. When I do research it is not uncommon that I find books that are available in several libraries and not only in one. So I would like to create a task that says “get book so and so” and add all libraries in which it is available as a context (and add the signatures in the notes-field). That is not possible with OmniFocus.
There are ideas to add tags to OmniFocus for something like this via the notes-field but it is just a work around and nothing more. Regrettably it doesn’t seem that OmniFocus 2 will add tags, judging from the current Alpha.
Tags
Things uses tags which can be organized hierarchically like the contexts in OmniFocus. Unlimited metadata \o/
But it doesn’t work as well, as one would think. And my latest mail-exchange with a support-guy from CC doesn’t let me think that this will change. Anyway, why doesn’t work it that well?
On the one hand there is the input-problematic on the iPhone. I at least enter a lot of tasks into the iPhone-version because when something comes into my mind, I put it into my iPhone. The trusted inbox, you know. But there it’s this extra tap and the bad UI I described above that I do not really want to enter tags there.
On the other hand there is the problem is a matter of the hierarchical tags. Let’s say I add to a task the two tags: “Central” and “State” which are both sub-tags of “library”. In the UI of Things it will show me the tag “library” with a hint that there are sub-tags and then I can open them specifically and filter for those. Or I click on “library” and it will filter it correctly. But when I search for library, it won’t show me tasks that have only a sub-tag of library.
And both in combination don’t really let me use tags in Things, even so they should be superior to the contexts of OmniFocus.
Search
Both apps have a search. But it works quite differently. Even so I usually start with the OmniFocus-part, I will this time start with Things. Things' search is great. On the Mac it is always in the lower right and it always searches all projects etc, independent from the view you are in. Results come up while you are typing and are ordered by Inbox, Next, Scheduled, Logged and Trash and you can filter the search-results by tag. On the iPhone it is available on the first screen of the application with, you just have to scroll up and is a universal search, too. When you start typing it shows an extra bar that says “Title”, “Notes”, “Tags”, “All” for doing a bit of filtering. As written above there seems to be a bug though with scheduled repeated projects on the iPhone. The only thing that bothers me is the tag-search I described in the previous section
On OmniFocus search is available universally as well but it only searches your current view. Therefore when you are in the Inbox and you start searching, it will show you only results from the Inbox. You have to go to a view that shows you all task to search over all tasks. I never understood that. Usually when I search, I don’t want to filter first and then search but want to search and maybe filter when I can’t find it.
On the iPhone there is an extra search-view which searches everywhere but it is not search as you type and it doesn’t search for contexts. So it is far inferior to the search in Things.
But the way both apps are constructed lead at least for me to the following: Since I usually give every task a context and a project in OmniFocus everything is well ordered and because of the weaknesses of the search, I rarely use the search but still find everything very fast because I usually know to which project a task belongs and it every phone call that I have to make is in the context phone.
In Things the search is so good that I really like to search but because of it can’t find the parent tag of a sub-tag it has kind of a bad taste for me. In addition I do not have everything as well sorted since it doesn’t really encourage you like OF to give everything a project and a tag.
Due Dates and Times
The next thing I want to write about are Due Dates. I am not sure anymore if the book Getting Things Done mentions due dates. Tasks shouldn’t have one if possible. Because usually stuff with a specific time or date is an appointment and not a task, thus it should be in your calendar and not in your todo-list.
OmniFocus has due dates and times. It defaults to a day at 7 pm. You can change the time though. The task will turn orange (and an icon badge will appear) when the task is due soon which is a time period set in the preferences between 24 hours and 7 days.
When a task becomes due and therefore overdue you get a notification and it will turn red, as will the icon badge.
In my experience the icon badge on the iPhone will only turn up for due soon tasks, when you open the app while a task is due soon. So not opening the app will only give you a notification when the task is due and then add the badge.
Things allows only due dates. When a task is due it will turn up in your daily review and the iPhone will remind you that there are due tasks at a set time (like 8 am in the morning). But you can’t give tasks a due time. Hence you have to rely on another app for that, like the built-in app Reminders or the great app Due.
I have to say that I don’t like that I have to have two apps for that. I often create tasks like “phone person x” and set a due date some time today. So I see it all the time at the badge that there is something to do but I will get an additional reminder at a certain point of time. In Things I have to create that task and do it a second time in Due. Or leave it out of Things (and therefore don’t have it in the project and logged that I did it, when I did it) and have it only in one app. Sure it’s kind of a first world problem but it annoys me. And to be honest being able to decide between OmniFocus and Things is a first world thing, too.
And CC mentioned several times that they won’t change it because a task shouldn’t have a due time. But it is something I could live with, it is just inconvenient.
Reviews
You should review your projects and tasks in a regular interval. The idea is that you do not loose oversight and you think about what might need an update (additional tasks or cross off tasks that are done or not necessary anymore). There are people who do it daily, I do it weekly on the weekend. When I have really a lot to do I do it daily.
OmniFocus supports you in doing reviews. You can determine a time how often a project should be reviewed (n days, weeks, months, years) and when you hit the Review-button, you will be presented with a list of projects and the tasks they contain which are up for review. You go through them and can mark them for review.
I have a repeating project for my weekly and monthly review. The weekly review contains not only stuff like “review projects” but also tasks like review previous and upcoming calendar data. The monthly review contains tasks that I have to do monthly like set up your budget or do a backup of you website.
OmniFocus 2 will have a new review-view which is apparently taken from the iPad-version (which seems to be awesome from what I’ve read). From what I’ve seen so far I like it but since it’s in its early stages I cannot say a lot about it now.
Things, like most To-Do-apps doesn’t support reviews at all. It has a daily review which will show you in your Today-view all tasks that are due today or are scheduled for today but that’s it. I have my weekly review-project. But it means that I always have to review all projects because keeping track of what when to review is cumbersome. It doesn’t matter when you only have ten projects, but with many projects it is not feasible imho.
Perspectives and Views
Things offers several views. Inbox, Today, Next, Scheduled, Someday, Projects, all Active Projects, all Areas, the Logbook and the Trash.
The Inbox is the inbox. Quick Entry defaults to the Inbox and the way the Entry-sheet is designed on the iPhone tasks put in there usually land here, too. Today is a view where you see all overdue and due-tasks and tasks you decided you want to do today. Next is a list of all active tasks and projects, Scheduled shows you scheduled and repeating tasks and is the only view were you can create repeating tasks (remember they can’t belong to a project), Projects shows you all Projects sorted by Areas of Responsibility, a click on a project shows you all tasks in it, a click on a single Area shows you all projects and scheduled tasks in it. The Logbook all logged tasks and the Trash all tasks which are in the Trash. That’s it. When I used Things a lot I lived basically in the Today-view. In the morning I looked through the next-list, selected all tasks I wanted to do today and from then on it was usually the today-view or maybe a project I was working on. When the Today-view was empty I got me new tasks from the Next-view. And there was a big maybe that I filtered the Next-view for tags (because, well I said enough about tag-entry on the iPhone, didn’t I?).
Let’s talk about Perspectives in OmniFocus. Or better not, I will give here only a brief abstract about them. Perspectives are one, if not the most powerful feature in OmniFocus. Merlin Mann did a 56 minute talk about them, if you are really interested.
Perspectives allow you to create any view on your projects and tasks you want. I have for example a today-view which has no side-bar, and shows only the tasks that are flagged, overdue and due today. Or there is the predefined context-view that shows you in the sidebar all contexts. And clicking on them will give you a list of tasks. Or you could create an inbox-view that shows you only the inbox and nothing else, not even the toolbar. You can essentially setup your window a way you want it, take a snapshot and when you want that presentation of tasks and projects you choose the perspective.
Perspectives can only be created on the Mac but can be synced to the iPhone. Because of perspectives you can essentially emulate any view of Things in OmniFocus and make it as clean or as cluttered as you want.
OTA-Sync
I want to talk only about the over-the-air-sync here. Things didn’t have it for a long time but has it now. And howly mowly it is damn fast. You can type a task on your iPhone or Mac and see it turn up on the other side more or less instantaneously. But you have to rely on CC for it because you have to use their infrastructure (for free).
The sync of OmniFocus can be fast and pretty slow. It is never as fast as the sync from Things or at least doesn’t appear as fast. When you want to keep it fast, you should archive your tasks on a monthly basis (one of the tasks in the monthly review project) and sync all your clients on a regular basis. Yeah, that one rarely used laptop can make a difference.
But if you want to use your own infrastructure, you can sync with a WebDAV-server of your choice and do not have to rely on Omnis sync server. But if you use Omnis sync server you can use the above mentioned Mail Drop which is ingenious in my opinion.
But the sync of Things is really neat. Rome wasn’t built in a day, too.
Conclusion
Now coming to an end with this big comparison. And you probably can guess that I will keep using OmniFocus. It is very flexible and powerful. But as I have written in the introduction I read (most of) a book and a lot of articles about it. It has a steep learning curve. And you really should have read Getting Things Done by David Allen when you want to use OmniFocus. But while it is heftily invested in GTD it doesn’t take the book word by word (but with contexts unfortunately) and seems to see it more as a guideline. Henceforth it allows you to model things to your way to get things done.
Things on the other hand is clean and easy to use from the get go. It hides stuff like tags and therefore looks clean. If you have more than 20 projects it becomes fast unclean and cluttered.
I always have the feeling the people from CulturedCode have a specific way to do Getting Things Done and if you want to strife from that way, you have a problem and need workarounds or can’t do it all. I do not even understand their reasoning. They say that tasks shouldn’t have a due time but at the same moment they allow tags (which aren’t “pure GTD”).
If good looks and a really fast sync are important to you and you do not have a lot of projects and don’t care about having a second app running for your tasks, then Things is probably the way to go.
If you want flexibility in the way you deal with your todos and projects and even be able to work in phases when you have a lot of projects on hand, then OmniFocus is the way to go in my opinion.
-
Opinion
,iPhone
,videospiele
iOS keine gute Spieleplattform
Ich bin mobiler Spieler. Schon bevor es den Game Boy gab, habe ich Stunden mit meinen Game & Watch-Spielen zugebracht (derer drei: Oil Panic, Donkey Kong 2 und das großartige Gold Cliff). Später dann ein Game Boy, ein Game Boy Advance SP und ein selten genutzter Wonderswan Crystal, ein Nintendo DS, später noch eine PSP aus Gründen. Auf der Wunschliste steht schon lange ein Nintendo 3DS.
Und dann kam ein iPod Touch. Mit Jailbreak gab’s dann auch schnell die ersten Spiele. Mit einem iPhone und iOS 2 ging es dann richtig los. Die Spiele waren billig und recht gut. Aus allen Genres gab es etwas und je nach Können des Entwicklers konnte man selbst Jump’n’Runs oder Beat’em Ups halbwegs brauchbar mit dem Touchscreen steuern.
Und seit einiger Zeit komme ich immer mehr zu der Erkenntnis das iOS als Plattform keine Plattform ist für Spiele. Auch wenn es vermutlich abertausende Spiele gibt und selbst große Entwickler wie EA oder Square Enix ihren Reibach machen. Die Gründe können natürlich auch für Handhelds gelten, die in Zukunft noch herauskommen, aber das wird man dann sehen. Aktuell geht es mir um iOS. Evtl. lässt sich das auch auf Android übertragen, dort kenne ich mich aber zu wenig aus, um mir eine qualifizierte Meinung bilden zu können.
Die Idee, dass iOS Probleme als Spieleplattform hat, ist mir vor kurzem das erste Mal gekommen. Es sollte ein Handheld für ein Kind angeschafft werden und die Wahl fiel auf einen Nintendo DS. Der Hauptgrund: man kann sich Spiele aus der Bücherei ausleihen. Und dann begann ich zu grübeln. Würde ich einem Kind mit neun oder zehn, ggf. etwas jünger einen iPod Touch als Handheld kaufen wollen? Und wenn nein, warum nicht? Ich werde mich in der Regel auf Handhelds von Nintendo beziehen, da zwar die Handhelds von Sony schick, aber meiner Meinung nach oftmals nicht wirklich kinderkompatibel aufgrund ihrer Spielebibliothek sind.
1) iOS-Geräte haben eine relativ kurze Haltezeit
Damit man aktuell alles spielen kann, was es im AppStore gibt braucht man allein von den OS-Voraussetzungen min. einen iPod Touch der 4. Generation. Das ist ein Gerät vom Oktober 2011. Ein iPod Touch der 3. Generation (veröffentlicht 2009) kann damit nicht mehr alle Spiele spielen. Und selbst ein iPod Touch der 4. Generation kann z.B. nicht mehr “The World Ends With You” abspielen (imho eins der besten RPGs aller Zeiten). Das heißt, dass ich als Elternteil mindestens im Zwei-Jahres-Rhythmus ein neues Gerät kaufen müsste, damit alle Spiele noch gespielt werden können. Ein aktueller iPod Touch ist auch nicht billiger als ein 3DS.
2) Die Update-Problematik
Ich habe ein älteres Gerät auf dem sagen wir max. iOS 5 läuft und auf einmal kommt ein Update für eine Anwendung die min. iOS 6 verlangt. Und auf iTunes drücke ich aus Versehen auf Update. Was passiert? Die App wird gelöscht. Gleichzeitig kann es aber auch passieren, dass Apps, die nicht up-to-date gehalten werden auf neueren Geräten nicht mehr funktionieren. Und Apple erlaubt wohl demnächst keine Updates mehr, wenn eine App nicht mit iPhone5-Anpassung daher kommt. Dann gibt es wohl keine Updates für Secret of Mana oder Chrono Trigger mehr. Und wenn die mit iOS8 Zicken machen, Pech gehabt.
3) Die Spielstand-Problematik
iOS hat seit iOS2 ein Problem, dass mich seit damals stört. Unter iOS2 war es noch störender, weil ich wegen eines OS-Bugs regelmäßig mein iPhone zurücksetzen musste und kein Backup einspielen durfte. Was passiert wenn der Platz voll ist auf dem iOS-Gerät und man will was neues installieren? Man muss was altes löschen. Was passiert mit den Daten der gelöschten App? Genau, die verabschieden sich auch. Und wenn ich das Spiel dann neu installiere, dann muss ich wieder von vorne anfangen und mir sogar alles wieder freispielen. Natürlich können die Entwickler dagegen was machen über iCloud-Sync o.ä. aber viele tun es nicht. Und für viele viele alte Spiele wird es nie ein entsprechendes Update geben. Aber ich kann noch heute mein Uralt-Zelda für den Game Boy ausgraben und so lange die Batterie nicht aufgegeben hat, was mir ehrlich gesagt noch nie passiert ist, ist alles erhalten geblieben. Bei moderneren Handhelds gibt es nicht mal das Batterieproblem meines Wissens nach (jedenfalls nicht für die PSP und ich vermute auch nicht beim DS).
4) iOS-Geräte sind nur mäßig stabil
Es ist nicht einfach einen DS kaputt zu bekommen, selbst die neueren Modelle nicht. iOS-Geräte mit zerbrochenen Displays sehe ich andauernd. Bei Erwachsenen.
5) Spiele können nicht verliehen werden
Spiele auf unter iOS sind verdammt billig, wenn man von den Ausreißern von Square Enix einmal absieht. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass ich meinem Kind jeden Monat ein Budget geben würde, um sich Spiele zuzulegen. Bei mir gab’s früher zum Geburtstag und zu Weihnachten jeweils ein Spiel. Vielleicht durch Geld von Verwandten nochmal zwischendurch was. Ansonsten hat man seine Spiele an Freunde verliehen und welche geliehen bekommen. Inzwischen kann man sich die Spiele sogar in der Bücherei leihen. Das geht unter iOS nicht. Natürlich sind die Spiele billiger, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass man sich einfach so alles zulegen kann. Auch zehn 3€-Spiele sind 30€ und von Square Enix-Spielen oder anderen Premiumspielen rede ich da noch gar nicht.
6) Freemium
Immer mehr Spiele kommen auf iOS als Freemium-Spiele raus. Große Firmen setzen meines Wissens nach sogar Psychologen ein, um das profitabelste Schema zu entwickeln. Ich selbst habe mir bei Freemium die Regel gesetzt: in dem Moment, in dem du was kaufen willst, löschst du das Spiel. Kinder sind da meiner Erfahrung nach dann eher etwas dickköpfig und nerven die Eltern so lange bis die entsprechende Premium-Währung im kleinen Paket gekauft wird. Und ist es einmal passiert, passiert es noch häufiger. Mal abgesehen davon, dass es meines Wissens nach dann immer noch die Lücke gibt, dass man für eine gewisse Zeit nach Passworteingabe bei In-App Purchases ohne Passwort shoppen kann. So schnell ist dann mal ein dreistelliger Euro-Betrag weg. Tja, das war es dann, für die nächsten 12 Monate kein Taschengeld mehr. Ähm nein, das ist wohl keine Option…
7) Die Geräte werden gerne gestohlen
Seitdem mir mein iPhone in der U-Bahn aus der Hand gerissen wurde und ich es nie wieder gesehen habe, bin ich sehr vorsichtig geworden. Ich habe ehrlich gesagt noch nie von nem Diebstahl eines DS, Game Boys o.ä. in Cafés oder den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln gehört. Bei Apple-Produkten ging das ja schon mit den iPods los. Und bei Smartphones passiert es wohl sehr häufig. Das ist eine reine Vermutung, aber ich denke das gilt auch für iPod Touches. Daher würde ich mein Kind in der Öffentlichkeit lieber mit einem “Spielzeug” spielen lassen, als mit einem Statussymbol, das gerne entwedet wird.
8) Nichts geht über Knöpfe
Das ist altersunabhängig, aber seien wir ehrlich: nichts geht über Knöpfe. Touch-Steuerungen sind besser geworden und es gibt Genre in denen sie die beste Wahl sind (Carcassonne mit einem Joypad stelle ich mir sehr anstrengend vor), aber für vieles unterliegen sie Joypads. Und ich sehe nicht, dass Apple jemals ein Joypad herausbringen wird als Ergänzung für die mobilen Geräte. Und wenn doch, na ja, Apple macht gute Hardware aber meiner Meinung nach war die Peripherie immer ziemlicher Mist. Die schicksten, aber gleichzeitig schlimmsten Mäuse waren die von Apple. Die Tastaturen sind ok-ish. Ich erwarte nicht, dass Apple es auf die Reihe beommt ein vernünftiges Joypad zu entwickeln. Und viele alte Spiele kann man dann auch nicht spielen.
Das gilt nicht nur für Kinder
Vieles was ich hier geschrieben habe, bezog sich auf Kinder. Allerdings gilt das auch für Erwachsene. Wenn ich bei nem Kumpel ein tolles iOS-Spiel sehe, kann ich es mir nicht mal für nen Tag oder zwei ausleihen, ich muss es mir kaufen. Mein Gerät wurde schon einmal gestohlen. Meine Daten sind verloren gegangen. Ich sehe bei einem alten 3G, dass der entsprechenden Person voll ausreicht, dass sie keine neuen Spiele mehr spielen kann und aufpassen muss, dass ihr iTunes nicht die Apps wegupdatet etc.
Fazit
Aus den ganzen oben genannten Gründen finde ich iOS immer schlechter als Spieleplattform und werde versuchen mich in Zukunft zusammenreißen, allein schon aus Geldbeuteltechnischen Gründen das Snackshopping nach Spielen zu unterbinden. Mein Pile of Shame ist hoch genug, dass ich vermutlich bis zu meinem letzten Atemzug mit Spielen in meiner Freizeit beschäftigt sein könnte. Aber ich muss zugeben, dass Spiele wie Carcassonne oder Super Hexagon mit zu dem Bestem gehören, was ich je gespielt habe und die Retina-Fassung von The World Ends With You einfach so viel besser aussieht, als die iOS-Fassug und ich auch relativ einfach zwischen der englischen und der japanischen Fassung wechseln kann. Aber die Nachteile überwiegen imho der Vorteile, wenn ich darüber nachdenke und ich würde Eltern nicht empfehlen ihren Kindern ein iOS-Gerät zu kaufen, auch wenn man damit so viel mehr machen kann und die Spiele so schön billig sind.
Ich verkauf dann mal meine ganzen iOS-Spiele und kauf mir einen 3DS…halt…Mist!
-
iPhone
,Rechnerkram
,ios
,iPad
,iTunes
,iTunesMatch
iTunes Match FAQ
Heute ist iTunes Match gestartet und es sind eine Menge Fragen aufgekommen. Ich versuche sie hier zu beantworten mit dem was ich mir angelesen habe bzw. aus eigener Erfahrung raus.
- Was kostet iTunes Match?
- Kann man mit einem iTunes Gutschein bezahlen?
- Was ist die Grenze an Titeln?
- Was passiert wenn ich mehr als 25.000 Titel habe?
- Wie bekomme ich auch mit mehr als 25.000 Titeln Match?
- Werden die Metadaten angetastet?
- Was wird auf keinen Fall gematcht?
- Was wird gematcht?
- Kann ich Lieder mit zu niedriger Bitrate trotzdem matchen?
- Wie lange dauert das Prozedere?
- Wie sehen Titel aus, die ich lösche und neu herunterlade?
- Was passiert wenn ich Match auf meinem iOS-Gerät aktiviere?
- Kann ich Lieder auf meinem iOS-Gerät löschen?
- Wie funktioniert das automatische Löschen?
- Funktionieren Smart Playlists auf iOS?
- Ist ein Ersatz für Spotify- oder andere Streaming-Dienste? Ich will doch Platz auf meiner Platte frei schaufeln oder meinem iOS-Device.
- Was passiert wenn Match ausläuft?
- Werden Lyrics synchronisiert?
1. Was kostet iTunes Match?
iTunes Match kostet 24,99€ pro Jahr.
2. Kann man mit einem iTunes Gutschein bezahlen?
Ja und nein. Ihr könnt über Guthaben bezahlen (aufgeladen z.B. durch einen Gutschein), es muss aber eine Kreditkarte oder Click’n’Buy als Zahlungsmittel im Konto hinterlegt sein.
3. Was ist die Grenze an Titeln?
Man kann max. 25.000 Titel + im iTMS (iTunes Music Store) gekaufte Titel haben. Es gibt drei Status: Matched, Uploaded und Purchased. Matched und Uploaded zählen in die 25.000 Titel rein, Purchased nicht.
4. Was passiert wenn ich mehr als 25.000 Titel habe?
Dann kann Match nicht aktiviert werden.
5. Wie bekomme ich auch mit mehr als 25.000 Titeln Match?
iTunes mit alt gedrückt starten (unter OS X) und eine neue Library anlegen, die max. 25.000 Titel enthält.
6. Werden die Metadaten angetastet?
Anscheinend nicht.
7. Was wird auf keinen Fall gematcht?
Titel, die größer als 200MB sind, Titel mit einer Bitrate < 96KBit, Hörbücher, ogg, mp4 (auch ohne Video), QuickTime-Dateien (danke an @gerritvanaaken). Bei FLAC und Losless hab ich leider keine Erfahrung.
8. Was wird gematcht?
Es wird gematcht über Titel, Künstler, Album, Song-Länge und ein Audio-Fingerprint. So wie es aussieht, wird auf jeden Fall nicht gematcht, was es nicht schon im deutschen iTunes Store zu kaufen gibt, auch wenn ein Titel in einem anderem internationalen iTMS erhältlich ist. (Danke @tblar)
9. Kann ich Lieder mit zu niedriger Bitrate trotzdem matchen?
Neu enkodieren mit höherer Bitrate. Am Besten in iTunes unter “Advanced -> Create AAC Version” konvertieren. Die Sachen hören sich danach natürlich immer noch räudig an. Mit Glück werden sie aber gematcht und nicht hochgeladen, dann könnt ihr euch die gute Qualität saugen.
10. Wie lange dauert das Prozedere?
Hängt von der Größe der Bibliothek ab, der Geschwindigkeit eurer Platte (meine USB-Platte war beim Datensammeln am Anschlag des USB2-Limits) und wenn’s ums Hochladen geht, von eurem Upstream. Ich rechne damit, dass meine 7500 “Artikel”, die hochzuladen sind, ein paar Tage brauchen werden.
11. Wie sehen Titel aus, die ich lösche und neu herunterlade?
Vier Fälle: Purchased ohne DRM, Purchased mit DRM, Matched und Uploaded.
- Purchased ohne DRM: Die Datei bleibt wie sie ist inkl. Metadaten (inkl. Play und Skip Count, Rating etc.). Hat sich allerdings der Name bei der Rechnungsadresse geändert oder der Account, so ändert sich auch der Name im "Purchased by"-Feld bzw. -Account-Feld.
- Purchased mit DRM: Herzlichen Glückwunsch, kostenloses Upgrade auf eine iTunes+-Datei (256 kBit, kein DRM), ansonsten identisch wie bei Purchased ohne DRM.
- Matched: Der Titel kommt in 256KBit AAC runter und ist signiert (mit dem Namen in der Rechnungsadresse eures Zahlungsmittels), unabhängig vom vorherigen Format 128 und 320KBit MP3. Die Metadaten bleiben bis auf die Signatur identisch (inkl. Play und Skip Count, Rating etc.).
- Uploaded: Die Datei kommt so runter, wie sie hochgeladen wurde. Keine Signatur, gleiche Qualität, die Metadaten sind identisch (inkl. Encoder und Kram).
12. Was passiert wenn ich Match auf meinem iOS-Gerät aktiviere?
Eure Library wird gelöscht und ihr dürft alles über’s Netz, das ihr hören wollt neu herunterladen. Batch-Download geht album- oder playlistweise. Die Lieder sollten beim Status Uploaded also in der Originalbitrate runtergeladen werden, alles andere (Matched, Purchased) in 256KBit - die Option der Reduktion der Bitrate kann dann nicht mehr verwendet werden. Ein lokaler Sync der Musik über USB oder WLAN ist dann nicht mehr möglich. Alles andere kann weiterhin lokal synchronisiert werden.
13. Kann ich Lieder auf meinem iOS-Gerät löschen?
Ja, aber wie in iTunes nicht aus einer Playlist heraus. Ansonsten geht es album- und songweise aus den anderen Ansichten heraus über die Swipe-Geste auf dem Lied oder dem Album. Die gesamte Musik lässt sich löschen über: Einstellungen → Allgemein → Benutzung → Musik auswählen, dann die Swipe-Geste ausführen. (Danke @ilikeapfelmus und @seagers)
14. Wie funktioniert das automatische Löschen?
Wenn euer Gerät voll läuft, fängt iOS wohl das selbstständige Löschen an. Gelöscht wird wohl nach dem was ihr schon lange und wenig gehört habt.
15. Funktionieren Smart Playlists auf iOS?
Ja, mit Einschränkungen. Limits (max. 25 Lieder z.B.) funktionieren nicht. Ob “zuletzt gespielt am” und Play/Skip Counts synchronisiert werden ist unklar. Einige Leute sehen es, andere nicht. Ratings werden synchronisiert. Ob es noch weitere Einschränkungen gibt, ist mir unbekannt. In iTunes funktionieren die Listen normal, aber unter iOS kann man dann Playlists wie die obigen komplett vergessen. (Danke @hessi und @tschookki)
16. Ist ein Ersatz für Spotify- oder andere Streaming-Dienste? Ich will doch Platz auf meiner Platte frei schaufeln oder meinem iOS-Device.
Ja und nein. iTunes auf einem Computer betreibt scheinbar echtes Streaming, allerdings müssen die Dateien einmal vorhanden gewesen sein für den Matching-Prozess. Ein automatisches Löschen für heruntergeladene Dateien gibt es aber wohl nicht.
Außerdem sollte man dran denken, dass wohl alle Dateien weg sind, die man nicht lokal lagert, wenn iTunes Match ausläuft. Daher ist es wohl geraten die komplette Musik min. einmal vorrätig zu halten.
Allerdings bedeutet das auch, dass man z.B. bei Computern mit kleiner Festplatte, die komplette Library auf einer externen Platte halten kann und dann unterwegs eine zweite Library anlegt (unter OS X iTunes mit alt gedrückt starten und eine neue kreieren). Bei der zweiten Library wird nur gestreamt bzw. nur ein Teil der Musik runtergeladen. Dank iTunes Match findet trotzdem eine Synchronisation statt.
Unter iOS wird die Datei runtergeladen und während sie runterlädt wird angefange abzuspielen. Das Abspielen setzt erst dann ein, wenn genug von der Datei runtergeladen wurde.
17. Was passiert wenn Match ausläuft?
iTunes Match lässt sich nicht mehr aktivieren, alle nicht lokal gespeicherten Songs werden gelöscht. (Danke @tblar)
18. Werden Lyrics synchronisiert?
So wie es aussieht, werden Lyrics nicht synchronisiert. (Danke Sebastian)