Apple’s Productivity Shortcomings (And How to Get Around Them)
So by the title, you might think I’m not a fan of Macs. You’d be wrong. I converted from a PC over two years ago and have been glad every day that I did so. Macs do *almost* everything better, and without the headaches of PCs. And the fact that you can go into an Apple retail store and get all kinds of help, most of it free, just seems to make using a Mac a no-brainer. But notice I did say that Macs do almost everything better. The one thing that is harder using Mac-native tools is personal productivity. And being that this is my profession, that’s a bit of a big deal for me.
Your brain was not designed to manage the details of your life. So in order to be effective, you need a tool. And that tool needs to manage at least 5 things well: calendar, contacts, to-do’s (or tasks), email, and notes. I believe that everything in one place is best. If it can’t be one place, the fewer the better, in my experience. On a PC, this is handled quite effectively by Microsoft Outlook, and Outlook has the added advantage of syncing pretty seamlessly with most smartphones.
Mac’s answer to this challenge is 3 different programs, and those programs don’t work particularly well together (even though Apple claims they do): Apple Mail, iCal, and Address Book. It’s not easy enough to create a task from an email, so I had to install an add-on program called MailTags (and BTW, MailTags does lots of other things. I’m a fan). The next problem is that Notes and Tasks don’t sync to iPhone. I am not alone in my shock that Apple would ignore such basic functionality, but there it is. I went outside the Mac native tools for my notes, and chose Evernote, and it enables me to see my notes on my iPhone. My one complaint with Evernote is that my notes are not synced locally on my iPhone, so I need an internet connection to view/edit them. So now instead of one program for my productivity system, I’m up to four.
Until recently there was no good solution to take your tasks from iCal and get them to your iPhone (see comments on OmniFocus, below). There are plenty of simple to-do apps that are web-based, like Remember the Milk, Toodledo, and Jott. But what I wanted was one that would sync with my tasks from iCal, so that I didn’t have to add yet another tool to my productivity system (4 already seems excessive). Finally, Appigo has solved my problem. They offer a free sync tool called Appigo sync, which you download on your Mac, and an iPhone app (although pricey for an app at $9.99) called ToDo. Finally! (UPDATE: There is now another great option: 2Do by Guided Ways Technologies – I suggest you check it out.) This solution allows me to sync my tasks from iCal to my iPhone, and it has lots of functionality for managing views, such as viewing by calendar, priority, due date, etc. If you’re a Mac user and looking for a productivity solution, I suggest you give this formula a try. There is another solution to task management that will also sync with your iPhone, called OmniFocus, but in my opinion, it’s unnecessarily complicated, it may not play as well with Mac OS as OS-native tools, and it’s pricey ($79.95).
If you’re a Mac user with another solution for managing the combination of tasks, calendar, contacts, email, and notes, that is also accessible from your iPhone or smartphone, I’d love to hear about it. Thanks for reading!
Hi Michael & Gita, thanks for reading! I don’t recommend Outlook for Mac. First because there is always a precarious relationship between Apple products and Microsoft products. It’s always been a challenge to back up and restore Entourage/Outlook on a Mac and I understand it hasn’t gotten much better. Also, you can’t sync tasks from Outlook for Mac onto iPhone, as far as I know. I hope that helps! Feel free to email me privately if there is something more you think I could help you with!
Hi Maura, I empathize with your conundrum about productivity. Hace you tried Outlook for Mac? Does it resolve the email, task, calendar and contact issue? Do they all sync to your iphone?
What’s your experience with Outlook 2011 for Mac? Thanks.
I’m familiar with Things, but I can do everything that Things does, using iCal and ToDo, for a fraction of the cost. I had already worked out this solution before I learned about Things, and so I couldn’t find any compelling reason to fork over the $80 and switch.
Do you ever use “Things”. It’s an awesome productivity tool for MAcs.
[...] A question I get a lot is how to sync Tasks in Outlook with an iPhone. I found an article online with detailed instructions for doing this and got permission to repost it here. It comes from Daniel B. Curran’s excellent how-to blog. Below are his instructions. I hope this helps. If you try this and run into any snags, I’d love to hear about it. And incidentally, I’m using To-Do (the app he mentions) to sync Tasks with iCal and I am VERY happy with it – well worth the $10 in my opinion. You can read about my experience with that here.) [...]
[...] (Part 2) Are Your Productivity Tools Complicating Your Life? Filed under: Uncategorized — Maura Thomas @ 9:00 am Tags: Address Book, Apple, Apple Mail, iCal, iPhone, Mac productivity, productivity training (There have been new developments since I wrote this. Read the update to this post here. [...]
great post as usual!