Review : Things For iPhone

Time is one thing we cannot buy. And at times, we get so bogged down by tasks (and forgetting crucial ones) that our time is taken aback. That is why we used organiser books back then. If you are looking to manage your time and happen to be in for a powerful task management app for the iPhone, read on.

Things for iPhone is a powerful task management app for the iPhone and has been around for sometime. While it comes at an affordable USD 9.99, you will need to purchase Things for Mac in order to manage your tasks on your computer as well. Things does not come with a web application, so you would not be able to manage your tasks on a Windows computer.

Things for iPhone has always been a long standing item on my wish list as I had heard only great reviews about it. Having used the native Reminders app on my iPad and now iPhone, I found task management on the various iOS devices as almost an afterthought. And thus began the search for a more powerful task management app.

Strengths of Things For iPhone

Things for iPhone enables us to do the following

  1. Create and sort tasks by tags
  2. Attach a due date to a task and be reminded when you need to fulfil the task
  3. Attach a note to the task, which makes it easy for things like grocery shopping or packing for a trip
  4. Share the task via Facebook, WhatsApp and various other ways on the iPhone. This makes it easy to collaborate with others, without actual collaboration.
  5. Create projects and add tasks with datelines and reminders, in order to manage a multi-step item, which has more than a task. This makes it somewhat similar to a GTD task manager (Getting Things Done – based on a book by David Allen), but lacking the power to do more.

Having said that, Things for iPhone is a very powerful tool and if coupled with the Mac version, you would have a powerful productivity tool on your hands. Instead of letting your time fly, Things for iPhone will ensure that tasks appear on the screen of your iPhone and an alarm to let you know the due time.

Weaknesses of Things For iPhone

While Things for iPhone might be good for simple and even more complex task management via projects, it is still lacking the tools to make it a truly great one.

For example, Todoist Premium and Business has the ability to email you about tasks and collaborate on projects which is lacking  on Things. It also has a web app, so that you can collaborate via any browser. This makes Todoist a platform independent tool.

Conclusion

We like Things for iPhone and the Mac version as well. As personal task management apps, they are really good. They even beat the free version Todoist hands down.

However, the question would be if Cultured Code (the team behind Things), would be willing to shake things up for more collaborative work and perhaps create a version of Things which could achieve that.

With Slack paving the way for collaborative task management, we reckon that it is the way forward.

Got an idea? =) Drop us your thought here