Mising Outlook's Completeness. How does one replicate on a Mac?

C

caffeineplease

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I'd like to fully implement GTD in my digital world. I am still trying to get fully moved over from my Thinkpad WinTel days to my new Mac Mini, and with the exception of the Data/information I use in Outlook, I'd say I'm successful. But work remains.

I have tried the Virtual Machine setups, Fusion 3 is much slower than Parallels 5 (which I'm now using) If push comes to shove I will load the rest of my Windows life there and use Office 2007 and its Outlook. But to those of us who use iPhones the dream setup is incomplete because the iphone can only sync Contacts and Calendar items from Outlook, not Tasks or Notes.

If one wishes to abandon Outlook, and cobble together a Mac app solution, many pieces need to be pulled together (though the future Mac Office 2010 suite will now have Outlook instead of Entourage-late 2010 arrival), would Apple then allow all the data then to go to the iPhone? Not likely.

So, if one thinks about these possible Mac apps for Tasks, Contacts, Notes, and Calendar you have issues with like using GMAIL for Calendar and Contacts and not having offline use well. For Notes I've used Evernote which is mutli-platform (works great on Mac and iphone, not so hot on Windows). For Tasks there are products like Things, OmniFocus etc.. and my biggest gripe with those apps is that you can't use Rich Text (URLs, Text Format, Pics etc...) in their notes, for Contacts you could use anything from wimpy Apple Address book to Filemaker (or Filemaker's personal product Bento) again if they support Rich Text, and going back to Outlook's superior setup, with any of its many features and customizations. I'd prefer fewer moving parts and the solution must also work with the iphone.

How are you all using GTD on the Mac Platform?

Thanks
 
GTD on a Mac

I use BusyCal (somewhat better than iCal), Evernote and Omnifocus along with the mail app. I don't do any action or other filing in mail (other than archiving it). If there is an actionable mail, omnifocus has a way to attach the email to an action or project. I find it much better to track stuff that way although it may not be quite as quick as using Outlook or Outlook and the GTD add-in (no experience there).

I have 3 macs (portable and two desktops) and an iphone and omnifocus keeps it all together.

My favorite "feature" of omnifocus is the ease in which it handles a weekly review.

I use evernote for notes and for an electronic reference file (easy to clip or print to save something).

BusyCal is easier to use than ical. Not a huge difference, but I try to reduce friction wherever I can.

For speed typing, I also use TextExpander (great for clips or repetitive typing) and I just started using Launchbar to try to stay "on the keyboard" more instead of using the mouse so much (those sort of take the place of activewords on a PC but probably not as well).

Randy
 
caffeineplease;78076 said:
How are you all using GTD on the Mac Platform?
Click to expand...

Omnifocus for all lists and actions and most project planning support materials
Apple Mail for e-mail and contacts
Evernote for additional notes, mostly legacy notes from my Palm system, I have a project to prune them down a bit.
Open Office to make PDF's of things I need rich text in and save those in Evernote or on my Kindle

Currently running my GTD system on an iMac, an iPod Touch and a Kindle. My cell phone is still a Palm Treo and there are 3 apps on it I still use: SplashShopper (because the iPhone/iPod version is unusable due to performance problems), BeJeweled (a solitaire game) and Klondike (yet another game) I should probably move my 2 games over to the iPod but just haven't yet.

I won't use any Microsoft products for mission critical stuff due to security issues. Same problem with cloud services, Evernote is my one compromise and I encrypt most everything on it that is remotely private.
 
My system so far

Things for tasks, projects, areas of responsibility – Things doesn't support full RTF but it does support URLS, and phone number links in both the mac and iPhone version. It's in the note section. I use it constantly and it works like a charm. I like how it is fast and easy and doesn't try to take over my Mac by installing itself in every menu like OmniFocus. Plus, it's cheaper.

iCal – Calendar - not much of an explanation needed here. It syncs with iPhone seamlessly and is more than robust enough as a calendar.

Dropbox – RTF Text files – For anything bigger than the notes field of iCal or Things to comfortably handle I use Dropbox. It's free (2GB) and has an iPhone app you can use to download and view any file you have in your Dropbox folder. I use Dropbox as my project support and read/review area. You can even download the files to your iPhone if you need to.

Email is in Gmail and basically self contained. I extract tasks out of each email and put them into my inbox for later processing. I quite like the Mail app on the iPhone and have it linked with my Gmail account but have had problems with the Mac Mail app, so I don't use it often.

Still a work in progress but getting better all the time. Like David always says, it's the thinking that's important, not the tool.

Hope this helps!
Braden
 
I have Office for Mac, and when the 2010 version arrives, I will not install Outlook. For GTD functions, Omnifocus is head and shoulders better than Outlook, particularly if one wants to see NA lists by Context and then by Project, and would like easy sync to other devices, and easy backup in the clouds. I have considerable experience with Outlook, and I submit there is no comparison.

Look at the big picture.....

rdgeorge
 
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