Friday, July 22, 2011

Free Cloud Sync Coming to Things for iPhone and iPad

The team at Cultured Code, makers of the popular task manager for iOS called “Things,” has announced
that cloud sync is finally coming to the Things for iPhone and iPad apps.
Things has been one of the premiere GTD (Getting Things Done) apps in the App Store for a long time, but one sorely missed feature has been wireless syncing between Things on the Mac, iPhone and iPad. Cultured Code has announced that invites to start beta testing cloud sync on iOS will be sent out starting August 22. Cloud sync will also be included for Things customers at no additional charge…
“It turns out that the hard work of making our solution scalable has paid off – our sync service has gracefully handled this increasing traffic – and with usage data on hand from this large group, we can also now confirm that there will be no need to charge for the service. Our cloud sync service will be free for all users of Things.
Internal testing of our iOS versions is also underway. Our approach to the iOS beta testing will be the same as with Things Mac: we’ll start with a small group of testers and then scale it up. This will begin on August 22.”
If you’ve been using Things, you realize how Cultured Code is pretty slow on implementing new features into the app. Actually, to be honest, they’re painfully slow at implementing new features.
I’ve been using Things as my go-to GTD done app on all my devices for over a year now, and don’t get me wrong, the app is amazing. I love the clean design, and it handles 90% of what I need on a daily basis perfectly.
The only thing keeping Things from being the perfect task manager has been the glaring lack of cloud sync. You still have to be on the same Wi-Fi network to sync Things between multiple devices. With other competitors out there doing cloud sync, like Wunderlist and OmniFocus, Things has started falling behind.
Another problem with the way Cultured Code works is that you never really know when they’ll finally have a new feature added to Things. They’re notorious for promising features and never delivering. They finally started allowing users to test cloud sync on the Mac-only version of Things some months back, and they have yet to even open that feature up to their entire customer base.
“Internal testing” of iOS cloud sync for Things could mean that we have to wait another year to see the feature implemented in the App Store, but at least Cultured Code has promised to start sending beta invites on August 22. We’ll see how that goes.
In the end, Things needs cloud sync badly if it wants to remain relevant. You can read more about Cultured Code’s ongoing cloud sync saga for more info on its development. Also, sign up for the iOS cloud sync beta here.
Are you a Things user? If so, has the lack of cloud sync bothered you? We’re curious to hear your thoughts.

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