I just searched L&L for Magic Inbox–what a trip down Memory Lane! iGTD, before Bartiel went off to Things! (bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/). George the Flea, at Omnifocus, recommending Magic at one point. Actionista, Todoist, and paper (foldable stuff you use with pen or pencil). All in the name of the perfect electronic dominatrix to get us to work, but gently, and in the precise, individual ways we like to be roughed up. That was in 2007…
Now i just got an iPad and saw Magic Inbox Touch touted as “new and noteworthy.” It’s both, plus quite pretty (not cheap at $15), but to my mind (not others) it wasn’t very intuitive. I’ve since concluded that all the action is in the popups. In any event, I went searching for the website (midnightbeep.com/products.html) and at the bottom found that the Mac (Tiger version) Inbox Magic 1.4.4 was available. Downloaded it, played with it, and started to really like it, beginning with the Yak Timer. (It asks: “Are you shaving a yak?” Your choices are: “Yes! I’m distracted and need two more minutes” or “No! I’m focused and working on my active task.”) It also had today’s email (and let me reply with one click) and events from iCal (including the weather!) and collects from a file I assigned of my documents in Dropbox. My guess is that 1.4.4 is part of the development of a Magic Inbox 2 version, and that the iPad foretells to some extent the new version.
Two unrelated questions:
1. Has anyone been using Inbox Magic on the Mac? The L&L reports were on an earlier version, which seemed to be unreliable. Users of the iPad version seem to hate it now for the same reason.
2. It’s hard not to compare Inbox Magic, The Hit List by Potion Factory (really awesome, now apparently defunct: potionfactory.com/thehitlist/, and Scrivener. All single developers with a passion for building software they themselves wanted to use. The first two have had severe (public) troubles along the way, with hostile users. The third (our Keith) cultivated a users group from the beginning. Are there connections between users groups and successful development efforts? Why is L&L unusual among user groups? Or maybe is the difference the price of real estate in California compared to Cornwall?
Oh, that Yak button came up again, and I can’t bear to tell it that I want another two minutes of distraction!
Do you mean Midnight Inbox? I tried MI early on in my experience of Mac-ery.
I came to certain conclusions:
there was at that point (three-plus years ago) a real opportunity for a capable OS X task manager. Some developers had already entered this niche but fallen by the wayside, others were beginning to approach it in a competitive fashion (Omni, Cultured Code);
MI looked really beautiful and its website made many of the right noises;
its timer was a good idea, but to call it “shaving a yak”? No;
its overall philosophy of ubiquitous collection was imaginative and GTD-correct in theory, but in practice maybe a step too far — too complicated and too prone to error;
(perhaps related to the previous point) its early version was too buggy.
I think it was this last point that really let it down, and is a lesson not just for small software developers but for small businesses everywhere. Later on, once your reputation is made, customers will forgive you a lot; to begin with, mud sticks. It’s hard to row back. (Can you row back from mud? Hmm… Maybe that’s the point…)
But good luck to MI’s developers now. Perhaps the iPad, being more of a walled garden, is more suited to the MI philosophy.
Hugh,
Yes, right–Midnight Inbox. Much of your critique still holds; if not buggy, MI is often counter-intuitive. But its relationship to the traditional GTD model is clear, and the collection of emails can be helpful (but the “collected stuff” doesn’t include any recent todos that one has just written unless the to-do was written in iCal. It’s a bit disorienting.) As for the Yak timer–I like it. If there’s anything more important for me to do than shaving a yak, then I better get on it.
As for the small business side, another lesson would be the cultivation of a sympathetic and useful users’ forum, which requires, above all, that the developer is highly visible and responsive. I suspect that this requires that the developer be a sturdy soul, able to take criticism, make clear the boundaries of the current development so as to control user expectations, and possessed of a sense of humor.
It would be nice if you placed these posts on the thread “iPad as research & writing tool” where we’re trying to gather all comments on iPad software and usage tips.