The much anticipated Informant for iOS 5.1 is “in the wild”, or in other words, it has been released to the public. It went to Apple on June 1, 2017 and was released for download on June 6, 2017.
Here are the Release notes for Informant 5.1:
- Improvements to New Date/Time Picker
- The new date picker remains inline with the editor, makes picking dates much more intuitive, and adapts with the size & orientation of your device.
- Tap-hold (or force-touch) on the month view to jump back to Today.
- New native watchOS 3 app (complete with a watch face complications)
- shows your events for the current week, shows tasks that are due, overdue or starred
- shows your events for the current week, shows tasks that are due, overdue or starred
- Informant now defaults to light mode
- Improvements to search
- “contains” search
- Search by emoji
- Updated our existing localizations & added a brand new language: Czech! The Czech localization isn’t 100% just yet, but it’s a great start and we’re glad to have it join the long list of languages that Informant offers. Thanks so much to all the hard work of those involved in these localizations!
OTHER FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS
- The “Import Flagged” button now works properly on Mail view
- Fixed issue where tapping “Create Tag” didn’t work when making a new tag from the event or task editor
- Fixed issue where sometimes the wrong template could be chosen from the “new” menu
- Fixed issue with printing your calendar when you had a filter set
- Image attachments wouldn’t show up properly in the iPad event/task editor
- The “complete” button works again on the Today Widget
- We no longer try to influence the appearance of the Apple Event Editor – it is effectively locked to the “light theme”. This causes it to still be useable even when the app is using the Dark Theme
- Improvements to search
- The attendee icon wouldn’t appear on event rows for Apple Calendar events when it should have
- A couple improvements to alarm processing including a timing issue where alarms on iOS events wouldn’t always properly update after making changes to iOS Calendar Settings (like which iOS Calendars to include)
- You could put Informant into an inconsistent state between the default task sync account and the default task project
- Fixed cosmetic issues that could occur in sync settings sometimes when navigating back and forth
- Minor visual improvements across several views
- Several internal improvements including some stability improvements
There were a few other items that we wanted to get into 5.1 but we know a lot of you are excited to get some of the above improvements as soon as possible. We have another release planned in the near-ish future that is primarily focused on some improvements to Informant 5’s View Picker and Triggers. You can read more about our future plans here. We’re really excited about this getting Informant 5.1 to you guys and we can’t wait to see what Apple reveals at WWDC’s keynote on Monday!
Informant 5.11 Release Notes [Available on iTunes June 12, 2017]
- Fixed a hang that could occur on Focus View if you had an event with an attendee to display
- Fixed issue where selecting a location suggestion in the event or task editor wouldn’t properly fill out the street address in the location field of the editor
- Fixed crash when tapping on an attendee in the Focus view
- Fixed a crash that would occur under certain circumstances when turning on Apple Reminders
- Fixed issue where you could (very intermittently) experience gaps or duplicate occurrences of recurring events in your calendar view
- Fixed regression in 5.10 where you could no longer could see the date row when picking an end date for repeating events
- A few specific improvements related
To make suggestions for new features or to vote for existing suggestions check out our user feedback forum.
Good Job Chris! I’ve been enjoying the complication on my watch.
Hi Alex,
is it possible to install PI 5.1 with iOS 10.1.1?
Thank you very much for delivering the v5.1 finally, it’s definitely a huge effort to get it accomplished. We really appreciate that. On the other hand, the important fixes on View Picker and navigation UI are still overdue. It is really frustrating and unproductive to toggle the task view and calendar view by pressing here and there in the SmartBar, why can’t we simply do it the original intuitive way by choosing what we want to access at the bottom bar, just list them out. The SmartBar setting is really something redundant IMHO, and why does it has to put in the lower right corner in the first place? Direct, fast and intuitive UI and navigation are critical success factors of this App. Hope you hear us roar. What is the schedule to release next fixes? Once again thank you Chris and his team for helping us out.
Takeaction,
We do hear you. We did say that we would have improvements to the view picker, but after the 3 betas with the date picker & the watch app, we thought that we had enough that we should get a release out now rather than waiting a few more weeks to get more of it. That is the real benefit of the new subscription model. We can do more & faster releases and they can be smaller feature sets. We DO hear the feedback on view picker & will have some fixes coming there. Im curious to hear your thoughts on the new Date/time picker & watch app.
Keith,
No good. Disappointed. The old design is much better to serve as a productivity tool. After anticipating for so long on the changes, its time to say goodbye. All the best to Fanatic. Thanks.
Takeaction,
We have posted a new blog on this topic & would love your input.
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/view-picker-debate-continues/
Also, are you on iPad or iPhone?
I have tried very hard to love PI5 including paying one year of subscription.
Oh, for God’s sake, so the View Picker is basically staying unchanged? This was the single greatest issue I had with PI5, you’ve promised it’d be improved in 5.1 and nothing is happening. Swapping a bit bettwee PI4 and 5 I realize that in 5 even the light theme is a punch in the eye; an “Informant 4 theme” would really be appreciated.
I am extremely disappointed and my Informant Sync subsription is expiring on June 24.
Gennaro,
Don’t panic. We do hear you. We did say that we would have improvements to the view picker, but after the 3 betas with the date picker & the watch app, we thought that we had enough that we should get a release out now rather than waiting a few more weeks to get more of it done. That is the real benefit of the new subscription business model. We can do more & faster releases and they can be smaller feature sets. We DO hear the feedback on view picker & will have some fixes coming there. Im curious to hear your thoughts on the new Date/time picker & watch app.
Keith,
to be honest I haven’t noticed any improvement in the speed of releases. If anything, it has slowed down a bit maybe for I5 related problems. It’s the same team working as hard as usual. New releases were coming out quite often and actually I was complaining too many new features were appearing (weather or now email integration) with not enough time dedicated to refnining existing features (and/or filters for example). The idea of faster releases with frequent improvements might work with Adobe, who was selling graphic products costing more than 1,000usd and might wait one year or two for the next majour release to implement new features to convince people to buy or upgrade. With Informant the situation is quite different. You can try to spin it in the same way, but you must think your customers are really stupid!
Furthermore, 5.1 doesn’t really include any new feature, as it was supposed to be the version to “fix” the mistakes in 5.0, and it’s fallen short of expectations. My thoughts on new date picker in another post.
Great to see the new improvement fixes coming soon!
The bug where Informant does not sync a removed due date to google tasks–that is not on the list. Is it included in this update?
I have confirmed this behavior with support at least twice, going back to January or so.
I have been using tags, and they would not sync through Google, so I purchased informant sync, but because of informant not being able to print, then I could not print out the monthly calendars. When will the printing monthly view be done?
So far I love the app, and look forward to many updates.
So, after waiting for 6 months for the watch app/complication, I’ve installed and it tells me that I have no Events for today. I have many events, they just aren’t showing up on the watch. This isn’t supposed to be beta, so what’s going on? Is there any documentation anywhere? Tried to be as patient as I can, but after waiting this long, when it doesn’t work, it’s very frustrating.
Jim,
Any chance your watch is “locked”? Try unlocking & tell me if it says same thing.
No, it is NOT lcocked. It hasn’t been locked since I put it on my wrist this morning. Install of update and database upgrade and installation on watch all occurred AFTER my morning unlock. It won’t lock again until I take it off tonight. There is definitely an issue with actually getting data to the watch app. A new appt. that was arranged an hour ago is now showing for today, previously scheduled appt.s are NOT showing. They are showing fine in my Google calendar, PI5 on iPhone and iPad, and in Fantastical complication, just for comparison.
Jim, Here are a few tips from devs on this issue:
“Make sure after the watch app is installed to actually launch Informant on their iPhone. If they don’t do that, then data will “eventually” get there. But the watch can’t really demand data from iOS – it can only request it. iOS can be a little more forceful about pushing stuff to the watch – but if the app is actually opened, then iOS and watchOS tend to force that communication more immediately you’ll see this same sort of behavior from Apple’s Calendar complication – if you don’t ever launch the calendar app, then there are times that the complication doesn’t accurately reflect the current state of your calendar
Also….final thing… If they launch the app on iOS and wait for about 10 seconds, if the complication still doesn’t update, then have them open the watch app and check the events in there to see if they show up”
Please let us know if any of this is helpful for your issue.
I have the same problem
“Don’t panic”. It will be fixed fast, after all that is “the real benefit of the new subscription business model”.
Wow, really, like I don’t know how to use the watch? Well, this’ll surely take a long time if we’re just going to keep looking at all the ways that the user could possibly screw this up rather than actually looking at the application. But, ok, I’m in for the year. After that, all bets are off. Already wasted 6 months waiting for a watch app. I’ll still say I don’t like paying to be a beta tester. Informant has been launched multiple times on watch, no dice. App opened on both watch and phone, no dice. Watch and phone rebooted (just happened to be my monthly reboot day), no dice. I don’t know about Apple’s calendar app, never used it. However, I don’t have that behavior from Fantastical. The final thing, no dice. So, app is NOT getting data from the phone. Other apps are working fine. BTW, it’s not just the complication that’s not updating, the app itself is NOT getting all the events I have.
And a little more follow up this morning (but it’s NOT good news). No changes to what shows in the complication….Events scheduled for today are NOT showing up. Only the same one that showed up yesterday (an evening one, but the whole day is just skipped). When I open Informant on the watch, it’s showing the one even from yesterday.
Huh, I guess this is the last straw. Tried to write a review in the app store and it won’t save. I won’t speculate why. But, unfortunately, Keith, you’ve had your chance and it didn’t work. Two years of beta for desktop, late watch app that doesn’t work, and a user interface that is unique has drained my patience. I could prolly live with the date picker (yeah, waiting for the rocks), but it would seem that you didn’t try adding events at the end of the month for early the following month. Let’s just say it was “difficult”. I’ll give you credit for sticking to your guns and backing your design intuition, but I’m looking for ways to increase my productivity. For many years, this program did that, and then it stopped. Now, while you can go ahead and say “but, we disagree” like on many of the reviews in the app store, but that’s not the point. Your customers are speaking and you don’t seem to be listening. I can’t speak for others, but for me, while I wish you well on your journey, we’re just going separate ways.
Jim,
We have posted a new blog on this topic & would love your input.
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/view-picker-debate-continues/
Also, 5.1 & 5.11 addressed some of the date picker stuff. Hope you saw that also.
Since you asked for thoughts on the new date/time picker: one step forward, one step back. I actually liked the previous one, mostly because being inline was more efficient than a separate-wait-for-it window. It was also very convenient to adjust tasks by a few days (something I do a lot) except at month’s end, which the inline calendar should help. So plus one there.
But the time picker is a step backwards, less efficient and more error prone. Having to scroll every minute is slower. The 5.0 time picker was quick and easy, since I never want to set an appointment for 9:17. Also, the AM/PM indicator does not roll automatically. If a new event time auto-opens at 10am, and I roll it up to 1, thinking it’s 1pm, the event is set for 1AM! Not helpful when in a hurry. The 5.0 time picker was convenient–simply slide it over to 1pm.
Bottom line: you should keep the calendar part of the new picker, and keep it inline, but go back to the 5.0 time picker.
I have to say, I agree with this. The new date picker is a huge improvement, but the time wheels are more complicated than the 5.0 time picker. JMHO. I know it must be miserable trying to make everyone happy, and I appreciate that you take the time to listen.
This is a general note about my love/hate relationship with Informant 5. On my phone, where the quick action circle activated by a press is very useful, I converted almost from Day 1. On the iPad, I mostly can’t stand it.
The use case might help. Much of my work and life is task driven and I depend on a heavy-duty task organizer, i.e. Informant. When I plan and review, it’s mostly with the iPad–I need to switch between different views, filters, and projects, and the iPad helps (in I4) to see the big picture. The iPad is for overall review and planning the day, the iPhone is for running the day, and it’s all held together with Informant Sync. (Meaning I’m a customer who doesn’t mind the cost scheme, because I’m paying for an ongoing service.) There are three major ways Informant 5 is inferior for task management on the iPad:
1. Views. I said I jump around to all different views when planning, and in I4 those are all there. The one-button interface might make sense on the smaller phone screen, but it’s annoying that on the iPad you tried to solve a problem that just didn’t exist. Chris said you might allow the view buttons to be always visible on the iPad, which I hope happens.
2. That quick-action circle. Useful with force touch, poorly conceived without it. Now my most used task functions (change start date, skip this occurence) take added effort–slide all the way out, then tap the last button, THEN do what I need. I could live with a continuous slide (i.e. a single motion) bringing up the circle–I’d probably prefer that. Or if you let us customize the slideout buttons.
3. The left-hand panels in Task and Note View auto-hiding themselves. I can’t believe you thought this was a good idea, especially in landscape. At the very least, why didn’t you give us the choice? To an iPad user, this the most bone-headed move in Informant 5.
This keeps me using Informant 4 on the iPad, despite glitches that will never be fixed. Based on what I read (or don’t read) here, I will probably be on it for quite some time. 5.3? 5.4? Too bad–it’s clear from the WWDC keynote that Apple sees the iPad’s future as basically a mini-Mac. You, on the other hand, seem to be moving toward treating it as an oversized iPhone. I hope you come to see the error of your ways.
Ok, so we’ve been waiting for 5-6 months for 5.1. This was supposed to be the version “fixing” all the problems seen in 5.0. I’m EXTREMELY disappointed. There’s basically nothing I like in Informant 5 and this is product is so much worse than PI 4 that I am at loss for words. Well, not entirely, because I’ll outline here what’s wrong.
(1) View Picker.
The View Picker is wrong, distracting and awful. I was the one to ask in the user feedback forum for “One tap to switch between views”, which is the request getting by far more votes than anything else.
I already wrote many times that the two taps, the animation and the transition screen are infuriatingly distracting. I add now that after the first tap I ALWAYS waste time hunting for the right button to tap all small and somewhat non-descriptive icons, especially for the different calendar views. I often end up where I DID NOT want to go. What a waste of time! There’s such a plethora of icons showing up that it’s easy to get confused. I know I can hide those that I don’t need, but I need them all, they are just so very badly organised, especially different calendar views.
Alex and Chris have suggested that this new approach has been chosen because many people didn’t realise the bottom bar which was the view picker befor could be swiped. I can’t believe this problems couldn’t be solved in other ways (like a super short tutorial before first use), and there never was need for swiping on the iPad!!! I suspect the new View Picker has been used ad an excuse to show the transition screen with weather and ETA to next appointment which to me is completely useless, and which I DO NOT NEED TO SEE EVERY TIME I SWITCH VIEWS!!!!!! Especially when planning.
Also, the space saved by the elimination of the “view picker bar” is not used in any way, especially on the ipad. What’s the problem with living that always visible?????
The VIew Picker in PI4 was perfect, especially for me given that I was working mostly with month view, than other calendar views when needed where just a couple of taps away.
it seems that the way Fanatic is looking forward is a tap/hold/slide. This won’t work with me, and especially on the iPad I might need to slide the finger halfway across the screen. How does that make any sense at all?
I WANT THE OLD VIEW PICKER BACK!!! CAN YOU HEAR THIS DESPERATE CRY? THE CURRENT VIEW PICKER IS NOT WORKING AND IS CRAP! GET RID OF IT!!!
(2) Date Picker
Ok, you wanted an iniine date picker. I understand that. It makes sense. Unfortunately it’s hard to implement.
With an inline date picker it made more sense to have sliders. Even if I found them quite annoying, I think the were implemented well enough in 5.0, with the possibility to choose increments of 1/5/15 minutes, go ahead or back one week. All that was missing was that sliders wouldn’t roll over and so it was a real pain in the neck to go back and forth for example across months
5.1 has a Date Picker which is a step back towards PI4. To be honest I still consider the Date Picker on PI4, espcially for choosing time it was much much better, and it looks that now we are not able to choose the time increment.
There’s anyway a big problem here: 5.1 is somewhat missing the point of the inline date picker. With sliders, the screen estate taken was (or looked) relatively small. As it is in 5.1, it takes a big part of the screen, even on the iPad looks about 1/4th. What’s the point of keeping it inline? Just open a new window (even if not ideal) and go back to what you had in PI4 or some improvement built upon that
(3) Task View
The Task VIew in 5.0/5.1 IS A DISASTER!!!!
Whover thought to get rid of the permanent had a dreadful idea!! This is relative to the iPad of course.
From Alex I seem to understand he prefers an empty screen to focus on planning. Well I do not! I focus better when the panel on the left is permanently on and I can quickly swap form, say, Inbox to Prjects, to Overdue etc. NOW I CAN’T. What do I get in exchange for the elimination of the permanent left panel? Vast empty spaces. Should I fill them with very long task titles? Not really, even if I considered this efficient and productive I wouldn’t do that because I wouldn’t be able to read them in their entirety on the smaller iPhone screen.
Both on iPad and iPhone the in PI4 Task View used to have a header telling me where I was: Inbox, In Progress, Overdue etc. Now this has disappeared and has been substituted by the “ribbon”, which is reduntant and useless. The place where I am (say, Inbox) is underlined on the ribbon. That would be tantamount the the view header in PI4. Too bad that if I scroll the ribbon I can’t see the underlined section any longer. How can this make me more productive in any way? Mystery.
Finally, in PI4 the “task view” icon featured the number of overdue tasks. Not any longer!!! Now the quickest way to know the number of overdue tasks is to exit the app and look at its icon, which still shows them. Does this make any sense? And why a feature that was given so much prominence until PI4 is now considered negligible? Where’s the consistency in development??
The Task View, especially on the iPad is really a deal breaker for me, if it doesn’t get any improvement I can’t use Informant any longer.
“From Alex I seem to understand he prefers an empty screen to focus on planning.”
It’s interesting that they haven’t applied this philosophy to Informant for Mac (based on screenshots–I don’t have a Mac).
Other issues:
(1) I don’t like any of the new colour schemes, more would be appreciated
(2) I miss the mini calendar that I could get when swiping from left in Calendar View. They were not my most used feature, but they were useful. Maybe this is why you removed them?
Gennaro,
We have posted a new blog on this topic & would love your input.
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/view-picker-debate-continues/
Bottom line, after all of what I wrote:
Informant 5 is not working for me. Informant 5.1 didn’t bring any of the improvements I was hoping for.
It is obvious that Fanatic is not going any longer in the direction I like, so I don’t see any satisfactory changes coming any time, neither sooner nor later.
My subscription to Informant Sync is expiring this month. I think I will renew because I can still use PI4 (except Google Calendar Sync) and I cannot find valid alternatives.
I will keep checking I5 when new releases come out but, again, I doubt you will do any steps in the right direction. I have already spent money on alternative apps like Calengoo and the overpriced Omnifocus which, to be clear, I find well inferior and worse than PI4 but which in the end I will be forced to use because I loathe Informant 5 for all the reasons outlined above.
cheers
Gennaro
Gennaro,
I completely feel your pain and agree with every point. But again it comes to a handful old time users complaining and being ignored. I guess that they have decent sales otherwise or they would care more about us.
It looks like they made all their developers/customer support people/friends and family to give a 5 star review at App Store as soon as 5.1 was launched. It is clear because besides monument valley, no other app gets so many 5 start reports in a raw.
You can try 2Do by beehive – I got it when it was free and when a solo developer decided to start charging a subscription, ALL of the previous buyers got in for free! It is better and more powerful todo app then Informant, but I agree with you I can not find a calendar app I like so far. I lost hope that we are going to be heard by Keth and Co, but still visit their blog from time to time and unfortunately get to the same conclusion again and again.
Best ~
View Picker
IMO there are so many different ways that people can, and probably do use PI that the only way to satisfy the majority of customers is to allow them to customise the navigation buttons available with 1-click. For example, the 4 buttons currently accessible with 1-click are “New”, “Filter”, “Goto Date” and “Goto Today”. Of those 4 options the only one I use regularly is “New”, so the current design couldn’t be much worse for me, I have 2-clicks 99% of the time. My ideal set of options would be “New”, “Focus”, “Month View”, “Tasks” & “Notes” (it looks like it would be possible to display 5 buttons plus the current button that displays all options). To reiterate my main point, I’m not suggesting you change the design to suit my preferences, it’s that they will be different for most people so having a fixed set of options is likely to always frustrate a large portion of your user base. The only way to satisfy most of your customers is to give users the option to choose the buttons available with 1-click, or revert back to the PI navigation design.
I’m also not in favour of tap/hold/slide as an alternative solution, IMO that’s worst than 2-clicks.
I am a massive fan of PI so I really hope you can resolve this issue. I’ve just renewed my subscription but will remain on PI4 until you do, but if you don’t I intend to cancel my subscription at the next renewal.
Hi Kieth, what are your thoughts on my suggestion of making the buttons available with 1-click configurable by the user?
Thanks, Scott.
Scott,
This is a good suggestion. We are looking at a few ways of making the one-click between tasks & calendar work a bit better. There are a few ideas that chris & alex are tossing back & forth and we may try a few things in a beta build here soon.
The “one-click” argument is definitely one that we want to solve related to the view picker.
I’m curious… where do you notice the extra click the most? ie, is it when you are on a certain calendar view wanting to go to a task view, or is it from Tasks to calendar, or other…
One idea that Alex is testing is to bring back a PI4.94 version tab bar that can be displayed “with” the smartbar. Anyways, this is a hot topic internally right now. We will have something good soon.
Scott,
We have posted a new blog on this topic & would love your input.
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/view-picker-debate-continues/
I use Pocket Informant since Windows Mobile age. It is a great change when Fanatic release Informant 5 as subscription update. Life change but it takes time for people to adapt changes. Application evolves and developer needs consistent effort to maintain. Subscription seems to be the only solution for developer continues supporting its application.
Events created in mobile synchronize back to Outlook via native IOS Calendar app and cloud Microsoft Outlook.com account most likely falling into “null” instead of “none” category. The following link will disclose this issue:-
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook-mso_win10/list-view-2-different-groups-with-recurrence-none/8d46bc20-5b75-464f-9f64-b32e3db328a6?rtAction=1486012476453
This is only 1 of many issues Microsoft has not been solved for years. Informant Sync has no such issue. Informant seems to be the most functional PIM app. Would people not use Microsoft Outlook nor not subscribe to Office 365?
I wish Fanatic can still improve and continue support Informant for the years come afterward. Please accept positive user’s voice and keep developing. There is no product in the world to suit everyone. The UI change in Informant 5 is very different from previous Informant 4 which people may takes time to adapt.
No, it’s not people need time to accept change. Informant is a productivity app, and when the designers make changes that hurt productivity, especially (IMO) for those of us who rely heavily on tasks and the iPad, we start to question whether their commitment is to productivity or to their “vision”.
I’ve used Informant for 14 years because it’s a heavy-duty task manager for my task-heavy life, which also includes a good calendar and decent notes section, all in one. But videos of iOS 11 on iPad make me wonder what if I had a good calendar (only) app, task (only) app, and notes (only) app, I could be comparing them side by side, instead of jumping around to different views (which Informant 5 has made HARDER to do). The days of one app to rule them all may be ending.
robertopitz80,
You do have a good point about the 1 click vs 2. A few questions:
-Where specifically do you find that you are missing the “one-click”? (for example)
a) When you are in a calendar view, do you want a one-click to go to tasks? (or contacts, or notes)
We have received lots of positive feedback on the Smartbar button as a way to centralize the navigation, and (for instance) always have the buttons be in a consistent place. But, there are definitely certain “shortcuts” that have been eliminated. Rest assured, we are working on ways to bring them back.
Any specific insights you have will be considered.
Robert,
We have just added a new post on the topic of View picker. We would love your input / comments.
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/view-picker-debate-continues/
So far, I like the changes that have been made to the date picker, although I still prefer PI4.X version. That being said, I use PI because I can manage my tasks directly from a calendar view. There was a bug in 5.03, when I open PI and the tasks would not load in the calendar view and I would have to close the application, remove it from memory and then open it again, to get the tasks to reappear. There is also the alternative to go to a different view and then come back again, but either method waste time if you have to do more than once a day (often 3 or 4 times a day). This persists in 5.1. I opened a ticket before and was told to remove my deleted tasks, but seems like a work around and not a solution.
I still don’t think PI5 is a complete product, since there are still user interface issues that still need to be addressed and feels like a very slow process to address them. I will not even go into pricing, since it appears that minds have already been made up. My only comment would be this product needs more work to be worth that pricing. My subscription renews in September, so I will see what other releases will bring before I make the decision to pull the plug.
Keith,
To answer your question about how one-tap switching helps me: I try to get today’s important tasks into an up-to-date Focus View, where I can then stay much of the day. Getting there means switching views a LOT: look at my near-future calendar, look through Focus View, switch to Notes for anything new, switch to Tasks View, bounce between views many more times than this description suggests. Not having the view buttons visible slows this significantly, compared to Informant 4 on the iPad.
In Tasks View, I’ll be looking through Overdue, Inbox, Projects, Multiple Smart Filters. Meaning having the left-hand panel always open, as in Informant 4, makes it quicker and easier. The top ribbon may work for some, but with many projects, it gets too unwieldy.
I’m just asking for some productivity features that were in Informant 4. Not necessarily identical, just AS EASY as I4.
I’ve been a big fan of PI since 2009 and whilst I respect the comments of others on this and other forums, I still like PI5. Yes, there are differences between the excellent PI4 but nothing that will force me to move away. The subscription issue doesn’t really concern me overly and I’m not going to go into details here. Would I prefer it for free? Of course, but the cost over a year is really small compared to plenty of other things paid for regularly (newspaper/coffee/etc).
The recent update is another improvement and shows the team is listening to comments. I have one small question on the date picker. As a single hand user, I find some difficulty when trying to change the time. If I place my thumb only just to the right of the hour and move up or down, instead of the hour wheel moving, the minute wheel is still the one that is affected. To move the hour wheel I have to place my thumb right on the hours themselves, meaning that I cannot actually see the hours I am trying to change. Yes, I could always use my left hand but if the area of the screen that actually senses the gesture could be slightly shifted to the right it would help enormously.
Thanks Keith – keep up the good work.
I have a similar problem, but I’ll address it in my main post.
I know this isn’t where you asked this, but I don’t have a Facebook account (get off my lawn 😉), but I do use PI4 and PI5 on my iPhone and iPad and Outlook on Windows (Exchange mailbox; PI gets native iOS calendar). Still need people for your study?
I’m fine with the current View Picker. I find it intuitively obvious and easy to use. Besides, I spend most of my time in the full month view (even on an iPhone-7 screen), and so rarely have to use it.
The Date Picker is another matter. I had gotten used to the old-new one. It was kinda Baroque, but it worked. The current one barely works for me. I have small fingers, but I’m often in a hurry, and it’s too easy to move the wrong dial. Worse, I frequently move the whole screen up-and-down, missing the dial altogether. I think they need to be much bigger, and / or screen motion needs to be frozen when you’re using them.
I am a long time informant user and yesterday I decided to buy informant 5 for 26,49 Euro (yes it is more than in Dollar). I liked informant 4 because it is a well designed Calendar with tooledo sync. I than tested the new version and I am really frustrated. I did not find any better or new feature in informant 5 compared with informant 4. It is even so, that especially the focus view is not as good as in informant 4 (no calendar slide in from left on iphone and no fixed calender day view on the left side of the focus view on ipad – there is enough space for it). I hope that with the new versions of informant 5 it will be as good as informant 4. But the most frustrating thing is, that I will have to pay after one year again to use toodledo sync. I do not need informant sync or weather sync. With informant 4 toodledo sync was free with the pro version. Please please find a way to charge less than 26,49 Euro for just the toodledo sync option. I think this is really a very good calendar app, but it is hard to pay this ammount of money for funktions I do not need.
I also posted this under the 5.2 blog, but I thought it was more appropriate here:
Bottom line: The time picker needs to be horizontal scrolling, wider so that more numbers are seen and there is more space to touch with finger, and more options for minute intervals.
The calendar grid is, of course, wonderful. However, the time picker still needs a lot of work. First of all, the vertical scrolling is problematic because the entire form is vertical scrolling. So I scroll the form to get to bottom options and accidentally scroll the am/pm… bam–very bad.
Time picker needs to be horizontal scrolling with a decent amount of room for actually scrolling with your finger. And minutes needs a 5 minute interval option. I can see the dilemma here, because 1 minute intervals will be needed occasionally.