task managers are as essential as email. Because of this, being able to organize your upcoming tasks and reminders in the most efficient and intuitive way can be priceless. Naturally, if you have a Mac, Reminders might seem like the obvious choice. However, like in my case, you might not feel right at home with Apple’s native offerings. This gives any task manager that is available on both the Mac and the iPhone an instant edge over any other similar app that might exist on only one of those devices. Thankfully, the number of task managers available on both the Mac and the iPhone is not small which, while by no means is a bad thing, still makes it a bit trickier to sort out which task managers to choose for your devices. Considering that, here is a look at what are perhaps the two best of them (in order of personal preference and not including Apple’s own Reminders apps), both available for both the Mac and the iPhone and each with its own set of features. Let’s get going:
Clear
Clear ($1.99 for iPhone and $6.99 for Mac) is perhaps the most popular task manager for iPhone on the App Store. Clear for iPhone debuted some time ago to critical acclaim thanks to its innovative gesture-only interface, which allows you to control every aspect of the app with only a few gestures and mostly with just a finger. Swipe down for to go up a level and access your task lists and settings or pinch to open within a list to create a new item between two existing ones are just a couple of the possible gestures that the app allows. The app also allows you to change its look with different themes that you can unlock, providing it with a distinct personality. So far, the app proved quite useful but no more than a novelty. But when the developers launched a Mac version of it with iCloud integration and with all the features that its iPhone counterpart offered, I was sold. What makes this my first choice is its simplicity, its seamless iCloud integration and, most of all, how smooth the Mac client bahaves, especially with a Magic Mouse or with macbook’s glass trackpad.
Any.Do
We’ve posted about Any.Do (free) in the past here, both reviewing it and comparing it with Apple’s own Reminders. Feel free to take a look at those articles to get a better feel for how Any.Do works. What Any.Do has going for it on the iPhone is its clean design and smart approach to task management, providing you with some quite flexible options to organize and manage your tasks. On the Mac side, Any.Do fails to provide a native client and instead, offers a wide array of plugins for Chrome and Gmail for example. The positive side of this approach is that it allows Any.Do users to access their tasks regardless of them having a Mac or a Windows PC. However, this comes at the cost of accessibility and responsiveness, since the plugin is not accessible offline and its interface is not as intuitive and responsive as if it were a native Mac application. Note: In its latest release, Any.Do forces you to share the app with 3 friends before allowing you to use location-based reminders. The practice has not been received well among users and it is still unknown if the developers will change it.
Conclusions
As mentioned above, task managers can be incredibly important for some users, so in the end your choice will depend on what your priorities are. Are seamless sync and offline access essential? Or are price and Windows support more important for you? Let us know what you choose in the comments.
