Apple’s Reminders.app, location-based reminders and Due
When Apple first announced its own Reminders.app for iOS5 back in June, I wrote my thoughts about what it meant for Due.
Between that announcement and the official launch of iOS5 on Tuesday, I’ve received a number of emails from users—-most of whom have never used Reminders.app yet—-asking about my plans to ‘counter’ Apple’s Reminders.app. One tech journalist even asked if I’m still going to charge for Due when iOS5 arrives, since Reminders.app will come for free.
My answer has always been no, I don’t have any specific plans to counter Reminders.app, and there’s no need to. The benefits and edge that Due offers—-fast reminder creation, persistent reminders, easy deferring and postponing, powerful recurrences—-over other reminder solutions, including the yet-to-be public Reminders.app, remain.
Thankfully, most users share my thoughts on this.
However, a number of users have remarked that although they vastly prefer Due’s interface and speed over Reminders.app, they would nevertheless hope to see support for location-based reminders in Due, a feature that Reminders.app has but Due doesn’t.
The short (and probably disappointing) answer is that I don’t have plans in the foreseeable future for location-based reminders in Due.
The long (and hopefully sensible) answer is that the paradigm for setting up and displaying location-based reminders is simply too different from time-based reminders for both to exist in harmony, and still maintain the simplicity and speed that we’ve to come to love in Due.
In fact, Reminders.app is the perfect example of what would happen to Due if I’d tried to put in support for location-based reminders.
The strong focus on time-based reminders in Due is the main reason why reminder creation and management is faster, easier and better than iOS5’s Reminders.app.
Adding location-based reminders dilutes this focus, makes it less like Due and more like Reminders.app.
When that happens, we would all wonder why we had paid $5 for an app that’s not quite as fast and as good as Due is today, but works about the same as the free Reminders.app.
