The Diary of Due

Today, I ship my third app

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 22:46:13 +0800

I haven’t shipped many apps, but each time I do, it seems to mark a milestone for me.

My first was Due for iPhone, which debut on the App Store close to three years ago on September 2010, and kickstarted my journey as an app developer.

My second was Due for Mac, which I shipped about a year ago, and marked my foray into Mac OS X development.

Today, I’m shipping my third app—Dispatch, an email client for the iPhone—and it marks the start of a journey with my buddy, Hon Cheng, and our new company, Clean Shaven Apps.

Dispatch, like all apps I’ve shipped so far, grew out of a personal need: responding to, and triaging support emails for Due on the move.

Responding to support emails on the move

For years now, I have been using TextExpander on my Mac to respond to support emails for Due (I still do, but increasingly I prefer to respond to them with Dispatch on my iPhone. More on that later).

There, I said it. If you’ve sent an email to me before and wonder how I can sometimes respond in the next minute with a detailed reply, it’s because of these semi-template snippets that I’ve written and stored over time.

I say semi because no one template can respond to all kinds of email, and I try to personalise my replies whenever I can.

I love TextExpander—it’s hard to imagine how I can get by without it—but there were two issues for me.

First, there wasn’t any email clients on my iPhone that could make use of my TextExpander snippets.

Trying to respond to my support emails on my iPhone for 3 weeks in Japan was the impetus for Dispatch.

TextExpander has had an iOS SDK for sometime, and late in our development, they launched a new SDK that I haven’t had time to check out. Federico also wondered why we decided to build our own snippet engine instead of integrating the SDK, which should be easier for us.

After shipping Due for Mac, and as the number and variations of snippets I have increases, I found it difficult to remember the exact TextExpander abbreviations that are used to trigger them (I have close to 200 snippets related to Due and Due for Mac).

Having an option to use my snippets by searching for a descriptive title or its content would solve my problem of having to remember the increasingly obscure abbreviations that I’ve came up with.

Now that we’ve shipped 1.0, I’ll have time to check out whether the SDK is suitable for Dispatch in future updates.

Triaging support emails on the move

The kinds of support emails that I get can be largely broken down into:

questions about how to do something, or whether something can be done,
problems that I know about and have a solution or response for,
bugs that I’m not aware of that need further action on my part,
feature requests

Having support for snippets solves 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4.

I make use of OmniFocus to plan future updates for Due, and being able to triage these feature requests and bug reports into OmniFocus would be really nice, and so that’s what we did.

And while we’re at that, we added support for 14 apps in all, most of them apps we use on a daily basis. Due, as you can imagine, is one of the 14.

So what’s next for Due?

Dispatch took two of us an entire year to ship, and on hindsight, a mail app is probably an overly ambitious project for our first app.

In the past year, I haven’t found much time to update Due, and now you know what I’ve been up to. Juggling multiple projects is an art that I’ve to master.

So the question that must be on your mind is: what’s next for Due?

I’ll be fixing some non-critical bugs that I haven’t had chance to, and hopefully a few new features coming your way. A 2.0 overhaul, of course, is my ultimate goal, but that would take time.

I’ve learnt a lot in the last year working on Dispatch, and I’m excited to make use what I’ve learnt to make a better Due.

1.9.4: The Accessibility Update

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:55:20 +0800

Now fully accessible with VoiceOver support
Large Text support. View your reminders and timers more easily with a larger font.

Using Due’s Natural Date Parser For Time Conversion A...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:57:18 +0800

Using Due’s Natural Date Parser For Time Conversion

A large portion of my users are based in the States, while I’m based in Singapore myself.

The huge time difference means that announcements made at what seemed like a convenient time for myself (say 3 PM) means an unearthly hour for users on the other end of the world (3 AM in New York, 12 midnight in San Francisco).

Many news websites face the same issue, and they adopt a strategy to post a tweet at different hours of the day in hope to catch their users around the world at a convenient time.

I’m hopeless at time conversion. Thankfully, the natural date parser in Due understands timezone.

If I thought 10 AM made a good time for an announcement, I could schedule a reminder to do a retweet at 10 AM PDT for users in the West Coast, or 10 AM EDT for users in the East, just by typing that directly into the reminder.

Due would then automatically* convert the time to your local time in the reminder’s due date.

This is also handy when you wish to convert timings of product announcements, such as Apple’s Keynotes, to local time.

*If you’re on iOS, you need to tap on the button that appears near the top of the window (eg. ‘Set to 10am PDT’) to set the date and time of your reminder to the detected date and time.

If you’ve any interesting use case or tips to share with fellow users, I’d like to hear from you.

Using Search to Categorize, Tag and Filter The latest update to...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:55:56 +0800

Using Search to Categorize, Tag and Filter

The latest update to Due, version 1.9, introduces Search.

Search was one of those features that should have been in there a year ago, but wasn’t, for a variety of reasons. But I’m glad it’s done now.

Besides using it to search (duh) through long lists of reminders, there is at least another interesting use of it.

One feature request that I’ve gotten is to be able to categorize your reminders (eg. Work, Personal) and filter them if desired.

While I’m not a big fan of categorizing/tagging/lists personally, you can now also do some form of tagging and filtering with the new Search function.

I have a long list of timers created for a variety of uses (tea steeping, exercises, parking ticket expiry, etc). One set of timers that I use frequently is a 15-second rest timer, and a 55-second workout timer for Kettlebells.

Since timers are not currently user-sortable, and are sorted automatically in ascending order of length, a set of related timers (say a 5-minute break timer and a 25-minute pomodoro timer) could easily get lost in a sea of timers.

With Search now, I would tag my 15-second and 55-second workout timers with ‘Kettlebell’ in their titles. That way, I could easily filter out all other timers when I’m only interested in my workout timers.

I don’t categorize my reminders—I treat both personal and work reminders equally. As long as they need to be done at a certain time, I’d like to be reminded to work on them—but I’d imagine users can now tag their reminders by appending the tags (eg. Work, Personal), and filter for them using Search when needed.

Moving forward, I hope to post more tips and tricks and use cases for Due. If you’ve any interesting use case or tips to share with fellow users, I’d like to hear from you.

Due 1.9: Search, Add Contacts, Create Events, Pull-to-refresh

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:14:45 +0800

1.9 ENHANCEMENTS

Search
Add a phone number, an email address, a birthday or an anniversary from a contact to a reminder
Create calendar events from reminders
Pull to sync
Now launches faster
Now scrolls much faster on the new iPad
See more of your reminders and timers on the 4-inch Retina display of iPhone 5
Fully compatible with iOS 6

Due 1.9 has a bug which may cause super slow launches (how ironic) and crash on launch. A critical fix (1.9.1) has been submitted to Apple on Sep 20, 10 AM PDT. Sorry guys.

Due for Mac 1.1: Menu Bar Mode, Notification Center, Retina Graphics

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 08:26:03 +0800

Due for Mac 1.1: Menu Bar Mode, Notification Center, Retina Graphics

• Menu Bar Mode. Run Due directly from your menu bar, badge it with unattended alerts, and take Due off your Dock if you like.

• Notification Center (requires Mountain Lion). See your alerts in the brand new Notification Center in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

• Retina Graphics (requires new MacBook Pro with Retina display)

CHANGES

• Now supports opening of .dueappgz databases

• Additional options in Preferences > Notifications to highlight and badge Menu Bar icon with unattended notifications

• Added switch in Preferences > Notifications to switch text notification system between Growl and Notification Center

FIXES BUGS WHERE

• Certain 24-hour times are wrongly parsed when typed directly into the time box (thanks Arslan Tolga)

• Certain keyboard shortcuts can increase size of the timer editor window

Due for Mac 1.0.1: Notifications Control, bug fixes

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0800

Due for Mac 1.0.1: Notifications Control, bug fixes

• Notifications Control. Selectively enable or disable Growl notifications, their stickiness, sound or icon bouncing for different types of alerts.

CHANGES

• New default notification behavior: reminders and timers that become due stay on screen and bounces dock icon once. Notification turned off for the sync statuses: ‘Checking for updates…’, ‘Uploading…’ and ‘Upload complete’.

• Separate Growl notifications for items that have just become due vs notifications from auto-snoozing items

• Cmd Return now automatically strips any detected date from title and saves the reminder immediately without further confirmation

• Adding a reminder via the due:// URL with a parseable date/time now automatically selects the detected date/time, ready for deletion or saving on Return

FIXES BUGS WHERE

• There could be no sounds on the Mac if the user had turned down ‘Alert volume’ or ‘Play user interface sound effects’ in System Preferences > Sound

• Item is saved when user has no intention to do so on certain input methods (such as Japanese) where the Return key is also used to select text (thanks Noritaka Kamiya)

• Adding reminders via the due:// URL scheme does not always show the populated item editor if Due is not running, or if window is closed

• Parsing doesn’t take place if reminder is created via due:// URL

• Menu items and shortcuts Show Reminders/Timers/Logbook do not work when window is closed (thanks Alan Dague-Greene)

• Server database can be overwritten with local database even when user has set to replace local database on next sync

• Relative date (eg. in 10 minutes) in the date field anchors off the due time instead of the time now (thanks Dries Geeroms)

• Changing system date and time zone does not refresh the display of dates and times in Due

• Clicking to switch focus between input fields doesn’t hide the natural date parsing help prompt

• Editing the title of an existing reminder with a parseable date/time already present could reset the due date of the reminder

• Overdue timers are not counted as active timers in the status bar

• Changing preferences panel did not stop any preview sound that’s currently playing

• Crash on launch when no Computer Name is provided in System Preferences > Sharing (thanks Christopher Forsythe / Jorge Balandra)

FINALLY, A NOTE

It’s been 2 years since I started making the first version of Due for the iPhone. Due for OS X certainly wouldn’t have been possible without your support, as well as all the kind reviews out there. Thank you, all of you.

Now that I’ve got the 1.0 bugs out of the way and better notification control, my priority would be the #1 feature request: menubar and dockless operation.

And something else exciting. — JJ

Due 1.8.1: New alert sounds, duplicate reminders, updated parsing behavior, easier to modify recurring reminders

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:12:00 +0800

Due 1.8.1: New alert sounds, duplicate reminders, updated parsing behavior, easier to modify recurring reminders

★ TWEAKS AND CHANGES IN 1.8.1 ★

✓ Two brand new short alert sounds

✓ Duplicate reminders
Create reminders quickly based on the time and recurrence of existing reminders. Now easier to create a series of reminders at different hours of day (eg. 3 doses of medicine daily).

✓ Updated date and time parsing behavior
Tap on title bar to parse date. Due no longer sets the due date and time automatically when typing in the title, and no longer prompts to remove/keep parsed date in title on saving/dismissing of keyboard.

✓ Easier to modify recurring reminders now
Due now asks if changes should be applied to just the next occurrence, or to all future events when editing recurring reminders.

★ FIXES IN 1.8.1 ★

Slow startup on some devices (thanks Joep Verhaeg and Faisal Choudhury for testing the fix)
Graphic glitch in the tiling of the navigation side bar on the new iPad (thanks @AERG0N)
Bug where swiping left or right when there are no items in Reminders or Logbook crashes Due (thanks @Ken_Haynes)
Bug where Sync on Exit doesn’t download and merge existing changes if there’s no changes made on the device before exiting (thanks Nathan Henrie)
Bug where iPad launches with iPhone launch image when launched through its URL scheme
Bug where syncing from a database launched from an external app crashes Due
Bug where Due refuses to restore/sync databases with spaces in their filenames

Due 1.8: iCloud + improved Dropbox sync, assignable alert sounds, retina-display graphics for the new iPad

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:55:00 +0800

Due 1.8: iCloud + improved Dropbox sync, assignable alert sounds, retina-display graphics for the new iPad

★ WHAT’S NEW IN 1.8 ★

✓ iCloud sync

Keep your data in sync across your iPhone and iPad through iCloud.

✓ Improved Dropbox sync

Sync database on Dropbox can now be moved to another location of your choice within your Dropbox folder.

✓ Assignable alert tones

Assign a distinctive alert sound for each reminder. Shows the last two most recently used alert sound for quick access to frequently used alert sounds.

✓ Retina-display graphics for the new iPad

★ TWEAKS IN 1.8 ★

Swiping across a reminder now displays the action menu immediately (thanks Adrian Quek and @honcheng!)
New timers now start with no default value set
Reduced gloss of Due app icon
Updated appearance of Quick Access Timing bar on iOS 5.0 and later
Corrupted databases on Dropbox will now be automatically replaced with database from device without prompting user for further action
Retired Secondary Alerts for reminders in favor of assignable alert sounds; Secondary Alert is now Alarm mode and only applies to timers

★ FIXES IN 1.8 ★

Bug where 24 hour time with hours between 01-07 can sometimes be interpreted wrongly as 13-19
UI bug where a drop shadow appears beneath the last Quick Panel in a reminder list (thanks Vincent Gosselin!)
Bug where unlinking from Dropbox shows ‘Network error’ when there’s none

Due 1.7.4: Critical bug fix

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0800

★ FIXES IN 1.7.4 ★

Bug where postponing of reminder is sometimes not committed properly, causing the reminder to continue auto-snoozing until Due is relaunched or re-activated (thanks Michael O’Brien!)

Due 1.7.3: Bug fixes

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0800

★ FIXES IN 1.7.3 ★

Crashing bug when marking complete a weekly reminder, where the next recurrence is past the current year (thanks Zane Heard)
Crashing bug on the iPad when a reminder has a parseable date, and the user changes the date, followed by tapping on a Quick Timing (thanks SPN)
Bugs that cause certain weekly recurring reminders to advance to the wrong date when the next recurrence is past the current year
Bug on the iPad where the date parser overrides the user’s chosen due date when the keyboard is dismissed, or when a Quick Button is tapped upon
Bug where user cannot cancel the linking of Dropbox
Bug where user cannot create an account to Dropbox
Undo/redo buttons in Edit mode are now tinted in red as well (thanks Robert Cooper)

Due 1.7.2: Grouped alerts*, iOS 5 prompt, bug fixes

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:51:00 +0800

★ WHAT’S NEW ★

✓ Grouped multiple reminder alerts into a single alert view when Due is running in the foreground

*Alerts when Due is not running continues to be handled by iOS, and is thus ungrouped. In iOS 5, choose Banner style alerts for Due in iOS Settings > Notifications > Due for less obtrusive alerts.

★ CHANGES ★

Users who’ve upgraded from iOS 4 to iOS 5 now receive a one-time message about running Due on iOS 5
Updated Italian localization

★ FIXES ★

Bug where reminder cannot be saved when edited through ‘Custom repeat’ from the Quick Panel (thanks @devinstoker)
Bug that prevents calling/sending messages to numbers with spaces in them (thanks Alessio Cerioli)
Bug that may on rare occasion crashes Due on launch
Bug that may on rare occasion crashes Due when adding/editing a reminder
Bug that crashes Due when sharing recurring reminders with a very, very long recurrence description
Bug where the help prompt for Logbook inaccurately describes what the Logbook does (thanks Sunny Singh)

Apple's Reminders.app, location-based reminders and Due

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:37:00 +0800

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.

Due 1.7.1: iOS5 compatibility update

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:22:54 +0800

★ WHAT’S NEW ★

iOS5 compatibility
Sharing of reminders via Twitter in iOS5

★ FIXES/CHANGES ★

Bug where overdue badging does not work correctly in iOS5
[iPad] Bug where accessing custom repeat from quick panel results in oddly-sized, tall popover in iOS5 (thanks Robert Cooper)
[iPad] Bug where labels in the countdown timer picker do not show when editing timers in iOS5

★ SPECIAL NOTES ★

Note: Silent mode warning is no longer supported on iOS5.

Due 1.7: Remind your friends, Agenda Calendar integration via new Send to Due API

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:05:22 +0800

Due 1.7: Remind your friends, Agenda Calendar integration via new Send to Due API. http://www.dueapp.com/whats-new-in-17.html

★ WHAT’S NEW ★

✓ Now integrated with the #1 calendar app, Agenda Calendar

Add reminders to Due based on your calendar events from Agenda (http://getappsavvy.com/agenda/), and have Due send you right back to where you left off in Agenda.

✓ Remind your family, friends and colleagues

Send reminders to family, friends and colleagues via email or SMS. Swipe across a reminder to access the new action and sharing menu.

✓ Add reminders sent from other users of Due

Your friends using Due can also send you reminders via email and SMS. One tap on the included link, and the reminder is on its way to be saved to your copy of Due.

✓ Email, call or SMS a detected number from within Due

Now detects links, email addresses and phone numbers in reminder titles, offering options to act on them when marked done, or via the new action menu when swiping across a reminder

✓ Launch of Send to Due API

Wish an app you’re using could add reminders to Due? Send your developer a feature request with a link to our developers’ documentation: http://www.dueapp.com/developer.html

✓ Redo support

★ TWEAKS & CHANGES ★

Keyboard now automatically shows first on the iPhone when creating a new reminder
Removed ‘Show keyboard first’ option from Settings

★ FIXES ★

Bug where ‘Pick up laundry’ timer shows the message ‘Parking expires’ (thanks Kyle De Almeida)
Bug where double tap to edit sometimes do not reflect the cell as depressed while loading the edit view
Bug in date parser where some hours in the morning are not parsed correctly (thanks Robert Cooper, Kai, @knowsbestt)
Bug where date is not parsed when title is auto-corrected on dismissal of keyboard
Bug where date parsing options are not localized
Bug where relative dates (today, tomorrow, the day after) don’t show in some regional settings (eg. Russian)
Bug where a suggested autocorrect is not applied to the title when saving the reminder (thanks John Gibb)
Bugs in Arabic localization

Due 1.6 Changelog

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:35:36 +0800

★ WHAT’S NEW ★

✓ Natural date and time parsing for reminders

Create reminders with due date filled in automatically by typing into the title directly. eg. Wash the dishes in 20 mins, Leave for badminton at 3pm on Friday, Buy gift for John’s birthday on July 30 at 1pm, Call the bank an hour from 2pm.

Supports English, German, Russian, Italian, Chinese language. Partial support for other languages.

✓ Now handles >64 active reminders and timers

★ TWEAKS & CHANGES ★

Interval on date picker now dynamically changes to accommodate due times that cannot be accurately displayed by user’s preferred interval setting
Editing the value of a timer with an auto-generated label now updates the label to match the new countdown value (thanks @mutewinter)
Now hides any transient animation on quit to prevent jarring transition on next resume
Overdue and Today+Overdue badging now faster
When setting up a new repeating reminder, ‘Repeat from date’ follows the ‘Due date’ automatically

★ FIXES ★

Bug where changing timezone results in syncing issues across devices
Bug where single tapping on a reminder right after launching Due from an alert is wrongly interpreted as a double tap and ends up editing the reminder
Bug where ‘Downloading…’ status is stuck at 100% without triggering sync when dismissing the Add/Edit view on the iPhone (thanks Robert Cooper)
Bug where Quick Access Timings are partially hidden on the iPhone during tethering, phone calls and voice recording.
Bug related to crashes on iPad (thanks Robert Cooper)
Bug where Edit and Undo buttons on the iPad can be tapped upon when adding/editing/recycling an item
Spacing issues in Chinese localisation (thanks Zhang Ruochi)
Crash on iPad when adding a reminder right after postponing one with the Quick Panel
Truncation and shrinking of Edit button on the iPad on rotation in languages where the Edit button is long (thanks Strattner Martin)
Jumpy animation when creating/editing a timer

RIP Due?

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0800

While waiting for Apple to announce improvements to iOS notifications, a bombshell dropped on Due instead.

Apple announced a new built-in app, Reminders.app, as part of 10 top features introduced for iOS5.

Reminders are something I always thought should have been part of iOS, which is why Due has been marketed as the ‘missing reminder app’ at the outset.

As a third-party app, there are a number of limitations in place for what I could do with Due.

For example, unlike Apple’s own Clock.app, I can’t override the mute switch to play sound alerts. I can’t snooze reminders with a tap of a button on the alert itself without first booting you out of whatever you’re doing and throwing you into Due. I can’t allow you to use your own alarm sounds. I can’t sync reminders in the background without first requiring you to run the app.

Some of these limitations are annoyances, but some are more serious that I had initially thought they would seriously hurt Due’s chances of being a good reminder app.

So on one hand, I’m really excited that Apple is baking reminders functionality right into iOS, which could potentially provide all the functionalities I could only dream of providing.

On the other, I’m also worried about what it means for Due and its future. Would Reminders.app in iOS5 make Due ‘redundant’, as one of the guys on Twitter described what iOS5 would do to a bunch of third-party apps? Is there enough differentiation and room for Due to co-exist alongside the built-in app, and for Due to continue to grow as a reminder app?

Can Due continue to do reminders in a way that is superior to the new built-in solution by Apple?

The knee-jerk reaction that many have when Apple announced Reminders.app was: RIP Due. I remembered feeling that way for a brief moment too.

But once the initial wave of shock has settled, and I had time to take a look at what Reminders.app really is, things don’t seem as grim as it had first seemed.

Apple may have named its new app Reminders (which really, had caused most of the anxiety), but on closer examination, it would probably be more apt for Apple to name it Todos.

Its premise is on making lists of things you’ve to do and checking them off. It just so happens that it does some reminders as well. Sounds familiar?

Put it simply: Reminders.app isn’t trained on Due, but on simple todo list and GTD managers.

The good news here is, Due has never strived to be a todo list or a calendaring app.

In fact, Due makes a terrible todo list. People have been asking for the ability to create reminders without due dates so that Due could function more like a todo list. Never once did I think that that would be a good idea.

To these users, I’ve always pointed them to apps such as wunderlist or Simplenote, or for really heavy GTD users, OmniFocus. These are apps I use myself to complement Due because they’re excellent at making lists of todos, while Due is excellent at reminding.

And Due has always been doing things that could already be done with built-in apps on the iOS, just in a lot more inefficient ways. You could, of course, set up events in Calendar.app with alerts that function like reminders. Or you could use Clock.app for your timer needs.

But you didn’t.

There are quite a few notable third-party apps that thrived by improving or even replacing core functionalities on the iPhone. Just think Simplenote and the built-in Notes.app, Week Cal and the built-in Calendar.app, Dialvetica and the built-in Phone and Contacts.app, one of the thousands third-party weather apps vs the built-in Weather.app.

So am I worried about it? Yes and no.

Yes—because it’ll probably provide less incentives for new or potential customers to look for third-party reminder apps on the App Store.

No—because once people figured that adding a reminder with a due date takes way too much effort, or that the reminders are not persistent enough for their needs, or that rescheduling a reminder is not as easy as it is in Due, or that it doesn’t support the advanced recurrences that Due does, they’ll start looking elsewhere, just as people did to replace many of the built-in apps on their iPhone.

In fact, it may even be a blessing in disguise, that the next time someone asks me to support reminders without due dates, I could simply point them to the Reminders.app that Apple baked right into their devices (although I continue to think that the apps I recommended above do todos better).

Reminders.app won’t replace OmniFocus for a diehard GTD-fan, in the same way it won’t replace Due for people who truly appreciates the way Due does reminders.

Due 1.5.1 Changelog

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0800

★ NEW ★

Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) localization
Norwegian localization

★ TWEAKS AND CHANGES ★

Ability to edit overdue reminders (title/recurrence) without forcing change of due date
Editing overdue reminders no longer advances due date automatically
Closing the edit view when there are unsaved changes now confirms close action
Marking a repeat-on-completion reminder as done now prompts whether to use due time or current time for next recurrence
Added Week start on Saturday option for Arabic regions
Increased maximum duration of timers to 99 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds

★ FIXES ★

Repeat menu incorrectly reflecting Repeat 1 day/week/month from completion as normal daily, weekly and monthly repeat
Crash when editing a reminder after cancelling a swipe to delete action (thanks Val Uvarov)
Crash when editing the custom repeat of an overdue reminder
Inability to save when editing the custom recurrence of an overdue reminder
Incorrect rescheduling of repeat from completion reminders that are yet to due
Incorrect display of time and units when using Arabic language in non-Arabic regional settings (thanks Badr Alsane)
Graphic glitch when Due is launched as a result of opening a database from another app
Bug where last undo reminder is not purged from memory when replacing a database during sync
Bug where repeat label appears in new/edit timer view (thanks Mark Bacas)
[iPad] Bug where silent mode bezel remains stuck on screen if syncing happens before the silent bezel is dismissed (thanks Daniel M. Gattermann)
[iPad] Bug where Edit and Add buttons are sometimes unresponsive on launch

Due 1.5 Changelog

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:27:42 +0800

Released April 22, 2011

★ NEW FEATURES ★

✓ Advanced recurrence Change your pet’s bedding every 2 weeks on Sunday? Submit a monthly report on the last weekday of the month? Take out the recyclable trash on Tuesday and Thursday each week? Wake up alarms on weekdays only? Clean the littler box every 3 days since last completion? We’ve got you all covered.

✓ Fine-tune your notifications Don’t want alerts to sound on both your iPhone and iPad? You can now choose whether to receive notifications on each of your devices. Want popup alerts for reminders, but not for timers? You can do that too.

✓ Four new alert sounds Two new short alerts (Accordion, Beep) and two new longer ones (Guitar, Flute) that are in the more subtle department.

✓ Faster Now faster at launch, on exit and during syncing, especially with large databases on advanced badging modes (Today + Overdue, Overdue only).

★ TWEAKS AND CHANGES ★

✓ Smoother experience When adding reminders with Quick Panel already opened, when postponing reminders one after another.

✓ Single/double tap behavior Single tap activates Quick Panel instantly, and double tap edits the reminder. Increases double tap delay (thanks Kyle).

✓ Disabling of snooze ‘Disable snooze’ has been renamed as Snooze and has shifted from Settings > Sync to a consolidated notifications page in Settings > Alert & Badges > Reminders. Snooze can now be deactivated independently whether you’re synced with Dropbox or not.

✓ Misc Rearranged Settings view, old ‘Beep’ sound is now ‘Sonar’

★ FIXES ★

✓ Performance issues on Overdue badging with large databases (thanks Tomas Svoboda)

✓ Settings view cropped off on the right edge in landscape view with Home button on left (thanks Kinny)

✓ Help prompt for ‘Alarm mode’ in new timer screen could be hidden behind keyboard (thanks Phil Clarke)

✓ Incorrect sorting of reminders at times

✓ Attempting to sync a non-existent database at times

✓ New reminder screen sometimes loading with blank labels

✓ Due date and time for new reminders getting saved on the iPad even when cancelled

Due 1.4 Changelog

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:41:19 +0800

Released March 14, 2011

★ NEW FEATURES ★

- Native iPad support
- Expanding title text box for longer titles and notes
- Create timers with second precision
- Double tap to edit reminders and timers (thanks Atma Singh)
- Undo support for deletion and recycling
- Ability to choose which alert type new reminders are created with (Reminder/Secondary/Silent)
- Brazilian Portuguese support (thanks Jan Marcel Gentil)
- Danish support (thanks Niels Danielsen)
- Swedish support (thanks Mathias T.)

★ CHANGES ★

- Now remembers last view (Reminders or Timers) and launches to it (thanks Shawn Blanc)
- Undo button now less obtrusive in titlebar, accessible by tapping Edit again, or shaking the phone
- Removes sliding extra panel in add/edit view in favor of editing through quick panel
- Adding new reminders opens its Quick Panel automatically to allow users to customize snooze, alert type and repeat quickly
- Snooze, alert type and repeat options are now set via action sheets instead of cycling with taps
- Network error messages are displayed in notification bar

★ FIXES ★

- Overdue badging not updating correctly if multiple reminders go off at the same time
- Total badges not updated if syncing occurred in the background
- Countdown of time stalling on shaking device (thanks George K)
- Various sync reliability issues, including deletion of reminders, deletion in Logbook using ‘Clear all’ button
- Countdown of time sometimes not updated when Due is resumed from lock screen
- ‘Backup now’ and ‘Sync now’ buttons still responding to taps even if they appeared to be disabled
- Display issues where title in title bar can sometimes be misaligned if Due was launched from the ‘View’ button of an alert notification
- Display issues where title in title bar can be truncated in some languages
- Display issues with devices on Arabic language but English region settings