To the good people at Mactopia,

I am not sure how an open letter from a Mac user is received, but I need to get this off my chest, so sending it is just a courtesy. If a loyalty test is needed, not only to I use the Microsoft office suite (yeah, I downloaded neoOffice, but I don’t use it; geekiness is really only an affectation for me thus far in my life), but I recently abandoned the mail, address book, and iCal apps and gave myself, body and soul, into the tender care of Entourage. I’m not threatening to change my mind about that. I am reporting as neutrally as I possibly can, that every single week I look around for something better. Some day someone is going to make it, and I don’t understand why you shouldn’t beat them to it.

Let’s start with something basic. Why not swallow your pride and copy iCal and offer email notifications? This is not really a luxury for many but a necessity. You must have many customers who operate with both a desktop and a laptop. Yes, it is possible to synchronize them, but it is easy to do it wrong or not often enough. Providing email notifications would be a great back up so that the appointment I forgot to put on whatever computer I happen to be working at would still receive a reminder.

Now, about tasks and projects. Your project center is what is going to keep me faithful to you and resistant to the wily and winsome attractions of iCal for the time being. But why is it so difficult to use? If I want to associate an email address with a project, I should be able to type the name in a blank somewhere and find it. I shouldn’t have to run through a long list. The same is true of events.

Also, while this may not have been true when entourage was first developed (or Outlook), it is now common knowledge, in the era of Getting Things Done, that task lists can be useless if they are not broken down to the smallest tasks possible. What this means is that I need overtasks that break down into subtasks. There should be multiple levels available. Merely associating tasks with a project is not enough. I should be able, under the project “trip,” to put a task “pack” with then the ability to open that and see “remember robe” and “remember swim trunks.”

Why can’t we have “reminders” of things put in our calendar without having to make a decision in advance about the exact amount of time I will spend on it? This is the sort of all-or-nothing forced decision that makes people find organizing their time so difficult. Give us a middle option please. And, while you’re thinking about it (ha!), why not think about ways of putting reminders about other people or other things that you need to know are happening, but aren’t activities that you are planning to do. I can attempt this with the color coding, but there are only so many colors I can remember at once. After I list all my own actions, and then come up with colors for co-workers etc, I’ve pretty much broken up the spectrum beyond human vision.

Finally (for the moment), why on earth did you save the two-column week view for only Outlook users? Is this punishment for not owning a Dell? It is time consuming and anti-intuitive to have to scroll down narrow columns. (A minor point, but related to Outlook envy: is it really so hard to code the point and click option so that you can bring up a chosen week buy using the mouse to designate it from a preview calendar).

If I’ve missed something obvious, I’ll receive correction. But if I’ve missed one of your features my prejudice (until you enlighten me) is to think that you need to make it more intuitive.

Sincerely,

Mark Horne