TaskPaper has a very passionate userbase. When the first time I published a press release—this was back in 2008 when TaskPaper 2 had just landed—I got a bunch of hate for dissing it as being underpowered. I decided to give it a second, more thorough look by using it as my sole task manager for a few weeks. I then understood what the philosophy behind TaskPaper was all about, and although I didn’t use it, TaskPaper was certainly good at what it did. My main reason for not using it at the time was that it didn’t have any way to have those tasks to the iPhone.

Fast forward to a year later, and Brandon is on the beta team getting his review ready for when the app is released. He was definitely excited about the app, especially since it coincided well with his piece on minimalism. When I saw the review in the queue however, I was shocked to find that he wasn’t head over hells over it. His conclusion:

[It’s the] task manager that I refuse to delete from iPhone even though I don’t really need it. For all its attempts at being simple, it makes my workflow harder. I could never recommend it as a replacement for Things or Omnifocus. If Quickie was more to your liking, TaskPaper is a more powerful alternative. But ultimately, even for the Quickie crowd, I don’t know if I could justify spending twice what Quickie costs for TaskPaper.

Of course, that passionate userbase I mentioned clobbered him in the comments. Look through the App Store reviews, and it’s mainly five stars. What’s going on? On the 18th of February, I installed TaskPaper on my iPhone, and transferred all of my tasks from my previous task manager, Things. In fact at the time I wasn’t even using Things that extensively, but I made sure I launched TaskPaper at least once a day. I wanted to know whether there was any injustice done to the application, since these things affect more than just the developer. It’s been two weeks now, and I think I voice out my view on the subject.

I’m in consensus with Brandon’s review. But let me start on a positive note. TaskPaper for iPhone is a nice task manager, and you can definitely use it as your way of getting your life organised. It carries over the same simplicity of the desktop app, in rapidly creating lists, much like you would on traditional paper. It adds ‘digital’ features like tags and search, and a way to rearrange your tasks, and at the end of the day, it’s a great way to list out your tasks. In fact, the only reason I managed to redesign the footer and the new Team SA page was because I rigorously used a TaskPaper ¹.

The problem is not what TaskPaper is, but rather what it could have been. First of all, the sync is clunky. Brandon irons out the issues in his review, and I agree. I had begun having my Notational Velocity notes be stored in my SimpleText folder, so I could have them accessible in Simplenote and Writeroom on the iPhone, but I was shocked to find all those show up in TaskPaper as well. If you’ve created a task list on the iPhone it’s synced over as a ’.txt’ file instead of the ‘.taskpaper’ files that the desktop app creates. So you have to open it from within the desktop app (File » Open) where a double-click should have done the trick.

Brandon also identifies problems with tag completion, deleting tasks (seeing strikeouts is an eyesore), lack of scheduling, disconnection between projects—all valid complaints. Noted that the TaskPaper as a task management system has never had any way to schedule alerts, probably because the developer doesn’t believe in them, and I respect that. But the iPhone calls for a different way of working with items. You’re no longer dealing with one large sheet of information where you can glance at your entire task list. You need to have a way to see what’s important, remove clutter, and I don’t feel TaskPaper for iPhone does that so effectively.

If you’re already a TaskPaper user on the Mac, you will love the iPhone version if only for the single reason that you can finally have them on your iPhone. There’s nothing like carrying your tasks around, and since the iPhone version generally stays within the principles that the desktop version was built on, you’re going to be a happy user. The disappointment is that it could have been so much better. That’s not to say the current version is the be-all and end-all of the TaskPaper debate. Just two days ago, SimpleText.ws got an update which adds auto-adds document tags for .taskpaper files so you can filter them better on the iPhone—it’s still clutter though.  In its current state, if you’re going to use it as a standalone app, it’s not much more than a simple list maker. If you’re thinking of switching from your current working task management solution, I’d say wait. If you’re looking to start managing tasks, that’s an emotional problem only you can find a solution to.

You may disagree with my point of view.