ICal To-Do's and the iPhone Calendar

Question

Why is it that at this stage of development, Apple has yet to offer a solution to manage and sync iCal to-do's with the iPhone Calendar? Am I missing something? It seems obvious that Apple is giving third party developers the opportunity to write the many wonderful To-Do apps out there, and there are many. The problem is, this doesn't fix the problem of sync-ability. I know that there are ways to sync between these third party apps and things such as their own desktop software (Things), which will then sync to to iCal. There are others that will sync to Google Calendar and/or Google Docs, but this is hardly a simple solution. There are always complications when you start syncing too many things to too many places, as the software doesn't always line up pretty.
I'm basically just looking for a simple solution to use iCal, my iPhone Calendar and a To-Do function that will sync seamlessly with both. The most natural thing would be for Apple to include To-Do creation in the iPhone Calendar app with full sync capability with iCal. I find it shocking that Apple hasn't written for this.
There are nice applications out there such as Pocket Informant that integrates a beautiful (and much more powerful calendaring function) with a To-Do function within the same application, but they have no ability to sync with iCal, nor do they have a desktop version of their software.
If anyone has any ideas on this, or advice on the best way to integrate iCal, To-Do's and the iPhone Calendar, please let me know. In the meantime, I will post feedback to the Apple developers with a seemingly obvious enhancement request.
Message was edited by: macorin

Answer 1

With all due respect, I completely disagree with you. Integrating To-Do's and calendar events is a very natural way of organizing things. There is an app called Pocket Informant which does a very nice job in integrating the two. Even Apple thinks they are (and could be related), or else why even include to-do's in iCal to begin with? You see, it is as if they went half way in their effort. They provide something because they think it could be a good idea, but then they put no time or effort into actually making it useful for the end user. The fact that to-do's and notes show up in mail is also pointless. Why do I need mail to see my to-do's on my computer when I could just look in iCal, which is where they were created in the first place.
Omni focus is a very powerful app. I just think that it is way overkill. What good is an app that helps you get things done, when using it actually impedes getting those things done? It literally takes so much time and effort to work with Omni (if you really want to use it correctly), that you don't have any time left over for the things you need to get done.
And by the way, don't talk about hourly rates when you use words like "Gentlements", "prolly" (for, I am assuming probably", "proccess" (there is one c) "offence" (it is offense, unless you are from the UK, which I am assuming you are not), to name a few. Anyway, spelling aside, you shouldn't really be judging what people make based on whether someone thinks an app is expensive. The fact is, Omni focus happens to be very expensive. I am not saying that it is not worth it. In fact, I really don't know. I know that it is powerful, but for someone looking for a simple way to manage the important tasks in life, Omni is not for everyone, especially when you are spending upwards of $80 when something like Put Things Off (which I like a lot better) costs around $3.