I think RTM (remember the milk) is considered GTD approved. I am not sure if it qualifies as a full PM app though. would love to hear some review comments of the apps you tested.
My main running test was Astrid. I combined that with a Remember the Milk account and Google Gears to give me a desktop window. So rating criteria in 1-5 of desirablitiy, 1 being highest, against competence/my opinion of how it works (this giving a desirablitly/competence rating) it has:
- online syncing (2/2) - Syncing does not actually put tasks in different RTM lists, it mearly gives them the lists tags. Other than that, good stuff.
- computer desktop syncing (3/2) - Same as above.
- phone widget (2/2) - good widget too. A quarter screen widget that can either add or go to tasks. Could do with having an option for a full screen widget when your projects/tasks start getting numerous.
- different forms of notifications (1/1). Notification bar. Alarm. No alarm. Most irritating alarm imaginable. Snooze. Ignore feature. Gentle reminders. Great stuff.
- UI (1/1) - Clean, colourful. Black background (as I prefer).
- tasks (1/3) - For most people I think it'll be great. But I could do with adding them in different categories rather than adding simple tags (that you can't sort by!!!). Some advanced features would be the ability to add more than just notes to tasks. E.g. voice memos, images, documents, links, contacts, etc. Also a big minus, no sub-tasks. For project management, this is difficult to stomach.
The lack of abiliity to sort manually or according to tag literally immediately got me searching for a new app after a few weeks of using it. As soon as life starts getting more complicated, this will be an issue.
Openloopz
Didn't use it that much. It fell down at a clunky UI which didn't show me the infor I wanted within the first few screens.
No syncing.
No subtasks.
No UI colour (that I can remember).
I quickly moved on.
GOALS ToDo
Probably the closest thing to a real project manager that I've come across.
- online syncing (2/5) - Doesn't do it.
- computer desktop syncing (3/5) - Doesn't do this either.
- projects backup to SD (1/?) - Compensates for the lack of the above two with this feature which becomes very important. I can't rate it because I haven't tried it yet. And you can only really grade backup ability once you've done it AND restored it AND checked it.
- phone widget (2/3) - Not as good as Astrid's, but it does update like Astrid and take you to making a new action when you tap on it.
- UI (1/3) - This one is a contentious piece. It's quite a detailed app. And I thank them for it. But the UI is not as fluent as it can be. It may well frustrate some people who do not spend time learning it. It doesn't frustrate me but I can definitely see that it can be more obvious and cleaner without loosing any functionality.
- tasks (1/2) - Then only thing that stops it getting a 1 is there are no subtasks, or in Goals ToDo, subactions. But on the positive, it does things that none of the others do. You can set actions to done, waiting for, cancelled, paused, you can even set action that are "maybe I will, maybe I won't" and they go in a special area of possible aspirations. lol. You can manually order actions so that when you look at your next actions list, you only see the next action per project rather than everything. It has a feature where you can add up all the estimated time scales of all actions to see how long a project is estimated to take. You can't add memos and images, or other file types, but you can add notes and contacts.
GOALS ToDo is quite good so far.
As I am a Google user, I would want most of my apps to have some integration with Google calendar and/or other apps. Astrid and RTM are good like that. Goals ToDo is not as good but not bad.
Any specific questions, let me know.
