Rick Stawarz’s story of switching from Things to OmniFocus back in 2010 and then switching back again a few weeks ago:

During my three-year affair with OmniFocus, Things had grown up quite a bit. It finally gained cloud sync and a couple other powerful features.

It’s hard not to pit these two apps against one another because in they’re the two kings of the to-do list hill when it comes to powerful, feature rich, well-designed task apps for the Mac.

And, Rick does a good job at comparing them without claiming one is better than the other, or vice versa. Because one isn’t better than the other — they are both good, they’re just different.

Personally, I love the look of Things as well as Things’ OTA sync, which, though late to the game, is incredibly well done. Also, the scrolling date picker within Things on the iPhone is one of the best and easiest-to-use date picker designs period — Apple themselves should adapt its design.

But I’m an OmniFocus user not so much because I’m a “power user to-do guru”, but because I’ve become too hooked on the Forecast and Review modes of OmniFocus, and the new-ish Mail Drop feature. Also, I use OmniFocus on my iPad a lot, and arguably the iPad version is the best of the 3-app suite. Whereas with Things, the iPad version is arguably the worst of their 3-app suite.

While OmniFocus certainly serves well the “extreme power user” it also has some great features which still suite the more casual user as well. You don’t have to be hardcore to use OmniFocus (though it helps).

Migrating from Things to OmniFocus and Back to Things