Welcome to Microsoft To-Do | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to Microsoft To-Do

todo.microsoft.com

16 pointsJaruzel12 comments

I'm not sure why you linked to this, but it like most to-do apps is far too simple. If I have a to-do to load my laundry, why can't it trigger a timer to remind me in 30 minutes to switch to the dryer, and then once that's marked as done another timer to take it out of the dryer?

So many to-do apps, I don't think one has solid conditional tasks or robust scheduling (repeat on 1st Monday after 60 days has passed, etc).

Todoist is the "closest" I could get to what you are describing, but frankly it is NOT even close,

Omnifocus sounds like it might do what you want, but it is (IMO) very complicated.

I linked to this because a) it's new to me, and b) I value HNs view on things :)

I've been using Microsoft To-Do since the earliest pre-release versions. It's…ok. It's by the folks behind Wunderlist, which Microsoft bought, but it's lacking some power user features that made Wunderlist stand out.

I'm actually thinking of going back to a paper planner. It's a lot easier to grab a pen and add something to a list than type it into a todo list, set a reminder time, etc.

There are so many To-Do applications/services/features out there. I guess I'm not surprised by MS breaking into the scene, but I have to ask the age old question. How many engineers at MS are just standing around where they can waste time on products like these which probably won't be around in two years time.

This To-Do application started as an acquisition by Microsoft (was formerly Wunderlist), and is a part of Microsoft's ongoing work to modernize their Personal Information Management (PIM) ecosystem [read: Outlook] for "mobile first" by acquiring interesting sub-components (the modern Windows Mail and Windows Calendar were both begun as acquisitions as well).

It interoperates with Exchange's Task items and is expected to be Office 365 "blessed" soon enough.

The introductory video says the app will "intelligently prioritize" your tasks for you... that sounds like a very frustrating feature to have as a user.

Either I am missing something hidden in plain sight or or maybe deep design knowledge is required to understand why Microsoft killed (is going to kill) an excellent Todo app and to replace it wrote another app, clearly inferior, from scratch which turned out to be "okay" at best.

I mean they could rebranded the app if they did have to call it Microsoft To-Do; and maybe changed the colours and all.

This should just be a part of Windows like Reminders is for macOS... We already have Microsoft accounts; it seems a bit disconnected from users to not just include something like this.

I wouldn't be surprised if it does get a default install in Windows 10 eventually, similar to its relatives Mail and Calendar.

Where's the API?

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