Accomplice - Still a Beta in the Rough
After my initial first [impressions](http://www.premagination.com/2006/10/15/accomplice-first-impressions) I’ve discovered Accomplice is falling far short of it’s potential. Regardless of what they’re calling it, this is definitely still a beta product. By calling it a beta I give them a chance to make it better, the other names I might choose are less constructive. Of course, if Accomplice didn’t have such big potential, and didn’t already do many things so right, I wouldn’t be so frustrated and I could just bin it and move on. Here’s the list of issues so far…
* Google AdWords in the middle of my screen!?! You’ve got to be kidding me! At least it’s possible to minimize them.
* No control or shift select of multiple activies/tasks.
* In indented view, can’t sort by due date without reverting to list view. In fact, you can’t sort by anything, it has to be done manually one task at a time.
* Task notes aren’t imported from Outlook. (Big problem, that’s where I put the assignment specifics for all my school tasks)
* Task notes in Accomplice aren’t exported to Outlook. (So how can I access them on my Axim while at school?)
* Categories aren’t imported/exported from Outlook. This fubars everything on my Axim, as my entire GTD organization scheme is based around categories.
* If you drag’n'drop a task under another task (making it a sub-task) the position you dragged it is ignored and instead it’s inserted at the end of the list.
* The task list is scrolled so that the LAST item in the list is display at the TOP of the screen, every time a new filter/view is applied. Frustrating and annoying.
* Every other Task line should have a different background color (like grey) but doesn’t.
* Select a parent task and use Ctrl-N to create a new task, this new task should be created as a sub-task but isn’t.
* Mouse wheel works hapzardly while scrolling through task list. (Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, depending on what has focus. While this may be technically correct it’s still a usability glitch.)
* Outlook synchronization is not automatic, manual only! (I want immediate and transparent synchronization.)
* A couple duplicate tasks were created in Outlook, from tasks I didn’t even edit in Accomplice.
* An “On My Plate” category was created in Outlook. As my categories are very specifically and precisely defined for GTD, this definitely gets in the way.
In conclusion, Accomplice isn’t usable for me right now. Which is a huge dissapointment, because I *__really__ want it to work*. All the parts that do work are just what I’d like, are just how I’d design them if I thought about it enough. My conclusion? Uninstall for now but keep a **close** eye out for new releases. I’ll also see if I can get anyone at the company to address the issues in this post.
UPDATE: While editing this post I was informed of a new release of Accomplice, 1.2.1, which I will be immediately installing and testing.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Jason Feinsmith October 19th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Hi. I’m not sure how we stumbled on your writeup here, but I want to commend you on your astute observations: 1) about how important and prevalent the market opportunity for our product is, and 2) about the usability issues that we can improve on. I also appreciate your personal passion for this.
While there are lots of little things we can do to add up to a better and better experience, I think you would be amazed at how many users try Accomplice and stick with it today. This is simply because the need is so prevalent and there is nothing else out there that is sufficient to address the full personal needs of activity management - and we believe, based on feedback from lots of users, that we have done a lot of things right so far. We also have clear ideas, again based on customer feedback, on what things will make Accomplice have an even higher “sticky” rate as we develop the product further.
Again, I want to commend you - you’ve nailed several things others have asked us to improve. It’s very constructive feedback which we value.
A few comments that I hope will help…
- We sync to Outlook mostly so that PDA users can sync bidirectionally to/from their Blackberry/Treo/Windows Mobile, etc. to/from Accomplice. The idea is that Accomplice is a much richer application for task management than the Outlook Tasks component, so we are going to focus our developments in other areas that will provide more value, rather than make the Outlook tasks sync be a perfect Utopia.
- The duplicates in your tasks is fixed in release 1.2.1. Please upgrade to that to prevent the issue from recurring.
- To subtask, instead of Ctrl-N, try Ctrl-Enter. Also to create a peer level task, hit Ctrl-Shift. See help (http://www.accomplice.com/help/hs167.htm ) for more shortcuts.
- The ads: if you don’t like them, customers can upgrade to Professional be able to turn them on and off at an early-bird discount of $29.95. This also gives you all the advanced features that we’ll be including in the Professional over the next year, and there’s a lot coming! That said, we have actually had a lot of people tell us they really like the sponsored links because they are often relevant and helpful, and in a way, just cool. Opinions here will certainly vary, but our studies have shown the vast majority of people are quite comfortable, and many even happy with the ads - they are intentionally unobtrusive, text only, designed to be helpful resources, and since we don’t use cookies, and for other reasons, protect your privacy.
- A surprising number of the things you mentioned are on our short and medium term roadmap. We look forward to making Accomplice better and better.
Sincerely,
Jason, CEO, Accomplice