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There's a trend these last few years to launch cross-platform todo apps with non-standard backends. It's really a PITA. I've been using CalDAV / icalendar for

There's a trend these last few years to launch cross-platform todo apps with non-standard backends. It's really a PITA. I've been using CalDAV / icalendar for my todos and it works great. I actually wrote my own small app to do this via cli (todoman), months later got an iPhone, and guess what? iOS actually supports CalDAV out of the box. All my todos worked on a brand-new device, with no forward planning, because I just followed an IETF spec. Meanwhile, half a dozen companies (eg: todoist) have been working on their own non-standard reimplementation, and it bugs me greatly. Why are we so quickly moving away from standards that work really well?

zuron7 10y ago
+1 to this. I use CalDAV and Google Calendar for an online version. It's funny how they support these standards but always tend to bury them in the feautures.
- hobarrera 9y ago
  Google's CalDAV implementation does not expose todos/reminders. Trying to upload one results in an error. Are you sure it's not just events, and not todos (CalDAV does both, as per the original spec). Google's CalDAV auth is also VERY user unfriendly. FLOSS apps are not allowed to include API tokens, so end-users have to sign up as google developers, and get their own API keys, which immediately kills UX.
walterbell 10y ago
A plug for 2Do (http://2doapp.com http://2doapp.com, iOS/Mac/Android) which supports CalDav and scraping your IMAP email for keywords that trigger todo item creation. It has reliable sync with 3rd-party CalDav servers, including self-hosted. The developer is super-responsive.
- hobarrera 9y ago
  Cool! I wish that using standard protocols/formats was more the norm than an exception.
remir 10y ago
These companies want to lock you in. It's that simple.
mpweiher 10y ago
That may be a trend, but we actually moved away from the purely proprietary Wunderlist backend to Exchange. Which, while technically also "proprietary", has several public APIs, isn't going anywhere and is supported on all major platforms. So my To-Do items also show up on my Mac in BusyCal (or Reminders, Outlook, etc.), I can enter new To-Dos using Siri etc.
- hobarrera 9y ago
  There's a difference between having "a single standard", and having "a few popular ones" (which Exchange contributes to). The big downside it that apps still need to either support two protocols, or live inside on of two bubbles. I really with Exchange would adopt IETF standards (but I guess that's not in their best interest).

zuron7 10y ago

+1 to this. I use CalDAV and Google Calendar for an online version. It's funny how they support these standards but always tend to bury them in the feautures.

hobarrera 9y ago
Google's CalDAV implementation does not expose todos/reminders. Trying to upload one results in an error. Are you sure it's not just events, and not todos (CalDAV does both, as per the original spec). Google's CalDAV auth is also VERY user unfriendly. FLOSS apps are not allowed to include API tokens, so end-users have to sign up as google developers, and get their own API keys, which immediately kills UX.

walterbell 10y ago

A plug for 2Do (http://2doapp.com http://2doapp.com, iOS/Mac/Android) which supports CalDav and scraping your IMAP email for keywords that trigger todo item creation. It has reliable sync with 3rd-party CalDav servers, including self-hosted. The developer is super-responsive.

hobarrera 9y ago
Cool! I wish that using standard protocols/formats was more the norm than an exception.

remir 10y ago

These companies want to lock you in. It's that simple.

mpweiher 10y ago

That may be a trend, but we actually moved away from the purely proprietary Wunderlist backend to Exchange. Which, while technically also "proprietary", has several public APIs, isn't going anywhere and is supported on all major platforms. So my To-Do items also show up on my Mac in BusyCal (or Reminders, Outlook, etc.), I can enter new To-Dos using Siri etc.

hobarrera 9y ago
There's a difference between having "a single standard", and having "a few popular ones" (which Exchange contributes to). The big downside it that apps still need to either support two protocols, or live inside on of two bubbles. I really with Exchange would adopt IETF standards (but I guess that's not in their best interest).