The Omni Show

For our holiday episode we’re joined by Tim Wood, founder and CTO of The Omni Group. Tim talks about serving as a resource, educator, and toolmaker for our dozen-ish engineers.

Tim also talks about Omni’s frameworks, saving the Mac world from Y2K, soccer fandom, and pottery.

You can find Tim on Twitter @tjw.

Note: we’re taking a little break after this episode. The next one is scheduled for January 9.

Happy holidays!

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

Molly Reed, COO — who is, in an alternate universe, your favorite coloratura soprano — joins the show to talk about starting at The Omni Group in her early 20s and helping it thrive in the years since.

She also talks about socks and sandals (don’t do it), solving problems, opera training, being a woman in tech — and about the beguiling Cleopatra the cat. Molly provides this video of Cleo totally trolling Mara the dog.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

This episode was recorded at the Swift by Northwest conference in Portland, on October 19, 2018. It’s a panel discussion with people from outside Omni, and we’re stretching a bit from our usual content — but we think you’ll enjoy it anyway!

Before the panel, your host Brent Simmons emailed the panelists to ask them about things that provoked strong feelings — positive or negative or both — to use as topics. These did not have to be strictly technical topics, and they weren’t.

The panelists:

Kaya Thomas is a writer, iOS developer at Slack, and the creator of We Read Too app, a directory of children’s books written by authors of color and featuring characters of color.

Daniel Jalkut is a blogger, podcaster, and the developer of MarsEdit, a blogging app.

Jaimee Newberry is a writer, speaker, and the CEO of Picture This Clothing, which makes dresses based on hand-drawn and -colored designs — in other words, kids can wear their imaginations.

Note: be prepared — the audio is a bit weird in some spots, since it comes from a live recording and Brent is walking around the room. We apologize for that.

Also: thanks so much to the conference organizers — the Klein family — for inviting us!

For this special episode we’re joined by Ken Case, CEO; Grayson West, Design Manager; Chris Pruitt, Web Developer; and Mike Davies, Devops Engineer and Guru. We talk about the nine-year-long history of OmniFocus for the Web and how we’re building it.

Issues include front-end design, encryption and security, running Objective-C and Swift code on our servers, and writing portions in Python and in React.

This show will answer the question, “Is The Omni Group running user-interface-less versions of OmniFocus on some Mac servers?”

You can sign up to help test OmniFocus for the Web, if you haven’t already. And you can read more about it in our 2018 roadmap.

Rey Worthington — software developer, rock climber, cat enjoyer — talks about bringing Mojave Dark Mode support to OmniGraffle and OmniPlan.

She also talks about how to make NSPredicateEditor look right on a sheet. And about growing up in the “Texas of California,” going to school at University of Pacific, and making her way to The Omni Group via meeting the folks at their Macworld Expo booth.

Then we talk about climbing, and about (most importantly, of course!) her cats, Spark and Blaze.

You can find Rey on Twitter @nothe.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

Michelle Knee — tester, game player, wrangler of ragdoll cats — talks about testing all of Omni’s many websites, including OmniFocus for the Web.

Michelle also talks about the special challenges in testing websites: defeating browser caching, the problem children (iPhone SE and iPhone 8 Plus), responsive design mode bugs, and testing on multiple operating systems.

Then we talk about games. And Hawaii. And mystery knit-alongs. And — most critically — her cats Calvin and Hobbes.

You can find Michelle on Twitter @mec2973 and on Micro.blog.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group, Dave Messent, OmniFocus Product Manager, and Joel Page, User Experience Designer, join the show for a special episode to celebrate the launch of OmniFocus 3 for Mac and to talk about its new design.

The early OmniFocus 3 for Mac designs are kind of like a concept car — futuristic, interesting, beautiful, but not necessarily something you could actually drive.

We talk about going from those early designs to the app that actually ships, and we talk about the various parts of the app, how they changed and why.

You can find Ken Case at The Omni Group and @kcase on Twitter. You can find Dave Messent @dmessent on Twitter.

To hear more about new features in the app, listen to the previous episode OmniFocus 3 for Mac: New Features.

Grayson West — who just might be a superhero (you can tell by the name) — manages design, the website, and marketing at Omni from his headquarters on the fourth floor, high above Lake Union.

Grayson started as a graphic designer at Omni 15 years ago and moved into management four years ago. In his youth he was an international bicycle racer, and lately he’s become a CrossFit trainer and kiteboarder.

And — most importantly! — he’s a cat person.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group, and Dave Messent, OmniFocus product manager, join the show for a special episode to talk about OmniFocus 3 for Mac and how it’s gaining new features that first appeared in OmniFocus 3 for iOS.

Some of these new features include tags, fancy repeating tasks, the Forecast tag, and enhanced custom perspectives.

We also talk about features that were not brought over to the Mac — since they were already there. But then some of those things were improved. :)

You can find Ken Case at The Omni Group and @kcase on Twitter. You can find Dave Messent @dmessent on Twitter.

For more about OmniFocus 3 for Mac, read the Omni Roadmap 2018 — particularly the second half, which concentrates on OmniFocus — and listen to a previous episode of the show where Ken Case talks about the roadmap.

Like any other workplace, Omni has a few subcultures — knitters, rock climbers, dog fanciers — but none of them involve quite as much rum, kitsch, and straight-up chillin’ as Tiki.

Mark Boszko, Aaron Cherof, and Evan McNulty — roughly half of Omni Team Tiki — talk about their zest for fruity drinks and for the whole surrounding show. We talk about the décor from a lost world that never existed anyway. We talk about the fancy and sometimes secret ingredients. And the vibe. And the volcanos.

You can find Mark’s Tiki bar on the web at Kilauea.co, and on Twitter and Instagram @KilaueaCove. You can find Evan on Twitter @theevanshow. You can find Aaron on Twitter @cherof, and you can find his music at cherof.com, cherof.bandcamp.com, Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned: