At first I thought omnifocus was overkill but the more I am using it the more I find those “extra” features incredibly useful.

Thanks for the update in the deletion. Good to know.

The option I was most excited about was Things — it has a lot of power but because it uses tagging it comes off looking much simpler and cleaner. Currently, there is no way to integrate the iPhone and desktop applications but that should be possible within the next week or so. Unfortunately that won’t work for me because, unlike omnifocus and todo, there is no way currently to input a phone number or an address and have that directly access the telephone or mapping feature. Those are “must haves” for me.

Bill-
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to take a look at PCalc.

Christopher-
Thanks for the suggestions I’m looking at all three over the next few days.

I too am knocked out by some of the applications and the creativity that developers are bringing to their work. Increasingly, however, I’m finding that applications tend to break down into one of two camps. On the one hand there is “Wow!” And on the other hand there is “You’ve got to be kidding me?” Among the core reasons for a starting the website was to have the opportunity to help people sort through those two camps and only focus on the former.

Judy — am I up for it? Heck yeah.

My issues with projects disappearing on the iPhone was partly my error and (imho) partly a weird user interface design.

Turns out you can go to the home, settings, projects and then select “show all” and you will indeed see even tasks which you have market completed.

Don’t ask me how or at what point these tasks would be purged (I think there is a clean up utility).

I’m deciding to hang in there with OmniFocus because I believe it may have the best mix of features. The learning curve is steep and the UI is a tad confusing. I’m betting it will be worth it.

If the Pandora project ends, I too will miss it. I love Pandora even though it occasionally brings up a song that makes me go “what is that about?” or “why did it pick that?”

For “time killing” I am also running a few games: Platinum Solitaire, Scrabble, and GTS World Racing, among others.

Overall, I am very pleased with the quality of iPhone applications, and I’m impressed with the way some developers have taken advantage of the hardware features of the phone. Scrabble makes use of the pinch zoom (multitouch) functionality, GTS WOrld racer, the accelerometer, for example. eReader allows you to properly “swipe” pages (unlike the attempted swiping found on devices with non-capacitive screens). Overall the effect is that even simple iPhone apps seem highly polished. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

I totally agree that a weekly summary would be awesome; are you up for it, Dan?

I am desperately trying to love OmniFocus. The sync ability through MobileMe (which for $99/yr I do find worthwhile despite it’s rocky start – and I predict it will be a hit) is really cool. I mean really. It’s great to have an updated list on both the iPhone and desktop.

The main problem I’ve had with OmniFocus is it’s too damn easy to delete stuff.

Example:

I took off for vacation on Saturday. I put the list of things to pack for the kids in my OmniFocus on the iPhone. I had created a separate projects. For some bizarre reason if you click the project to indicate that is done — the entire contents of the project folder are removed/labeled done.

You have zero opportunity to undo — and I did not find a way to remove the items from any “trash” ares on the iPhone.

I found this WAY unacceptable for such a complex application that is sold to diehard GTD (Getting Things Done) followers.

The desktop application has a very similar issue — using the backspace (which I realize may partly be a Mac shortcut issue as well) can very quickly and unintentionally get rid of lots of data.

In short I’d really hate to have anything complex or vital to my company setup in OmniFocus and then accidentally delete it.

I’m on the fence as to whether I can trust this application and whether I can keep using it. The cost in the App Store isn’t cheap either – $19.95 — plus to REALLY use it you need the desktop app for another $80.

PS – I would love to see a weekly summary of the best of the app store items.