Category: Productivity

You by no doubt know that I am a self proclaimed to-do list junky in search of the perfect task management app for each of my devices.  Recently, I had become somewhat irritated with my previous favorite app, Taska.  Don’t get me wrong, Taska is every bit as awesome as I had originally found it.  It was just getting too time consuming entering in tasks.  So with the last of my iTunes card, I purchased Sorted.  Money well worth spent.  Allow me to share why.

Sorted is a straight forward todo list manager with the quickest of entry methods.  Unlike the majority of offerings in the App Store that model themselves after the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology – which to me is far too complicated for on the go productivity – Sorted breaks the norm with a very “Apple” approach.  The famous line of “it just works” comes to mind.

Once you download Sorted, a main screen that resembles the ones in Apples own Pages, Numbers and Keynote appears.  Sorted provides a sample list which helps you become acclimated to the apps behavior and features.  After clearing the start up list and learning the very simple input methods, you can either delete the list or leave it as reference.  Though this was extremely helpful and I fully support the “this is how you do this” feature, I could imagine a help page might save a bit of time for some users.

That night I began to assemble my various lists; one for work, one for band, one for home, and one for groceries.  Right off the bat, I found my lists growing at an incredible speed thanks to the ingenious use of the Return key.  In Sorted, when you are entering a task, you can simply tap Return and have another task entry created.  This really sped things up at work when I found the need to add a new incident or task while out and about.  There was no separate edit screen or view, just an inline entry right under the last task – just like you would write on a pad of paper.  No bloated features like tags, context, etc.  Finally, simplicity obtained.

There are four sorting options (or views if you will) that you can have your list displayed in.  The List view simply shows the tasks as you have entered them.  Priority sorts the tasks from Urgent to Important to Flag based on the tasks priority level.  Date will show the tasks according to the due date.  Lastly, you can view the tasks you have completed by clicking on the Completed button.

As you will also know, I adore crafty and well thought out User Interfaces.  Sorted has that covered.  It feels like Apple developed the entire application.  From the main screen of lists, down to the entry flow, Sorted sports the crisp and shine that blends naturally with the iPad itself.  The app operates in both landscape and portrait orientations, however I occasionally experienced a minor bug when switching from either where the Notes icon would overlap the manual sort icon when in List view.  I spoke with the developer and was assured they had a fix currently in review by Apple.  I love it when the developers are quick and responsive!

Sorted is so close to perfect, I almost don’t want to request features for it.  Yet, there are still a few minor requests that I personally would like to see implemented.  The first of which is a badge icon option that could show either the Urgent task count or all tasks.  This really would be nice to have, but I don’t think it breaks the deal.  However, the second feature I envisioned was the option to have the task notes displayed in a stylized text beneath the task.  I like the current method where a small icon depicts if the task has notes or a due date, but the pop-over window is the same as if I were to tap on the blue arrow at the left of the task.  The redundancy could be alleviated with a setting to either display notes beneath the task and have the icon on the right removed, or simply show the notes icon as current with a pop-over that just shows the notes box.  Sorted however, even in its current state, has won me over and subdued the urge to look for another to-do solution.

Overall, I am extremely happy with my purchase.  So much so, that it has weaved its way into my daily routine and created a dependency that will be extremely hard to replace.  Whether you are sick and tired of the GTD method or just a person who needs to have a lightening quick interaction with a todo app, Sorted will help you reduce the amount of time you spend thinking about doing stuff and get you on the express lane to productivity bliss.  You will not be let down.