The response we got on the release of Steps, on the App Store, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, has been great. It is exciting and encouraging, because it means we have done a couple of things right. Your enthusiasm and your criticism is really making us happy, and helping us to understand your needs.
When you use Steps first time, it will explain itself and it is very easy to learn. But if you would like to learn more details about how things work, we have set up a page that lists all functions available in the current version of Steps. Keep in mind, we are planning on more features, while keeping Steps elegant and simple.
There have been a couple of questions we haven’t talked about yet. Some people thought there are no badges, but there are. Or Web syncing, or how iCloud syncing actually works.
How Badges Work
Many list apps use badges to indicate how many tasks are open. Or they show how many tasks are due, be it today, next week or in a year. Some of these apps have complex settings to adjust what a badge actually means. Getting rid of this confusion was one of the important design decisions we made during the design of Steps.
Badges in Steps work similar like badges in Mail on the iPhone. They show the number of reminders you haven’t responded to. So when a task is due today and it alerts you, there will be a badge on the blue Steps icon, indicating how many tasks are due.
Of course we could have made this badge show how many tasks are open at all times. But that makes the badge not more useful, it makes it more annoying, causing a fatigue effect, just like a full mailbox. The higher the number on that badge, the less you want to open that app.
Web syncing
One of the greatest features of Steps is syncing with Google Tasks. Many people who use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, or are on Google+, don’t even know they have Google Tasks as well. It is accessible over Gmail and Google Calendar.
Steps syncs with the lists you keep in Google Tasks, and that means you have your due tasks automatically showing up on the Google Calendar website.
iCloud Syncing
We use iCloud as a main database repository. What that means is, it doesn’t use iCal, or Apple’s Reminders to store lists and tasks. This was a decision we made early on. iCloud helps Steps to keep different devices in sync, and it acts like a cloud based backup for your content. Syncing with Reminders or other to-do systems may be something we consider to add in the future, but at the moment we have no plans for it.
We have already started working on the next release, to bring you more great and useful features. We want to keep Steps as streamlined as possible, but really integrate it in your daily workflow. It has been a great start and we are looking forward to more of your questions, ideas and suggestions!
By Michael March 4, 2012 - 11:57 pm
Imagine that you open your empty fridge and see like five things you need to buy. You open your amazing Steps app and start making tasks. Currently, after finishing a task, you have to press “Done” and then “+”. It would be both smoother and quicker if it was possible to type “xyz”, then do a swiping motion that would act as those two combined. What do you think?
Considering that I hold my phone in my left hand, the “+” is also a little tricky to reach.
By Damion Berv March 7, 2012 - 8:52 pm
I’d really like to see badges indicate open items for the specific day in question on Steps. The current set up of populating a badge after the event has already passed seems kind of pointless to me; maybe I’m missing something, but aren’t badges supposed to be an additional reminder ahead of time that something is due?
By Henning March 7, 2012 - 10:05 pm
It’s true that many list apps are using badges this way, they indicate how many tasks are open of a given day, or any setting you like. We deliberately followed a different route.
The very idea behind Steps is that you use it to work off the tasks of your day. Several times a day you check your Open list and see the next important task at the top of the list. This is as straight forward and simple as it can be, because you don’t have to go through individual lists to see what is the next most relevant task.
Following this concept, we made the tasks sort by date, so the next upcoming task is always at the top of the Open list. Steps reminds you of this task when you set a due date and time, so at the moment when it reminds you, you will execute this task.
If you didn’t see this reminder, Steps puts a number in the badge to give you an indicator next time you look at the phone: hey, you missed this task you wanted to be reminded of. So that’s what the Steps badge does, it is not designed to steadily remind you of all open tasks, but as an extended help of the reminder you missed.
While other apps have introduced different ways to use badges, we feel this is the least intruding one. A badge that would show how many tasks are open does not really do something, it only gives you a number of your open tasks. What does that change? You still have to open Steps to go through these tasks and whether they are 12 open tasks or 24 does not really make a difference.
A badge that shows you that you missed to see something on your phone, a reminder you didn’t see, is something we found much more useful.
By Damion Berv March 7, 2012 - 11:11 pm
Thanks for the explanation; this makes total sense, and is something I hadn’t thought of before regarding the implementation of badge notifications. Cheers!!
By Gabriel Visser March 12, 2012 - 8:10 am
I think Steps is a beautiful product, but mind explaining why you decided against using iCloud Reminders sync?
You’ve done it for Google Calendar. Having my todo’s across ALL (and I mean my iPad, iPhone and Mac) is essential for me and currently Steps falls short in that regard.
By Henning March 12, 2012 - 8:19 am
I think what you mean is using Apple’s Reminders on iOS for syncing tasks. Reminders for iPhone and iPad (and soon Mac OS) uses the same to-do function it implemented with iCal years ago, when it introduced the app with OS X. Steps is using iCloud as a data backup and storage solution, but it’s a different system than ours.
We chose Google Tasks, because it is integrated with Gmail, the e-mail system with the highest number of users the world. Until we come out with the desktop version of Steps, users have an option to manage their tasks with any browser, in their offices, at school or at home.
We have not decided yet, whether we will at some point implement syncing with Apple’s iCal, or Reminders respectively. But we have plans that go further with Steps, implementing features that both, Google Tasks and Apple’s Reminders, don’t have. Therefore it will be always a limited solution to ensure integration with existing workflows. But it’s not off the table, just not our priority at this point.
By Zhou March 17, 2012 - 3:24 am
Steps has been a great tool on my phone thus far. But may I know when is the version for Mac be released?
By Henning March 17, 2012 - 8:23 am
We have set no date yet.