TaskMaster Looks Great, But Fails To Deliver
TaskMaster - Easy Todo Manager ($2.99) by AS apps appears to be a beautiful task manager for your iPhone.
It seems that the iPhone never has enough todo apps in the App Store. I love finding new task apps that look good, so TaskMaster immediately caught my eye. However, it seems that TaskMaster still has a lot of kinks that need to be ironed out before it can be used regularly.
When TaskMaster is first opened, you’ll be prompted with the app settings. With these settings, you’ll be asked to toggle synchronization through Dropbox, and whether it’s enabled, automatic, and triggered by shaking. Once you make your decisions, you will have to exit the app and go to your device Settings to change anything, which I always find cumbersome and rather unintuitive.
After you get the app settings done, you’re taken right to the main screen of TaskMaster. Here, the tasks will be split up into three categories: All Tasks, Someday, and Completed. At the top left, you can create categories for your tasks and color code them. To add a new task, just tap on the “+” button in the corner.
When you add a new task, the keyboard will immediately pop up for you to enter in the name of your task. At the top is a light yellow-colored bar that will allow you to set the priority (one to three bars), and see the status of "Uncompleted." I kid you not; it is actually spelled "uncomplete," when the correct term is "incomplete." I also find the entire option to mark a task as complete or incomplete when creating the task to be unnecessary and useless; if you're adding the task, of course it's going to be incomplete, why else are you adding it? Personally, I just find this to make no sense at all.
The other bits of information that you can fill out for a new task are category (you can also add new ones if you didn’t already make them), due date and time, an alarm to remind you, and whether a task repeats or not. If you have additional details about the task, fill it in with the Note section. The last part for creating a new task is the attachment. In regard to the due date and time, you can also have a task be set for someday (no due date) or even all day.
With the attachment feature, you can add an image or a URL. The image can be taken with the camera or imported from your Photo Library. Adding a URL will take you to a screen to input the link, of which you will see a live preview generated underneath. A preview of an image will be shown here as well. Tasks can have multiple attachments, which is pretty nice.
Once you’re done setting it up, hit “Done” and it will be saved and take you back to the main screen. Your tasks will be organized by due date in All Tasks, and you can see the category by the colored corner on each task, that is, if you assigned a category to it. If there are any attachments, you’ll see them listed underneath the task name. When you complete a task, simply tap on the checkbox and it will move to the Completed section.
There’s a search feature that allows you to search your tasks in real time. It will go through task name and category, though it doesn’t appear to go through notes or attachments, which I find to be a letdown. If you cancel the search, it appears that all your tasks are gone, but you just have to go back to the Categories and hit “Done,” and then your tasks are back. It appears to be a glitch.
TaskMaster could have been a good todo app. However, I’m fairly disappointed in it. The main interface (list of your tasks) is beautiful, but not so much for the new task input. I also get text like “Vyberte barvu” rather than “Choose the color” (as it appears in App Store screenshots) when creating a new category. I’m not sure why this is, as the rest of the app appears to be in English. Some text appeared blurry on a Retina display as well (like when you first open the app), which irked me. Consistency would certainly be nice. I also had the issue of some tasks not being saved after I entered them, and the app crashed several times (mostly after trying to add attachments).
There’s also no way to manually sync your tasks besides shaking (which kind of makes you look weird in public). When the automatic syncing kicks in, there is a sync progress bar that imposes itself near the top of the app, under the woodgrain bar. It’s especially unwelcome when the app decides to sync when you’re trying to search your tasks, as you can no longer see the search bar.
Finally, the lack of having settings in the app itself is just annoying. I should not be forced to go to the device settings to adjust something, especially for a todo app. It’s just counterintuitive.
While TaskMaster certainly looks good on the surface, it’s currently too buggy and inconsistent to be used daily. There are other tasks out there that just do the job better. And with Reminders coming in iOS 5 in a week and a half, there isn’t much need for apps such as this one.
