Remember The Milk – App

Remember the Milk is my go to webapp for an advanced to-do list.  Supporting easy entries like: “Go grocery shopping tomorrow at noon”, RTM is about as easy as it gets while being one of the most powerful productivity managers out there.

I used the RTM app for my Blackberry in a previous life and loved it, so naturally, when I moved over to the Evil Empire’s phone, I wanted to bring my to-do list with me.  it was even more important to find a to-do list app since Apple didn’t deem it necessary to include with the platform (you know, they cannot figure out how to integrate a to-do application, even if they got it right in 1989).

Full review and more screen-shots after the break.

As always, lets start off with the official spiel:

Key Features:

• An intuitive interface, available in 18 languages, makes managing tasks fun.
• Sync seamlessly with Remember The Milk (access tasks at www.rememberthemilk.com too).
• Work offline and auto sync when an Internet connection is available.

Task Features:

• Full-featured, with all the fields you need: task name, list, priority, due date/time, repeat, time estimate, tags, location, and URL.
• Organize efficiently by list, Smart List, tag, or location and prioritize your tasks.
• See at a glance how many tasks are due today, tomorrow, and this week.
• Quickly switch between your incomplete and complete tasks.
• Sort by priority, due date, or task name.

Action Features:

• Add and edit tasks with a few taps, and swipe to complete tasks quickly.
• Complete or postpone multiple tasks at once with a special edit mode.
• Save time with add by context: tasks added to your today list will be due today, while tasks added to Smart Lists inherit their criteria.

Note Features:

• Store additional info about tasks in notes for quick reference.
• Email addresses and links conveniently auto-link to Mail and Safari.
• Phone numbers auto-link for handy one-touch calling (iPhone only).

Location Features:

• Detect your current location to see nearby tasks due today, this week, or any time; plan the best way to get things done.
• Add your current location, or search by address to record new locations.

Search Features:

• Powerful search makes it easy to find tasks; supports multiple criteria searches.
• Save your searches as Smart Lists to easily see tasks that match your desired criteria (similar to Smart Playlists in iTunes).

Reminder Features:

• Get reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger (AIM/iChat, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN/Windows Live, Skype, and Yahoo!). Set up via the website; see www.rmilk.com/reminders

Bonus Features:

• Customize icons in the tab bar for quick access to your favorite features.
• Landscape mode; type with a larger keyboard.
• Full management of lists, Smart Lists, tags, and locations.
• The RTM service integrates with iCal, OS X Dashboard, Gmail, Google Calendar, Twitter, and more. See www.rmilk.com/services

For starters, let me evaluate the app pretending I’ve never used the RTM services for other platforms (as that’s how many of you will come to this app).

Firstly, even though this is free at the app store, it’s an evaluation copy, as to use it for longer than 15 days you need to become a Pro Member of RTM.  This costs about $25/year.  This makes it one of the most expensive apps I have purchased (or rather leased for a year).

RTM is ultra powerful as a task manager as you can see with the wall of text above.  This can make things a tid-bit confusing if all you want is an ordered list.  If, on the other hand, you are interested in being as uber-organized as you possibly can be, RTM provides pretty much everything I can imagine ever wanting.

Some features, for example the locaiton aware list, is not as useful as you might imagine when you combine it with Apple’s SDK limitations.  As apps cannot run in the background, RTM has no way of updating your current location so it can send you a push notification (or even update the app badge), when you change locations.

As a standalone task manager, RTM is almost as powerful as their webapp is, and when you combine the two ways of accessing the service, provides a wonderful experience for the super organized.

As with all software, there are bugs however.  The ones I have encountered are; I have a daily reoccurring task, that whenever I “complete” the task, the app crashes to the springboard.  I have to go to my computer to complete this task.  Lastly, the app badge rarely actually reads how many uncompleted tasks I have if I let it sit unopened for any  length of time, 2 become 28 and so on within a day (weekends and such I rarely use the service).

All in all, the service can be worth it, though I’m not sure I will continue my Pro status next year as the price is a bit beyond what you receive with this application.

Obligatory ratings

Screenshots

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If you need to get organized badly and want to give this a try for the 15 day evaluation, head on over to to download it.