Applications that allow users to create and manage to-do lists are certainly in no short supply on mobile devices. Sadly, many of these devices are either frustratingly complicated to use, have clunky user interfaces, or both. Technophiles, mobile junkies, and busybodies are continually on the hunt for the definitive task manager for their smart devices.
Users of Apple’s iOS may just have found that application in Realmac Software’s Clear, a simple productivity management application which launched exclusively on iPhone devices back on Valentines Day. Clear is an incredibly simple and intuitive iPhone application, with no on-screen buttons to muck up the user experience. Instead, Clear users pinch and swipe their way through a minimalist task list to manage the to-dos of the day.
Dates and times are nowhere to be found in Clear, replaced by a color-coded “heat map” which ranks tasks on the list in order of priority. Since most of us are visually-oriented anyway, arranging tasks in this manner makes sense and naturally appeals to us.
Clear is a collaborative project, with Realmac Software, software studio Impending, and engineer/programmer Milen Dzhumerov jointly working on the project. User adoption of Clear has been phenomenal, with the £0.69 ($0.99 USD) application selling over 350,000 copies and netting the UK development team a cool £169,000 (approximately $268,000 USD). We think it’s a very visually-stunning app but do wish it had a bit more functionality like being able to sync to-do lists and set reminders. I know those are probably coming, so we can just try to be happy that it nailed its goal of being a simple, gorgeous to-do list before we complain too much.
The team behind Clear is certainly not resting on its laurels and it will be re-tooling Clear for the iPad and computers running Mac OSX, in addition to pending updates for the iPhone. The team didn’t rule out releasing a version of Clear for Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone platforms but those updates would come after Clear was out for the iPad and OSX platforms.
If you own an iPhone and have the need for a To-Do manager (and, frankly, who doesn’t need a task manager?), Clear is certainly worth giving a serious look. And, at £0.69/$0.99, it definitely won’t break the bank.
[Via The Guardian; Image from Gizmodo]