Reminders is built into the current
versions of iOS and OS X. It has one neat trick that none of its rivals can
match: geographical reminders. This makes use of Location Services to pop up a
prompt when you arrive at - or leave - a particular location.
If you're using a Mac (and for obvious
reasons this is really only relevant to MacBook users), it does this through OS
X by looking up local Wi-Fi networks - those visible to your system, regardless
of whether you've ever attempted to connect to them - against a database
maintained by Apple. This relies on Location Services being enabled in System
Preferences, so if you can't get location-based reminders to work, check that
setting. If you're on an iPhone or an iPad 3G or Cellular, it uses the built-in
GPS, augmented by network triangulation. (Again, you may need to enable this in
Settings > General > Restrictions).
Not only does this work on both platforms,
but it also works between them. So you can set a reminder in the Reminders app
on your Mac that you need to pick up some stamps next time you're passing the
post office, and next time you're passing the post office an alert will pop up
on your iPhone.
Of course. Reminders also support regular
time-based alerts if you prefer to organize your tasks by time rather than
place. Synchronization works via your iCIoud account, which is free, and
naturally works in both directions, so tasks tapped in on your iPhone will be
waiting on your Mac when you get home.
Reminders doesn't provide the quick entry
or daily review features of Things, but it does come with rudimentary project
management in the form of lists, and you can add notes to flesh out a task. You
might want to remind yourself in a note, for example, that you need to drag
some files into a particular folder before performing your preset backup task.
Location-based
reminders As well as regular time-based alerts, Reminders lets you set a prompt
to be displayed when your MacBook or iOS device detects your arrival at or
departure from a given location
Consistent interface Reminders' compact iOS
version still has all the tools you need to set due dates and file tasks into
different lists
There are also priority options, which let
you order tasks in terms of importance. But there's no support for tags, which
in other apps let you gather together similar tasks across the boundaries
between multiple lists or projects.
Beyond its trick of popping up alerts based
on your location - and we wouldn't want to underplay how remarkable a feature
that is - Reminders is still rather a slim offering from Apple, and doesn't add
very much to the Calendar app (or iCal, in previous operating system versions).
It's just as well that it's free for iOS 5 and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion users;
it's not a sufficient reason in itself to persuade anyone on an earlier release
of OS X to upgrade to 10.8. And if you need more functionality than it
provides, well, that's where the other apps on test here come in.
