The Road to the App Store

June 10

What’s up?

Hey All 👋

It’s been a different busy week. WWDC 22 was a happy distraction from the daily grind. Our bet on SwiftUI may have been considered naive but — like every decision we make — it was carefully considered. We felt it’s the future of iOS development. Fortunately Apple agrees.

As far as this week’s feature drop goes, it’s light but there are significant changes. Farid’s past-life (big-tech) calendar was a Tetris puzzle. Same goes for a number of you. Previously, our full-screen Day card was unable to handle it, leading to some funky behaviour. No more! You don’t win awards for table stakes but we’re really happy with this one. Perhaps more importantly was the speed we managed to pull this one off. It’s given us great confidence that there’s no UI problem we can’t — with patience and creativity — solve, even when working with a relatively immature framework.

When it comes to table stakes like above, we know they’re not going to win us any recognition. That said, we’re aware of the need to support as many out of the box. Although resource constraints dictate an inability to 10x each, what we’re aiming for is a more realistic +1. These incremental step ups will hopefully add up to a significant number across the experience.

To see a full list of changes (you can right swipe out of a fullscreen card now!), check out timing.is/change.

Have a great weekend!

Bardi

P.S. if you want to talk product, we’re always open.

What’s improved?

Hero

• If you play Tetris with your calendar everyday, then you’ll notice significant improvements to how we handle conflicts on a Hero Day screen
• Tapping on an Event on a Hero Day should animate smoothly
• You can now swipe from the left edge to collapse the Hero – as per system convention (it may be occasionally unresponsive – for what it’s worth so is Apple’s Calendar – and we’ll look at improving this soon)
• All day events are fixed to the top (and don’t need to be scrolled into view)

Stream

• Event cards for today now have a max height to ensure lengthy events don’t take up too much space resulting in unnecessary scrolling (previously their height was always fixed to their duration)
• If an event that has a start/end date of 00:00, we’ll assume it’s an all-day event (let us know if you think this is not an unreasonable assumption)
• If an event that has a start time of 00:00 and end time of 23:59, we’ll assume it’s an all-day event
• An event spread across two days but not all-day on both will be presented differently than a multi-all-day event

What’s fixed?

Calendar

• Text on selected date will be visible always

Hero

• Tapping on an Event on a Hero Day and then back won’t result in putting the app in a state of funk (things in the wrong place, some no longer scrolling etc.)

June 3

What’s up?

Hey All 👋

Another week, and a lot more additions, improvements and fixes. Although there’s no transformative change in this update, hopefully you’re starting to feel the impact of a ton of incremental improvements. We have bigger things planned – in time!

As much as we want to (and will) innovate, we know for t:m:ng to be a viable calendar alternative, we need to absolutely nail the basics. Speed is critical. We’re studying the established players in the space to make getting things done in t:m:ng preferable. Whether that’s adding something to your calendar,  trying to get a feel for your day etc. you name it and we’ll do it faster/better. That’s the idea anyway.

Another focus after last week’s customer interviews was to prioritise obvious over clever. We’re minimalists but it shouldn’t come at the expense of usability. Our preferences made for optimistic designs. We already begun the process a few updates ago, and will continue to simplify the design so it makes immediate sense.

If you’re interested in catching up, please book a time at timing.is/open.

Have a great weekend! Till next week :)

Bardi

What’s new?

Entry

• [Cancel] button added that clears the entry session – if you however tap above the row of action buttons to implicitly close, then reopening entry should restore your session
• System auto-complete word suggestion bar now showing when inputting title field

Hero

• On the back of fullscreen cards (aka Heroes), toolbar now has contextual actions to quickly [Share] your private note

Stream

• Button added to the bottom left – we’re calling it a scrubber – that enables you to quickly jump to the next day (stay tuned because we have a lot of ideas to make this even more useful)

What’s improved?

Calendar

• Way more fluid when swiping between weeks or months – shouldn’t stutter anymore
• No more condensed text for dates
• Switching between week and month pulldowns should carry over state, i.e. what week/month you were on

Entry

• “timing.is” was considered confusing placeholder text, and so it’s been replaced by the more helpful “What’s happening?” (thanks @David)
• [Save] has moved to a more-ish conventional top right of form (unlike iOS that keeps it to the very top right, we think it should be reachable)
• Labels added to all toolbar icons – we are minimalists, but not when it’s at the expense of clarity (will look at making this a setting for those who don’t wish to see the labels)
• When you invite someone, you’re kept on the People field so you can add as many others consecutively
• When there are no results when searching for a location or people, you’ll be informed
• When you’ve typed in an email for a person to invite (and it’s not associated with a contact in your address book), you’ll be instructed to hit [Return] to invite
• Calendar menu moved to a less prominent position on the date keyboard to give its dates focus
• However, appearance of the menu has improved to include calendar colours so it’s unlikely to be missed
• When you’ve explicitly picked a calendar, you are indirectly confirming this is an event, and so time keyboard has a time set by default when you open it
• When you add an event/task, you’re automatically scrolled to the day it was added for
• Notification at top providing feedback on the completed action stays up for longer

Hero

• Scrolling, pulling (from the header area or if you pull down content when you’ve scrolled to its top) and swiping (to flip) should all work reliably – when scrolling is detected, the other two gestures become automatically disabled to ensure a predictable experience
• Text on toolbar buttons bigger
• Animating into Hero much faster than before – we think it feels overall better because the previous speed made the app seem unnecessarily (inaccurately in this instance) slow
• Back of card has a different colour to front for greater distinction/better contrast on a flip

Omni Sheet

• Slides down when you tap into a card
• “timing.is” was considered confusing, and so it’s been replaced by the boringly clear “Search” as the placeholder text on the text field (thanks again @David)

Search

• Search extended to cover the next 365 days by default (in local tests, continues to perform, but will optimise for performance and usability based on more tests/feedback, as well as extending it so you can search back in time too)
• Month anchor included when results are not for the current month
• When no results found, you get a message
• And when there are you get notified on number of results
• Case insensitive searches

Stream

• Omni sheet is restored to its non-collapsed state at a more appropriate time once scrolling has stopped (i.e. noticeably faster than before)
• Tapping on any area of a day card that’s not an event or task card will open up the Hero Day (as opposed to just tapping on its date)
• When you tap the top strip in the middle to go back to top, it will take you to now onwards (and not earlier today)
• Whenever you’re automatically scrolled to the top of the Stream, above happens now too

What’s fixed?

Calendar

• Text will be legible on busy dates (previously white text on light background dot)

Entry

• Going from date to time keyboard doesn’t automatically add a time because we don’t want to make any assumptions
• Changing from a keyboard that doesn’t have the auto-complete word bar to the date or time keyboards won’t result in its size being reduced from its intended height
• No crash when you remove a time so that it becomes a task and then hit [Save]

Hero

• Occasionally exiting a Hero wouldn’t take you back to the Stream – should do every time now

Search

• Trailing space in a search keyword is ignored
• Search results are scrolled to the top, so first result is visible
• When dismissing a search, you are returned to the top of the Stream

Stream

• When you enter a new month on a different year to the current (e.g. 2023), the top left won’t show “ <year>”

May 27

What’s up?

Hey All 👋

Another week, and a lot more additions, improvements and fixes. Although there’s no transformative change in this update, hopefully you’re starting to feel the impact of a ton of incremental improvements. We have bigger things planned – in time!

As much as we want to (and will) innovate, we know for t:m:ng to be a viable calendar alternative, we need to absolutely nail the basics. Speed is critical. We’re studying the established players in the space to make getting things done in t:m:ng preferable. Whether that’s adding something to your calendar,  trying to get a feel for your day etc. you name it and we’ll do it faster/better. That’s the idea anyway.

Another focus after last week’s customer interviews was to prioritise obvious over clever. We’re minimalists but it shouldn’t come at the expense of usability. Our preferences made for optimistic designs. We already begun the process a few updates ago, and will continue to dumb the design down so it makes immediate sense.

For a full list of this week’s changes, go to timing.is/change.

If you’re interested in catching up, please book a time at timing.is/open.

Have a great weekend! Till next week :)

Bardi

What’s new?

Entry

• [Cancel] button added that clears the entry session – if you however tap above the row of action buttons to implicitly close, then reopening entry should restore your session
• System auto-complete word suggestion bar now showing when inputting title field

Hero

• On the back of fullscreen cards (aka Heroes), toolbar now has contextual actions to quickly [Share] your private note

Stream

• Button added to the bottom left – we’re calling it a scrubber – that enables you to quickly jump to the next day (stay tuned because we have a lot of ideas to make this even more useful)

What’s improved?

Calendar

• Way more fluid when swiping between weeks or months – shouldn’t stutter anymore
• No more condensed text for dates
• Switching between week and month pulldowns should carry over state, i.e. what week/month you were on

Entry

• “timing.is” was considered confusing placeholder text, and so it’s been replaced by the more helpful “What’s happening?” (thanks @David)
• [Save] has moved to a more-ish conventional top right of form (unlike iOS that keeps it to the very top right, we think it should be reachable)
• Labels added to all toolbar icons – we are minimalists, but not when it’s at the expense of clarity (will look at making this a setting for those who don’t wish to see the labels)
• When you invite someone, you’re kept on the People field so you can add as many others consecutively
• When there are no results when searching for a location or people, you’ll be informed
• When you’ve typed in an email for a person to invite (and it’s not associated with a contact in your address book), you’ll be instructed to hit [Return] to invite
• Calendar menu moved to a less prominent position on the date keyboard to give its dates focus
• However, appearance of the menu has improved to include calendar colours so it’s unlikely to be missed
• When you’ve explicitly picked a calendar, you are indirectly confirming this is an event, and so time keyboard has a time set by default when you open it
• When you add an event/task, you’re automatically scrolled to the day it was added for
• Notification at top providing feedback on the completed action stays up for longer

Hero

• Scrolling, pulling (from top-down to collapse a Hero) and swiping (to flip) should all work reliably – when scrolling is detected, the other two gestures become automatically disabled to ensure a predictable experience
• Text on toolbar buttons bigger
• Animating into Hero much faster than before – we think it feels overall better because the previous speed made the app seem unnecessarily (inaccurately in this instance) slow
• Back of card has a different colour to front for greater distinction/better contrast on a flip

Omni Sheet

• Slides down when you tap into a card
• “timing.is” was considered confusing, and so it’s been replaced by the boringly clear “Search” as the placeholder text on the text field (thanks again @David)

Search

• Search extended to cover the next 365 days by default (in local tests, continues to perform, but will optimise for performance and usability based on more tests/feedback, as well as extending it so you can search back in time too)
• Month anchor included when results are not for the current month
• When no results found, you get a message
• And when there are you get notified on number of results
• Case insensitive searches

Stream

• Omni sheet is restored to its non-collapsed state at a more appropriate time once scrolling has stopped (i.e. noticeably faster than before)
• Tapping on any area of a day card that’s not an event or task card will open up the Hero Day (as opposed to just tapping on its date)
• When you tap the top strip in the middle to go back to top, it will take you to now onwards (and not earlier today)
• Whenever you’re automatically scrolled to the top of the Stream, above happens now too

What’s fixed?

Calendar

• Text will be legible on busy dates (previously white text on light background dot)

Entry

• Going from date to time keyboard doesn’t automatically add a time because we don’t want to make any assumptions
• Changing from a keyboard that doesn’t have the auto-complete word bar to the date or time keyboards won’t result in its size being reduced from its intended height
• No crash when you remove a time so that it becomes a task and then hit [Save]

Hero

• Occasionally exiting a Hero wouldn’t take you back to the Stream – should do every time now

Search

• Trailing space in a search keyword is ignored
• Search results are scrolled to the top, so first result is visible
• When dismissing a search, you are returned to the top of the Stream

Stream

• When you enter a new month on a different year to the current (e.g. 2023), the top left won’t show “ <year>”

May 20

What’s up?

Hey All 👋

It was a busy week! There’s a lot that’s gone into this update. The fundamental blocks — related to events, tasks and notes — are now all in. For the full list of changes, go to timing.is/change. There’s still however plenty of work remaining to connect and light these pieces.

We had a customer call as soon as the update dropped. Their playthrough of the app confirmed we had made a ton of progress since your call. They managed to independently steer their experience without much trouble or confusion. That said, by being more usable/understandable, the app was arguably being judged fairly for the first time. What makes t:m:ng different? What makes t:m:ng better? Big questions in need of convincing answers.

Every week in a bootstrapped operation matters (heck, every minute) but these next few weeks will be especially pivotal. We set the end of June as our release target a few months ago. We don’t know whether we’re going to hit that date, but we do know we’ll have built answers to the aforementioned questions by then.

It would be great if we can catch up soon to talk about the app more: please book a suitable time at timing.is/open.

Have a great Sunday!

Bardi

What’s new?

Calendar

• Week calendar (tap on the week number on top right)

Entry

• Can add an all-day event
• You can add a scheduled task (i.e. title + date combo minus time) – unscheduled tasks are on the pipeline, as well as more consideration/care with where/how all tasks display
• Can add a description (we know there are still many more fields unavailable for add/edit such as recurring status, alarms etc. – give us time :))

Notes

• Private notes (tap into an event [or a date] and flip it to access a contextual notepad - oh and it auto saves)

What’s improved?

Calendar

• Swiping on month/week calendar pulldowns will automatically scroll you to the first day of month/week on Stream
• Inversely, if either pulldown is open, and you’re scrolling the Stream, then the pulldown will update when you’ve scrolled forward to the next month/week (or back to previous)
• Past dates on calendars have faded appearance to give increased prominence on the present/future
• Date circle colour on calendars have varying intensity representing busy levels (lighter = busier) — at the moment, only considers number of things happening (i.e. basic), and not acknowledging (total) duration (this will be considered in a future update)
• Top left now shows short-hand month in letter form (e.g. MAY instead of 0522) — year only displayed when on a month in another year, whether past or future (makes sense @Nico)
• Should be easier to instantiate a pulldown drag from the bottom
• Removed bottom-middle links on pulldown to keep it clean (hopefully a swipe to collapse is clear!)
• Pull down the top strip from the right/left of the month and week to access the full year

Entry

• More connected in animation + appearance with bottom Omni Sheet where you open it from
• All completed fields are now visible on a horizontal scroll, no longer resulting in a vertical undismissable stack (or for items to become compressed horizontally) – a nicer way to view a preview in fullscreen is coming, in the meanwhile consider this to be the compact version of a preview
• More clear CTA to save (less trivial @Sarthak? :) )

Event

• Toggle to switch to Notes on Hero Event no longer has disabled appearance — instead it changes state from Notes to Details

Navigation

• Tap in the middle of the top strip to go back to today

Stream

• Multi-day events more helpful on Stream by showing what day number each card is for
• Multi-day events’ Hero shows more information for better bearings on where you are now and how much time is left (also adapts based on whether the event has started or not)

What’s fixed?

Calendar

• Can’t get into permanently black state by pulling it down

Entry

• No dummy accelerators for location input (Home or Work) – they’ll be working when they come back
• When removing a date, calendar won’t unnecessarily stick
• When you’ve added a date + time, and then change date, time is preserved

Hero

• Last few hours on a Hero (fullscreen) Day card should be visible/scrollable
• Removed superflous minimise button on Day Hero

Stream

• When on the first day of a week, and there’s nothing going on, the day’s date will show on its card (thanks @Sam!)
• Live badge won’t get pushed off card when title is long
• No ridiculously long line leading to first event today (that likely required scrolling) when it happens much later in the day
• Don’t get told an event that just went live is 0 minutes away
• When month calendar is pulled down, Stream won’t show a duplicate when passing through a month

May 20

What’s up?

Hey All 👋

It’s been a few weeks (at least) since we last spoke, and – damn – a lot has happened in this time.

Most recently, we were interviewed by Michael Seibel – yes, Twitch’s co-founder. This concerned our YCombinator application. We made it through to the final round of interviews, but – alas – it was a no. For a few days – not going to lie – it felt like a punch in a stomach. Especially as Seibel had proliferated our YouTube algorithms, so there was no escaping the fact. That said, we’re fully recovered now, and feeling grateful because the process made us learn so much. In fact, as a result – despite the rejection – we’re even more excited about our plans and determined to make this a success. The winning formula is simple. We need to 1) believe in ourselves and 2) listen to you.

Early user testing indicated the app was confusing, unpredictable and overwhelming. We were unnecessarily doing too much, too soon. And so we’ve agreed we want to build the best first version of t:m:ng. We don’t want to do everything half-assed, but a few things really well. Our roadmap is strong and clear. We’ve so many big ideas, and hopefully by taking a more calculated first step, we set ourselves up for future possibilities.

So, a big thank you for being super helpful and shaping our plans. We’re officially starting our private alpha today, and we’d love to continue talking. Here’s how:

Download our alpha. You’ll need TestFlight but instructions are there (and straightforward).

Join our Slack Channel **timing.is/feedback,** send an email to feedback@timing.is, or hit us up on any of our personal channels: email/WhatsApp/iMessage/etc.

Bonus:

Help spread the word If you know someone who might be interested in joining this alpha, please direct them to **timing.is** to join our waitlist.

Learn about our process [for the curious]

• Changelog @ timing.is/change
• Livestream @ timing.is/now
• Tweeting @ timingis_

The next TestFlight update is the first acknowledgement of your input so far. There is no longer a mini-task manager or standalone notes experience. Our goal was to seamlessly integrate tasks and notes with your calendar. This wasn’t how. We’ll figure it out with hopefully your help (: The app shouldn’t feel bottom-heavy anymore either: the address and tab bars have been merged. Speed matters, and with this update, we’re clarifying how we intend to make it super fast to filter your time. Hit that wand.

Moving forward, we’re going to be dropping at least one noteworthy update every week. So, expect to see regular progress here on out. There’s still a ways to go, but we’re getting there and are anticipating a busy summer.

Thanks again for making the time to make our t:m:ng better!

Bardi & Farid

What’s new?

iOS

• Hard-coded summaries removed (when they return TBD)
• Tab Bar removed
• No more split-screen task manager UI
• No more ability to record notes independently
• Replaced by a refined Omni Sheet
• Tapping on the wand opens up filters
• Search now enabled (at the moment, only works when you hit [return] and for the next 30 days but hopeful to get it trigger on every character input as well as be able to expand the search to as many dates in the future as well as past)
• Back of event card now has a single text input from where you can add tasks (manual for the time by typing in square brackets before text) and notes from (expect bigger improvements in this area in an update soon)
• Hero cards have had some love, including addition of a Toolbar to perform actions and to toggle into its note-taking surface (i.e. back of card)
• Onboarding revamped
• Changed it so you can only add events via [+] (i.e. need title, date + time to be able to confirm) but hope to restore ability to add tasks (and possibly notes too) in a near future update
• Tapping on a date when you pull down calendar into month view won’t open a Hero for the day, but instead scroll you to the day on the Stream (it will continue to behave as before when you are already in a Hero though)
• Infinite scroll on Stream (going forwards only!)
• Today is highlighted on the Stream, and emphasis is given on what’s happening right now
• Greater distinction between days and weeks/months on Stream
• No longer launch to the beginning of today (even if it’s for an event that happened earlier), but to the current time within (i.e. stuff happening now onwards) - you can scroll back up to earlier today
• Calendar Clip becomes a back button when you’re on a Hero
• Bug Can’t have an end date that occurs before a start date when adding a new event (leading to a crash)
• Bug Even if you have a long list of calendars, should be able to scroll all when picking one for a new event
• Bug On first launch, can add an event without leading to a crash
• Bug Shouldn’t see funky artefacts when you expand/collapse the calendar pulldown

Web

• Website up and running – timing.is
• Slack launched — timing.is/feedback