(from <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5642484" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5642484</a>)<p>I don't want to take anything away from Astrid.<p>I keeps dismissing my ideas as trivial and already done. When I think I have a new idea, my friends would dismiss it as trivial and already done. Take astrid's todo list or task sharing for example. My initial and only thought would be 'does the world need another todo app', 'another list making app' really? If I take the idea to my friends, they would bombard me with companies who do exactly the same thing. And yet here we are with Astrid being acquired. It seems to have some angel investment/funding even. The founders may not be millionaires but they definitely made more money than I did.<p>Note to self: do something. anything. and get acquired.
> <i>The app will remain online for another 90 days before it’s shut down by Yahoo. In the meantime, it’s not accepting any new users.</i><p>Well, crap. Any migration path or alternatives? I don't even need 99% of Astrid's bells and whistles, just your basic "add entries and tick 'em off" todo list along the lines of what the Palm V used to do.
<sarcasm>
I thought Yahoo was in trouble and had a glut of employees. Rather, it seems they have found a pot of gold and don't have enough employees to execute their plan for world domination.
</sarcasm>
Astrid ran hard to make an app that millions of people use constantly. As a startup, they took a risk, ran hard at an idea, and executed their ass off.<p>We should all be so lucky.<p>Regarding this "acquihire" talk:<p>This is something the naysayers like to talk about. Yahoo's scale present an incredible sandbox for the Astrid team. They are a fully contained, highly functional team (across product and engineering disciplines). They know how to build back-end systems, complex web-apps, and cross-platform mobile apps.<p>The fact that someone found a higher and better use is not a failure on their part. Yahoo is fortunate to have this team join their ranks.
> Yahoo Acquires 4M-User ‘To Do’ App Astrid, Will Shut It Down In 90 Days<p>I'm afraid I'm not familiar with what scale Yahoo operates on, but wouldn't it be more beneficial for them to merge Astrid into whatever their plans are rather than drop them and alienate people who were already users?<p>Or was it just seen as a potential resource hole (with the value of the users seen as negative)?<p>Can anyone shed some light on what Astrid's business model was?
I used Astrid for a while and just switched over to Google Keep a couple weeks ago. I highly recommend it for people who just want simple synced to-do/notes.<p>Yes, they could Google-Reader-it at any time, I suppose, but for something transient like todos I'm not too worried about it.
Sweet, maybe they can afford to address some of the insane bugs they have accreted. I normally defend developers/software when people I know complain about an app - but this is like a year and a half of really bad/frustrating bugs. Disappearing tasks, duplicated tasks, inability to enter tasks at certain times of the day.... And ultimately not responding to emails regarding these issues. If you are going to provide an app which is in essence an augmentation of someones mind you should take the responsibility seriously.
Just checked and saw that Astrid is open source. Not sure if it's the latest version though.<p><a href="https://github.com/todoroo/astrid" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/todoroo/astrid</a><p>Now if only someone would adopt it :(
While we're suggesting todo apps - I've been using Clear [1] (Mac + iPhone only) for the past month and love it. The UI is beautiful yet very simple as everything is done with touch gestures.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/" rel="nofollow">http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/</a>
I run a time management app, and I will develop a Astrid importer if there is enough interest: <a href="http://weekplan.net/import-your-astrid-tasks-into-week-plan/" rel="nofollow">http://weekplan.net/import-your-astrid-tasks-into-week-plan/</a>
It seems companies other than people like 37signals and indie game studios don't want to be small and independent? I could be wrong about this analysis, but I find the aquihire trend somewhat depressing.
Guess I'm picking a new to-do program, then. Honestly I don't spend as much time with Astrid since I switched to iOS, I really got used to its geofencing capabilities on Android.<p>Anyone got any suggestions for an iOS/Mac to-do program that can do geofencing for entire lists, instead of single todos like Apple's Reminders?
The key feature I used Astrid for was the ability to have recurring tasks based on the date of last completion instead of fixed intervals. Does anything else out there do that?
Huge congrats to Jon and Tim! I worked with them in 2011 and it's an amazing team that I'd be honored to work with any day. Yahoo! is lucky to have them.