

The Omni Show
The Omni Group
Connect with the amazing community surrounding the Omni Group’s award-winning products.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 8, 2018 • 39min
The Tikinauts: Two Cherries In
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Like any other workplace, Omni has a few subcultures — knitters, rock climbers, dog fanciers — but none of them involve quite as much rum, kitsch, and straight-up chillin’ as Tiki.
Mark Boszko, Aaron Cherof, and Evan McNulty — roughly half of Omni Team Tiki — talk about their zest for fruity drinks and for the whole surrounding show. We talk about the décor from a lost world that never existed anyway. We talk about the fancy and sometimes secret ingredients. And the vibe. And the volcanos.
You can find Mark’s Tiki bar on the web at Kilauea.co, and on Twitter and Instagram @KilaueaCove. You can find Evan on Twitter @theevanshow. You can find Aaron on Twitter @cherof, and you can find his music at cherof.com, cherof.bandcamp.com, Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Rumba
Latchkey Kid
About Tiki
The Tropics in Beverly Hills, CA (a “bamboo bar”)
Don the Beachcomber
Trader Vic's
Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room
Dole Whip
Disney's Polynesian Village Resort
Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar
Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto
Smuggler's Cove
Hale Pele
Tiki Kon
Volcano Bowl
Jeff “Beachbum” Berry
Devil's Reef
North Shore Lagoon at McMenamins Arderson School
Tacoma Cabana
Navy Strength
Rob Roy
Karaage
The Saturn
Falernum
Orgeat
Shark Bite
Mai-Kai
Kilauea
Black Magic
Kahlúa
Kōloa Kauaʻi Coffee
Kona coffee
Three Dots and a Dash
Morse code
World War II
Martinique rums
Demerara rum
Pimento liqueur
Dr. Funk
Grenadine
Pernod
Absinthe
Anise
Mai Tai
Il Fornaio
Raspberry Pi
Fez-o-rama
Scorpion Bowl
Kahiko Punch
Cesar’s Rum Punch
Hawaiian Punch
Hammering Man
Diller Room and Justin Wojslaw
How to Make Flaming Drinks

Jul 25, 2018 • 26min
Tami Snyder, Operations Assistant
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Tami Snyder — Voice of Omni, helper of people in and out of the company, coffee expert — joins the show to talk about working as an Operations Assistant and the big, varied list of things this actually means.
Though it’s a few years old, Tami’s bio on our About Omni page is worth quoting:
Tami somehow entered the realms of Omni without ever having heard of Battlestar Galactica or playing World of Warcraft. She studied Psychology at Seattle Pacific University and worked with troubled adolescent boys. She later became a certified bra fitter at Nordstrom’s. She has a green Jeep Wrangler named Jewel and organizes “boutique-style” yard sales. She refuses to define what “boutique-style” means, so we assume cookies. Tami fiercely defends our gates, protecting us from scary folk like the delivery folks.
(Tip! To read a person’s bio on our About page, just click on their picture.)
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Omni Support
The Record
Tacoma, WA
Seattle Pacific University
Galaga
Nordstrom’s
Aaron Bendickson
Three Musketeers
Birth Doula
Buzzed Bear Coffee Company
White coffee

Jul 11, 2018 • 25min
Terry Stearns, Executive Chef
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Terry Stearns — Vermontian, chef, musician — joins the show in the middle of the last afternoon of his last day, after 19 years of making us wonderful lunches and dinners.
We will miss him, and we wish him all the best in his next adventure. We’re so glad to get his voice on the record, and to bring a little bit of Terry to you.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
University District
Wil Shipley
OmniGraphSketcher
Nisqually Earthquake
Killington, Vermont
Burke-Gilman Trail
Liz Marley
Paramount Theatre
Flaming Lips
Astoria, Oregon
Columbia River
Summit Lodge
Grunge music
Silver Stallion

Jun 27, 2018 • 39min
Aaron Cherof, Support Human
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Aaron Cherof — native Floridian, indoor cat, piano man — is one of the folks who answers your questions when you write — or call — in. We talk about how support works and about the support team’s important role in product decisions.
Aaron, a Berklee College of Music graduate, has also written music for a number of Omni videos — and he wrote the theme music for this show. Thanks to Aaron it’s not just awkward silence when the host calls for “Music!” at the beginning and end of every show. :)
He’s also branched out into sound design for apps: the recent OmniFocus 3 for iOS includes his sound effects.
You can find Aaron on Twitter @cherof, and you can find his music at cherof.com, cherof.bandcamp.com, Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play. Check it out!
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Cher
Do you believe in life after love?
Auto-Tune
T-Pain
OmniFocus
OmniGraffle
Blackjack
Omni’s support website and knowledge base
Dave Lonning
Dave Messent
Liz Marley
Sync
Inside OmniFocus
Stenciltown
OmniPresence
OmniPresence video with Aaron’s music and voice
Mark Boszko
OmniFocus 2 video
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Boston University
Boston Globe
Berklee College of Music
Aaron Bendickson
Ainsley Bourque Olson
Tiki
Tiki Drink
Mai-Kai
Ellis Island

Jun 6, 2018 • 26min
WWDC Announcements: Live at NextDoor
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
This week, a full panel of guests joins us live at the NextDoor developer conference. We discuss the upcoming iOS and macOS features announced during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, and what it means for the future of apps.
On the panel are:
Paul Kafasis, CEO of Rogue Amoeba
Liz Marley, OmniGraffle Developer at The Omni Group
Kristina Fox, iOS Developer at Intuit
Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group
and an audience of dozens!
Special thanks to Solomon Klein of NextDoor for recording this episode on location.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
NextDoor Developer Conference
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
WWDC 2018 Keynote
WWDC 2018 Platforms State of the Union
Rhapsody
The Omni Group game ports
Silicon Graphics and OpenGL
Ken’s tweet about the new features
Panic Transmit
Bare Bones Software BBEdit
UIKit
Steven Troughton-Smith
macOS Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)
OmniGraffle
NSBezierPath and UIBezierPath
NSColor and UIColor
OmniFocus
Intuit TurboTax, Mint, and QuickBooks Self-Employed
Developer ID and Gatekeeper
Rosemary Orchard
App Camp for Girls
Carbon
React Native
Electron

May 30, 2018 • 26min
OmniFocus 3 for iOS Launch Day
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group; Dave Messent, OmniFocus product manager; and Tim Ekl, OmniFocus engineer, join the show for a special episode to talk about HEY IT’S LAUNCH DAY WOO-HOO!
We look back on the two years of work on this release — all the database and syncing groundwork, new user interface, and new features — and how all these different pieces didn’t come together until near the end. But then they did!
While the app looks familiar — which is entirely by design — this release is a much more dramatic improvement than it appears on the surface. And we’re very proud of the whole team.
And now our Support Humans, who’ve done so marvelously well during the beta program, get even busier as OmniFocus 3 is now available on the App Store. We’ve got WWDC next week, and our designers, engineers, and testers are back to working on OmniFocus for Mac, OmniFocus for the Web, and more new features for OmniFocus 3 for iOS.
It’s almost the company motto: “Work continues!”
You can find Ken @kcase on Twitter, Dave @dmessent, and Tim @timothyekl and on the web. You can also find @omnigroup on Twitter and on Micro.blog.

May 23, 2018 • 19min
OmniFocus Pro 3 and Custom Perspectives
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group, and Dave Messent, OmniFocus product manager, join the show for a special episode to talk about the enhancements to custom perspectives, a feature in OmniFocus Pro 3.
Custom perspectives now work with tags (new in OmniFocus 3), which make for even more powerful ways to view your data.
The perspective editor has been enhanced to make perspectives easier to set up, by showing you just what you need to see at any given moment. And the editor now supports complex queries: you can combine and filter using all, any, and none.
And plus — bonus points — you can not only set a custom icon (any image) for each custom perspective, you can also set a tint color! Which is a small thing, sure, but is surprisingly nice. :)
You can find Ken @kcase and Dave @dmessent on Twitter. You can also find @omnigroup on Twitter and on Micro.blog.

May 9, 2018 • 29min
Shannon Hughes, OmniGraffle Engineer
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Shannon Hughes — French toast enjoyer, math understander, frequent robot — joins the show to talk about working on OmniGraffle. Which, apparently, involves a whole bunch of different types of rectangles.
Shannon started at Omni a week before your host, and started out on the OmniGraffle team and has been there ever since. Your rectangles are in the best possible hands.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Andrea McVittie
Robot
OmniGraffle
Adobe Illustrator
Dave Messent
Rectangle
Undo
Wil Shipley on Git as Document Format
Omni and Customer Data
Lotus 1-2-3
Punch cards
Dot matrix paper
AltaVista
Lycos
Excite
Yahoo
Society for Creative Anachronism
Mead
Linguistics
Barnes and Noble
Impostor Syndrome
NSCoders
Table views
Bog
Butterflies
Hummingbirds

Apr 25, 2018 • 18min
OmniFocus 3 Potpourri with Dave Messent, Tim Ekl, and Jim Correia
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Dave Messent, OmniFocus product manager; Tim Ekl, OmniFocus engineer; and Jim Correia, OmniFocus engineer join the show for a special episode to talk about OmniFocus 3 for iOS and several new features: flexible inspectors, enhanced repeating tasks, batch editing, and the interleaved Forecast view.
In OmniFocus 3 for iOS, inspectors are now customizable: you can make them work the way you want them to work.
We’ve given repeated tasks more real-world options — such as the last weekday of the month — and we’ve applied progressive disclosure to the interface so they’re easy to set up.
Batch editing — which makes making bulk changes easier — was brought over from the Mac to iOS.
And in the Forecast view we’ve interleaved tasks and calendar events, which makes it easy to plan and to see how your day fits together.
You can find Dave @dmessent on Twitter, Tim on Twitter @timothyekl and on the web, and Jim on Twitter @jimcorreia.
For more about OmniFocus 3, read the Omni Roadmap 2018 — particularly the second half, which concentrates on OmniFocus — and listen to a previous episode of the show where Ken Case talks about the roadmap, and listen to another previous special episode where we talk about OmniFocus 3 and tags.
Also see the OmniFocus 3 development blog, which is just starting up (at this writing) and will have more details as we post more.

Apr 11, 2018 • 28min
Aaron Bendickson, System Administrator
Full transcript and show notes at theomnishow.omnigroup.com
Aaron Bendickson — system administrator, saint — talks about how he runs things at Omni and, especially, about how he fixes things.
Aaron’s just a small town boy from Missoula who went big: he studied at Berklee College of Music and eventually made his way to Seattle by way of Tacoma. When he’s not fixing Omni things, he’s bicycling, competing in pinball matches, and being a dad.
You can find Aaron @benaar on Twitter and on Instagram.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Office Space
The spice must flow
PowerMac
Ainsley Bourque Olson
OmniBugZapper
Ken Case
WebDAV
Apache
MySQL
OmniFocus
FreeBSD
Linux
Telepresence
Jousting
Craig’s List
Tacoma
Missoula, Montana
Lake Missoula
Berklee College of Music
Boston
Americana music
Dad rock
Pro Tools
PCI cards
VHS tape
Internet
GarageBand
Commodore 64
Turtle graphics
Apple IIe
DOS
VisiCalc
Lotus 1-2-3
WordPerfect
Tetris
MechWarrior
PowerMac 6100
PowerPC
Bee Gees
Hanson
University Place
Doc Brown and Marty
Biometrics
CIA
UNIX
Pinball
Shorty’s
Seattle Center
Tacoma Convention Center
White Water pinball game
Dennis Nordman
Coindexter’s
Contras
Iran-Contra
Admiral Poindexter
Contra game