Clearing the Air About Clear

Late last night my review for Clear from RealMac Software, Milen and Impending went online at Cult of Mac.

I didn’t give it the rave reviews that others have been giving it (only 3 and a half stars out of 5), while others have given it a great deal of praise.

Examples of those folks are:

Shawn Blanc
Ben Brooks
Matthew Panzarino (via The Next Web)

Some (other than myself) didn’t see it fitting into their workflow, either. But there weren’t many. My podcasting pal Michael Schechter over at A Better Mess seemed to have arguments against Clear, especially when placing it up against Listary (which I’ve never used).

But Brett Kelly’s post over at Bridging the Nerd Gap gave me something to really think about:

“So, that’s the deal—for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting Clear through it’s paces as my “incidental” list manager. If nothing else, it will be a marked improvement over my abysmal handwriting.”

Maybe I placed Clear in the wrong context. Maybe it is meant to augment my workflow with the app rather than replace anything electronic that’s already part of it. Maybe it is a gateway to a more paperless approach to my day.

So, I’m going to give Clear a shot as a simple list-making app (a la Brett Kelly) to see if it can replace my analog methods or any of the other apps I use to compose lists, such as:

• Evernote: OCR capture and general “fileables”.
• Reminders: Siri-integration for lists that don’t require a “deep dive” into my task manager of choice.¹
• Stamped: Adding recommendations from trusted sources to my “Things To Do” — such as books, restaurants and the like.

I’ll give it a full 30 days on this and see if my initial thoughts hold up. Right now, I can’t see Clear being part of my oft-used apps, but maybe with time it could be.¹

¹On that note, I have switched task managers. Yep, I’ve done quit OmniFocus. More on that tomorrow.
²You’ll notice that there are a lot of “maybes” for Clear to overcome.