This is a public issue tracker for Due for macOS. You’re welcome to submit bug reports and feature requests related to Due for macOS here. You can also search for issues that you may be encountering, find workarounds, or just keep yourself abreast about progress in general.
Please read on further to have a better idea on the purpose of this tracker so that you will not be disappointed in case there is a mismatch of expectations.
Developers who are smarter than us, like Brent Simmons, have commented on how public bug trackers are a bad idea:
Decisions about what to work on — and when, and by whom — are complicated. From the outside it might look like it’s as simple as picking the next feature request with the most votes, but it’s not that simple.… [Opening] up the bug tracker to the public is just a way to get bogged down: it’s a way to make worse decisions, and make them more slowly.
In spite of all that, we wanted to experiment with the way we communicate with customers.
There have been many instances where we appear to have gone dark while we work on major updates. I think it’s fair to say that we’re much better at developing software than communicating with our customers—and we want to change that. (I mean we still want to be proficient developers and designers first, just that we want to level up at communicating about our work too).
By launching this public issue tracker, we want to be more open about development, and to involve customers more in the development of Due.
We want customers to be able to see the thought process behind some of the decisions and tradeoffs that we make. We want to offer a way for customers to be kept abreast of progress. We want to offer customers a more intimate way to communicate with us, whether it is to file bug reports, submit feature requests, or to offer their thoughts on any issue we’re working on.
Due is an opinionated software. It means we have a clear idea about what the software should do (and what it shouldn’t try to do).
The folks at Basecamp sum it up well:
The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they’re not just looking for features, they’re looking for an approach. They’re looking for a vision.… [Our apps] don’t try to be all things to all people. They have an attitude. They seek out customers who are actually partners. They speak to people who share our vision.
In fact that was exactly how Due started in 2010. It was before I knew anything about software design and development, or what an opinionated software is.
Due was made to scratch a personal itch. It turns out there were enough people with this itch. It scratches this itch for this group of people well enough that Due became a sustainable business that still exists 10 years later.
Of course, not everyone shares the same opinion as we do about what a reminder app should be, and we certainly don’t expect everyone to. It’d be arrogant of us to think otherwise.
Some people want to meticulously organize their reminders into lists, tags, categories. Others want location-based reminders. Yet others want an Android/Windows/web app.
These are just some of the things that Due have not supported so far. It doesn’t mean we think any of these needs are unimportant needs. And it doesn’t mean we think any less of Android/Windows, as some customers seemed to think.
It just means either this feature does not fit into the overall vision of what we have for Due, or that because of limitations in resources, time or technology, we are unable to deliver the feature in a manner that is aligned with our vision of the app.
Even with this public tracker, we are absolutely clear that Due is not about to become design-by-committee.
We won’t be outsourcing the decision-making process of which features will eventually make it, or which features should be prioritised. Due remains an opinionated software, just as it always have been.
What this means is that feature requests will not be considered based on popularity. For instance, it’d be foolish of us to neglect our iOS/macOS customers and channel our extremely limited resources into an Android app—even if that is the most wanted feature request.
We welcome your suggestions about what would make Due better for you. Even more useful would be to hear what is, and what is not, working out for you—and why. Putting these issues into the context of your workflow helps us to think deeper of ways to solve your problems.
If any suggestions or ideas that we can come up with fit into the vision that we have for Due, we’d definitely consider them for future updates.
So, this public tracker could either be a foolhardy experiment, or it could change how we communicate.
If this makes sense to you, I hope you’ll join us in this journey to help make Due better, together.