The WWDC 2025 is in the rear view mirror, and it would be just to say that there were a lot to excite, even with Apple (wisely) avoiding its wider upgrades of Apple’s intelligence.
The iPad obtaining real window management has been an excellent addition, while the new design language on all platforms is certainly a big goal in September. But relatively hidden, almost as a footnote, was the promise of more functionalities to come to reminders – and seeing these features may happen in fact to move away from things 3.
Let me explain.
Here is the thing
The “Things” application of Culture Code is, as anyone uses it will tell you, the Holy Grail of the design of the user interface. It is a task manager who seems so well, even Apple himself could not have done a better job, and it is my essential organizational tool for the best of the decade. It is a powerful tool for anyone uses one of the best MacBooks and Mac – or any Apple device, by the way.
I use the application on my mac, my iPad, my iPhone and my Apple Watch, noting the tasks even with a shortcut of action button on my phone. And yet, I find myself moving away from the path. It is not that things 3 are less magical than it was when I started using it; It’s just that so many rivals have committed the gap.
Things 3 remain an easy place to empty the tasks, place them in sections and enjoy this serotonin hit when you check them. There is nothing wrong with that, but key features are lacking that its rivals now offer.
There is no shared recall list, so my wife can add things to do, and there is no web version either. It is also lacking in “true” Siri integration, which means that I must essentially deposit my tasks in reminders and make them synchronize with things 3 if I want them to be dictated.
Then – and if I doesn’t synchronize them? What if I’m just, you know, used Apple reminders to manage my life?
Rejection the system
I use the concept as a database to manage my professional life, but things are there that my daily things are done. Each evening, I charge it with tasks for the morning, and every morning I start to check them.
But what happens if my wife needs me to catch something from the shop? What if I want to ask Siri via Carplay to add something to my daily list? These are the kinds of things where the reminders would work very well, but it is not new. In fact, Apple has put a ton of work in reminders in recent years, so what made me think of changing now?
As a writer, I am wary of AI. The models formed on the content for which I worked always have the trouble to keep a suspicious eye, but I recognize that automatic learning has a lot to offer (and no, I do not mean these horrible notification summaries).
This year, with iOS 26 and MacOS Tahoe (and the other versions of Apple OS), Apple Intelligence will be integrated into the reminders, so that it can automatically assess what the next action element should be. Receive confirmation that one of my independent articles has been published? It would be great to make a task appear to invoice it. Make a note of a meeting? Having the place to send the details afterwards would be super useful.
The application will even be able to intelligently determine the lists of your tasks, which means that less time is devoted to channeling them in the right places.
I could get ahead of myself (and I don’t even know if IA feature is in the current beta version to test today), but even if these are not reminders that I pass (I still don’t like this user interface), I have the impression that things 3 (or surely a fourth version) could do more thinking on the front of the update.
What could things 4 could add?
Okay, then: cultivated code, listen? There is a handful of things that a longtime user like me would like to see in a potential “Things 4”.
On the one hand, I would like to have in the morning / afternoon / the evening as different hourly installations (currently, it’s just day and evening), which could then allow more granularity with control tasks.
A web application is also essential (some of us use Windows, you know?) While a collaborative list option could make things even better for small business owners like me. And hey, a Kanban view would mean that I don’t have to take tasks from the concept and throw them into things too.
