Up close with Mountain Lion: Reminders
Why should the iPhone and iPad have all the fun? In Mountain Lion, Apple continues its process of porting over the best features from iOS to the Mac. Among those is an app first introduced with iOS 5: Reminders.
Reminders, of course, is a tool for recording and storing todo lists, tasks, and any other little bits you want to remember. If you’re familiar with the Reminders iOS app, you’ll feel right at home in the Mountain Lion version, which is a near-perfect clone.
As with the iPad version of Reminders, the application presents a list of all your lists on the left, with a faux sheet of wide-ruled looseleaf paper on the right.
Because Reminders can sync via iCloud, your Mac and your iOS device can share one common set of todos. They do so via accounts: In lieu of a Preferences option under the Reminders menu, you’ll find an entry entitled Accounts. Selecting that actually opens the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane of System Preferences. There, you can add any iCloud accounts you’d like to use for syncing Reminders. Reminders also works with CalDAV services including Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar; you can similarly add those accounts in System Preferences.
Making a list
To create a new list, you choose File -> New List, double-click on a blank section within the lists sidebar, or click on the Plus (+) icon at the lower left of the Reminders window. The other buttons down there toggle the list sidebar and a small calendar that indicates the dates for which you have reminders scheduled.
To delete a list, Control- or right-click on it and choose Delete. You can also use that contextual menu to open a list in its own window, or rename it.
You click on lists to navigate between them. If you use a multitouch input device, you can also use two-fingers wipes left and right to navigate across your lists.
When you’re ready to start adding tasks, you again have multiple input options: You can choose File -> New Reminder, click on the next blank line on your list, double-click anywhere below the last task on your list, or click on the Plus (+) icon at the upper right of the Reminders window. As you type in a new task, or after you hover over any task with the mouse for a moment, an i icon appears on the right; click it to configure extra details for your reminder. You can instead double-click a task to accomplish the same thing.
When and where
Among the extras you can set are options for when Reminders should remind you: You can choose to be reminded at a specific date and time, or when you arrive at or leave from a specific location. Reminders in iOS 5 limited location-based reminders to addresses linked to your contacts, though Apple says that’s improved in iOS 6. Mountain Lion already allows you to set those reminders to any address of your choosing.
If you check the At a Location checkbox, you’re then prompted to provide details about the location you’d like to use. You can either enter a contact’s name (provided that contact has an associated address in Contacts) or street address. Then you choose whether you wish to be reminded when you arrive it or depart from that location.
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