20 Years of Things with Werner Jainek

Werner Jainek, co-founder and CEO of Cultured Code, sat down with Mac Power Users for the first time to discuss nearly 20 years of building Things, the iconic task management app. The conversation covered the company's origins, its deliberate independence, the craft behind the app's celebrated design, and how a small team of 11 people navigates new frontiers like Apple Intelligence and AI without losing its identity.

From scratching an itch to an accidental iPhone app

Things began in 2007 as a Mac project, born from the founders' own frustration. The "Getting Things Done" movement was peaking, but the Mac had no serious task management software. "It was scratching our own itch," Jainek said. "We thought, let's try to do the best we can to bring personal task management to the Mac."

But the iPhone launched mid-development, and the team made a sharp pivot. "Instead of finishing the Mac app, we started developing the iPhone app," Jainek recalled. That iPhone version shipped first, even though the Mac version was started earlier—a mirror of Apple's own story of prioritizing the phone over a tablet concept. The early Mac landscape, Jainek noted, was sparse: most users thought managing to-dos meant using iCal's tiny sidebar. Things, along with OmniFocus, arrived to fill that void.

The operating system: independence, craft, and a mathematical sync engine