Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Microsoft has #*!@ed up to-do lists on an epic scale

 

I’ve always been a note-taker. From Post-Its to little twists of paper, I jot down reminders a dozen times a day. I know, it’s stupid: Digital Trends itself has a great post on the best productivity apps to get my lists in order, from simple systems like Remember the Milk and Google Tasks to robust life-organizers like Evernote. Technology can solve this problem for me. So I set out recently to get off the analog world of paper notes and into digital — and promptly ran into an immovable object: Microsoft.

Recommended Videos

Microsoft has mucked up to-do lists on a scale you simply can’t imagine, a failure that spans multiple products and teams, like a lil’ bit of salmonella that contaminates an entire factory’s output.

…like a lil’ bit of salmonella that contaminates an entire factory’s output

Yuck. Hear me out.

A year and half ago, the engineers rolled out a beta of Microsoft To-Do, the company’s replacement for the profoundly useful and popular Wunderlist app, which Microsoft bought back in 2015. Wunderlist is still pretty decent, even though Microsoft is very clear that it plans to suck the life out of it before burying it in an unmarked grave in Redmond. (To be fair, those are my words. In Microsoft’s, “Once we are confident that we have incorporated the best of Wunderlist into Microsoft To-Do, we will retire Wunderlist.” It reads better my way.)

So I signed up for Microsoft To-Do a month or two back, and replaced my Post-Its and scraps with tech. And it became clear pretty immediately the enormous gulch that still exists between Wunderlist and Microsoft To-Do. For starters, there’s the Cortana integration. Cortana is supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to Alexa and Siri, and To-Do lists are a key part of making that voice assistant functional. Tap the microphone next to the Cortana icon on your computer and say “Create a Holiday Planning list” and Cortana will make a new list for you … in Wunderlist. It’s the same functionality that has existed since the integration was rolled out in November of 2016, two years ago.

Microsoft To-Do pictured on several platforms
Microsoft To-Do, a tool to help you create a list for anything—for work, home projects or just your groceries. Image used with permission by copyright holder

That’s right, Microsoft’s own signature voice-recognition technology doesn’t recognize Microsoft’s own To-Do app, despite the company’s publicly announced plans to port over the best of Wunderlist. Is the company working to change that? Are the Cortana team and the To-Do team talking to each other? We asked Microsoft this question a week ago. The company declined to go on the record for this story.

Ugh.

Change is coming, thanks to announcements made at an early October event (where Microsoft unveiled the fantastic Surface Pro 6). Unfortunately, those changes are profoundly stupid.

First, Microsoft announced integration with Outlook – a concept that could turn To-Do into something amazing. Outlook is pervasive, like Dunkin Donuts or something. According to Jee Soo Han, a product marketing manager for Microsoft: “While in your inbox, open the tasks pane and drag and drop emails to it on the right-hand side to create a task. This task will sync to Microsoft To-Do with the associated email linked for reference. Now you don’t have to leave Outlook to create a task manually, and you’ll have the email to reference right in the task notes!”

Unfortunately, changes Microsoft plans are profoundly stupid

Great! Except it will only work in Outlook.com when the feature is finally released next month, and for other web versions of Outlook in December. Meanwhile, the same functionality exists today for the vast majority of consumers using the Outlook app on our desktop….. through Wunderlist, of course.

Digital Trends asked Microsoft when this basic functionality would be brought to the To-Do app. The company declined to respond.

Then there’s Microsoft Launcher version 5.0, unveiled at the same event and promising a deep connection between your Android smartphone and your Windows laptop or desktop. One key feature: Microsoft To-Do is built directly into the app. Great! Easy access to my list? I love it. Guess which program Microsoft decided to sync with it? You get a gold star if you guessed Wunderlist.

Launcher 5.0 is especially maddening because it looks virtually identical to the To-Do app itself, yet doesn’t connect with it in anyway. Install ‘em both and you’ll have two different versions of Microsoft To-Do running on the same phone that are unable to talk to each other. In the only meaningful comment Microsoft was willing to make for this article, the company acknowledged this issue: “The to-do list feature in Microsoft Launcher you see currently does not yet integrate with Microsoft To-Do. We are actively working on delivering Microsoft To-Do integration into Microsoft Launcher. We’ll have more to share when we’re ready.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, what about One Note? Does that integrate with To-Do? What about Windows itself? Or the other Office applications, like Word? What about Edge? I’ll let you guess. Microsoft, if you’re listening, tackle these simple asks!  It helps you to get it done, build yourself a To-Do list – just take the hint. Do it in Wunderlist, m’kay?

Jeremy Kaplan
As Editor in Chief, Jeremy Kaplan transformed Digital Trends from a niche publisher into one of the fastest growing…
How Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to take on Apple
An Intel Meteor Lake system-on-a-chip.

It seems like Apple might need to watch out, because Intel and Microsoft are coming for it after the latter two companies reportedly forged a close partnership during the development of Intel Lunar Lake chips. Lunar Lake refers to Intel's upcoming generation of mobile processors that are aimed specifically at the thin and light segment. While the specs are said to be fairly modest, some signs hint that Lunar Lake may have enough of an advantage to pose a threat to some of the best processors.

Today's round of Intel Lunar Lake leaks comes from Igor's Lab. The system-on-a-chip (SoC), pictured above, is Intel's low-power solution made for thin laptops that's said to be coming out later this year. Curiously, the chips weren't manufactured on Intel's own process, but on TSMC's N3B node. This is an interesting development because Intel typically sticks to its own fabs, and it even plans to sell its manufacturing services to rivals like AMD. This time, however, Intel opted for the N3B node for its compute tile.

Read more
Microsoft just discovered the next big evolution in displays
Resident Evil 4 running on the LG UltraGear 45 gaming monitor.

Microsoft is working on a new patent that aims to bring unprecedented levels of control to displays. The new tech, dubbed Pixel Luminesce for Digital Display, allows you to micromanage every single pixel of your display, adjusting the brightness as needed. If and when this makes it out of the development stage, it could end up being huge for all sorts of use cases, and could bring major improvements to some of the best gaming monitors.

The patent application describing the tech, first shared by Windows Report, describes the new technology as something that would enable selective dimming. With Microsoft's new tech, you could decide that one part of the display stays brighter while the rest of it remains unaffected, and this would happen dynamically.

Read more
7 beloved Windows apps that Microsoft has killed over the years
A screenshot of Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft's history is littered with the discontinuation of once-beloved applications. Most recently, WordPad, the renowned text editor app, was conspicuously absent from the latest beta build of Windows 11, indicating an end to its 28-year-long journey. I have fond memories of using the app back in my college days when Microsoft Office was too pricey for me.

WordPad is far from the only app to get canceled by Microsoft over the years. From pioneering productivity tools to nostalgic multimedia players, let's reminisce about some of the most famous applications that Microsoft has consigned to the annals of tech history.
Internet Explorer

Read more