Year end Outliner/PIM review/roll call

Posted by Paul Korm
Jan 2, 2016 at 02:42 PM

For 2015, I’m pleased with how Curio and iThoughts (all platforms) continue to mature and I anticipate continuing evolution of new features for them.

I think Ulysses has plateaued—in a graceful way. It’ll continue to be a workhorse even with no major new changes—I’ll be glad to be wrong, but it seems The SoulMen are mainly producing tweaks, now.

New discoveries such as MarginNote and Quiver have been delightful, niche tools.

I usually divorce OmniFocus a couple times a year, and did so again in 2015. We’re re-engaged now, as ever, because I just never find a good all-round non-cloud alternative that I trust.f

The AppleWatch I bought is fun, but clearly a “never again” moment. The latest iterations of iPhones and iPads seem to offer few real-world benefits—the Apple fan-bloggers are bending over backwards to flog the new products—it’s a bit embarrassing to read some of the claims for 3D Touch, e.g., I think Apple maybe has run out of paradigms to shift. But, it must be nice to reach a plateau as the richest corporate in the world.

Disappointments include NovaMind which began 2015 promising major features on all platforms then went into radio silence after collecting upgrade fees for these features, and never delivering them. NovaMind cloud is a standalone project that has little value as a result, and NovaMind iPad is still vaporware. I’m sure I’ll continue to be a sucker for pre-paying enthusiastic developers for features that never appear (MailMate 2—now about 2 years past due; Butler—now defunct, etc.) because I like indie developers.

For 2016 I’m looking forward to DEVONthink 3 (cool advances there), Scrivener iPad (I hope I hope), TheBrain 9 (looking good in alpha testing). There’s no danger of loss-of-CRIMP.

Happy new year, all!