Aquaminds Notetaker

Posted by Dr Dog
Sep 15, 2019 at 07:12 AM

Beck wrote:

>satis wrote:
>>At this point in time I think developers who don’t develop apps that
>can
>>be easily accessed on mobile are going to find their numbers of
>>customers continue to shrink. In 2019 I simply would never consider an
>>app like Curio or Tinderbox, no matter how good. I’d take a less
>>full-featured app whose data I can access and edit from a tablet or
>>phone any day.
> >I’m moving in the opposite direction, lately.
> >I can email, grade, and in some cases edit on the go, but to do most of
>my work, I’m finding that I need (1) to be in a physical environment
>that supports my directed attention; and (2) with specific tools nearby,
>one of which is my computer (others are my iPad, paper notebook, at
>certain times a whiteboard, etc.). I’ve begun to let go of the
>requirement that an app needs to work any device and am instead making
>peace with seeking exemplar apps that work exceptionally well on the
>device in which they’re intended.
>

Me too - I was pretty excited a couple of years ago when I got an iPad Pro and (and binge-read MacStories articles) and started to think it could be a main machine. But then I didn’t get on as well as I thought I would with Scrivener on iOS, I began to find that my research/writing project planning was easier with SheetPlanner than on Aeon (which I tried to use because of the iOS link-up), and because of the complexity of the historical research for my projects, I have been happily tethered to Tinderbox for nearly a decade and *that* is never going to get to iOS. And so the horses for courses protocol kicked in, for platforms as well as apps. So I use the iPad Pro a lot as a ‘think-pad’, with Ulysses and Bear for exploratory prose and notes; it also has my calendars and Things - for things I can, or prefer to, do away from the main office, but I still think of the office as the place where the heavy-duty research gets done. And, like Beck, I have an extensive analogue support structure than in my case is too messy or large or simply too expansively visual ever to be portable. I also have a dreadful butterfly mind, and being in a specific physical ‘workspace’ helps the focus.

But I realise that this is probably becoming a minority position overall. My daughter - a student - and my own students wouldn’t dream of being office-bound (although graduates seem to be happier with this than undergrads - maybe because they get dedicated, although shared, workspaces). Their reading and their writing and research and communications are all mobile - and most seem to prefer the big iPad to laptops. I couldn’t imagine how to work without Tinderbox (and I can’t really imagine what a less fully featured derivative of it could be) but my daughter doesn’t really see the point of it. And Satis is right: their preferences and needs and not my case seem to be the focus of most app development - for good or ill (I was an early-adopter of Day One - now I can’t bear to look at it’s bloated narrow spaces and so use the elegant Diarly; my daughter loves DO).

I think the physical really does interact heavily with the mental in a number of ways here. Vive la difference.