(The)BrainDead? (Hopefully not yet)

Posted by 22111
Oct 24, 2020 at 05:39 PM

Lothar Scholz wrote:
And to TB. Yes i would call this short release cycles renting, i’ve been
>bitten by Curio which totally failed to be useable on MacOS Catalina.
>And no side won’t fix it. Just buy it again.
> >Most Software has just become way too expensive under this conditions.
>Especially everything in Apple Land because Apple doesn’t give a fuck
>about breaking, people are rich and should just buy again and pay Apple
>again 30%. There is no incentive for this evil Tim Crook company for
>long term preservation of anything.
> >Final comment: MindJet is not a competitor for The Brain, neither is
>Tinderbox.

I didn’t expect being with Mr. Scholz (why gratuitious, feckless aggression? just for the group dynamics? why getting some additional insight, instead?), but I am. (I’ll have to read comments on the previous pages though.) Btw what Apple, Google, and even Amazon do, is called, in German biz speak, bring in “Renten” - im not sure if the english term of “annuities” is the right one (it means income from a market position, not from the value of your services), but it seems the Trump government has finally grasped this should end since it’s, obviously, against public interest, i.e. the interest of the people. (“grandiose word”, yeah…) (and that is, worldwide…)

MJ of course is not a competitor for TB, but, as the discussions linked by me show, TB tries to compete with MJ, in lack of better things to offer, for the time being (i.e. when it’s, by necessity albeit, “crippled” (cf. infra))... and also because there’s a big corporate market over there, but that’s illusionary, for TB…

(Here again: Now that Windows (or Apple) laptops / “notebooks” have (when you’re willing to spend almost 2,000 bucks, but that’s the sum of something “regular” plus a mid-range iPad) reached a weight around 1 kg, why iWhatever, not even mentioning Android devices, so why this real folly with “alternative operating systems”, which prevents developers from doing their core work? Is “mid quality” on 2, 3 “platforms” really preferable to highbrow on just one?)
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Some (14? 21?) days ago, a new “contributor” here uttered (I cite from my memory), “I’m very impressed by the highbrow level of discussion here” - which, as we all know, was a lie, since 95 (98?) p.c. of stuff here is descriptions of me-too products, but then, a) he wanted to get some info here, and b), I fully acknowledge the usefulness of those descriptions for crimpers - sorry for not getting along, personally, with run of the mill descriptive discussions; on the other hand, when, some days ago, I have warned anybody reading me here, of buying “TimelineMaker Pro”, I was serious, and in fact, I had trialled TMP because it should soon be available on “bits” again, and sometimes, I had bought for a combi of price and my expectations, and then had been promptly disappointed: when now TMP will appear on “bits”, for its $90 plus VAT, I will NOT buy it, since indeed, being a “specialized software”, which you systematically - but often wrongly - expect to be superior to the “usual things” (here: MS Excel’s “charting” capabilities), it’s simply not worth it, and for somebody who will have delved in those MS Excel timeline functionalities, it’d not even be worth 20 bucks - we’ve got here, again, a situation where, yes, the “specialized” tool “facilitates things”, but then, comes with very un-expected limitations the “generic” solution (here Excel) has not.
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As implied above, I have never been interested in me-too stuff; on the other hand, “you” (i.e. contributors having been present here for 10, 15, even more years than that) know that with TB, I’ve got a love-hate relationship: I fully acknowledge its promises, but then, 10 years or more without even “getting by”, but including crippling the software, well… and then, with an annual subscription nearing 300 bucks (incl. / counting VAT)... (As said above, I suppose - now! - that their “market penetration” isn’t that strong, so that the multiplicator of those 300 bucks minus VAT isn’t as high as they would have hoped, and as some of us would have expected… hence their tries (see the discussion already linked, and further in their forum) to “compete with MJ”, intermittently…).

Since, we all agree here - I didn’t make that point, but various contributors of this forum did - the higher the degree of sophistication, the lesser the “success” for the developer… all this to be explained by the fact that “outliners and such” are expected to be in a price range of 30 to 100 bucks (Ultra Recall, Zoot, MyInfo, Treepad Biz (defunct), MyBase, RightNote… or oven IdeaRover, to remind of one of the truly exotic species…), plus VAT, whilst “corporate software” could easily attain a price of 1,000 or more bucks, plus VAT again, or the respective “rent” prices; so, “crippling” software has been standard, within the last years, in order to reach the “masses”... OneNote, anyone? Or then, Evernote?
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“Crippling”, “making it simple”, also touched InfoSelect; both IS and TB tried - appeared - to be “something special”, by their price. You can buy IS, you can rent it; its rent is in the 2-digit range, which TB’s rent is not; bot are “crippled” now, for the time being (and for obvious lack of means) for TB, whilst the “crippling” of IS seems to be permanent.

And now let’s face it: Whenever we struggle with our “IM” (cf. supra) tasks, we would EASILY pay $1,000 or even a little more, for some REAL FACILITATION / QUALITY enhancement / speed-up / and similar of our work, right? (We’re not the masses, we’re people striving for “something special”.)

And then, “pricing” is a factor; IS’s pricing once was - before its - seemingly (but really?) deliberate - “crippling”, and TB’s always is - it’s got the advantage of the “spacial” (but then, not too-user-influenceable) representation, and then our wishful - no: even MAGICAL! - thinking sets in: It’s 3 times the price of the “ordinary”, of the usual offerings that is, so it MUST REALLY HELP US in our strivings to excellence - and then not…

(“Normfall”, 300€ and more, also is one of those exceptions which “do much more than what you are regularly entitled to expect”; *Whizfolders”, e.g., now under $30, being almost “dead”...)
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Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to bury TB, I’m just saying that I’m unhappy about what we got, and in general (but then, TB’s claims are the very most formidable, so…) - some months ago, I trialled Mr. Schmidt’s “Notebooks”, for Windows, indeed, and it was abysmally bad… in the Apple hemisphere, it seems to be far better indeed…

I would have liked to trial / really use, possibly, ADM (not to be mixed up with the - sorry! - far inferior aml pages) - I was too late, and it seems it’s also a question of “correct marketing of the superior” - probably, that’s also one of “IQ”‘s main problems, together with its abysmal GUI / ergonomics?... I’m not to criticize here, I just mention, with comments…
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25 years ago, I “had”, i.e. had totally naturally realized, - very sophisticated - cloning, “2-panes/trees/items-concurrent”, “editable”, of course, and many, many features more, obviously better, in parts, than IS, unfortunately in that, well, “shit”, i.e. not robust (i.e. a question of memory management of the language itself, I was helpless indeed), programming language Gates’ co-author, Allen (dead now) had then devised and tried to find his fortune in (i.e. something the like of Adobe’s early web programming language, don’t remember its name currently: something clearly intermediate, with all that implies), and now, 25 years later, RN even dares come without cloning (but with links to paragraphs, which I had not, and which also MyInfo has (but of which the cloning is ridiculous, and), but which I “succeed” in “bombing”, every time I trial it for more than just around three minutes), and MyInfo is, as far as I know, all alone in presenting a second pane, not for a tree, not for editing, but at least for “looking at” -

OMG! And then, more and more developers give in - which isn’t quite an incitement for other would-be developers to develop for “Windows only” -, for not having the “manpower” - they’re male, after all, and 1-person ventures - to also develop the according iWhatever or Google-Android tool, whilst “customers”, in our 1 kg-i7-W-Pro (Apple ditto) age, should ask for really intuitive, functional IM tools, instead of demanding mediocrity, spread over at least 3 “platforms”.

TB always had promised that very special “one thing beyond” - which it had only partly delivered many years ago, and instead of having been progressed from that, they even dared receding - as EN did, where the unique (!) USP seem to remain - if you’re willing to spend around 100 bucks p.a. - scanning and character recognition (which both you can get e.g. by Abbyy et al., within the “work space” of your choice…

Mine had been my own thing, up to some 6-, 7,000 items, and then Allen’s overlooks stepped in, and that was it for “marketability”, and then, ActionOutline, then MyInfo (“not robust”, to put it cautiously), then Ultra Recall (which simply wasn’t good enough, conceptionally (but robust, yes, so it’d always be my recommendation to anyone, in the meanwhile), and for the last 10 years or so, I have been developing a system out of around 1,500 AO trees plus NTFS, with some 20,000 or more lines of code… and which is the “prototype”, an approximation only of what a “REAL”, “IDEAL” IM system would have been - it now works far better for me than any “ready-made” tool would have, but considering what we all could have available, if some conceptionally-gifted, “real” developer (or simply one of the latter - UR, anyone? -, had he also had the knack of listening) had done “their work”, in-between: it’s a real pittance.

(As far as I know, on the Apple side, there’s DevonThink and, to a seemingly lesser degree, “Tinderbox” - lots of “conceptional” blah-blah, lesser utility at the end of the day, am I wrong? -, but then, some months ago, DT seems to have abandoned the 3rd pane of its 3-pane user interface: are they all “nuts”, simplifying for the masses, and by that kicking their former possible excellence into the…?)

I, too, feel with Matt, but he should not have lauded my suggestions, late in 2020 - his management should have realized them at least 3 years ago, see the linked threads. ;-) I was aware that I overstressed my dialog partner, but then, TB already had me thrown out of their forum 10, 12, was it 14 (?) years ago. - “Good for you”, some here will now, invariably, say - but people with personpower not listening - it’s all of us here who bear and feel the consequences in our work, NOT really assisted to a point easily imaginable and technically easily attainable, even with today’s means - day after day.

No, TB’s not my (one-directionally-and-delusionary-declared-or-such) “enemy” or similar: they’re just, and provisionally, for the time being, my biggest disappointment in the “industry”, both for their (unfulfilled) claims and their (alleged) means.