MacBook experience...

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 30, 2008 at 12:44 AM

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>Have you had the chance
>to compare Aquamind’s NoteTaker to CircusPonies Notebook? They started out as one
>project, and the two developers split. Since then they seem to have diverged further.
>NoteTaker is said to emphasize information management more than Notebook, which
>tries to be more of an outliner too. This is all hearsay, but at least one poster raved
>about CircusPonies Notebook.
> >Tao is supposed to be the most powerful pure outliner
>on the Mac; Omni the most popular and versatile; Opal might be the most facile, judging
>by its predecessor, Acta. I would be interested in your comparisons with MaxThink,
>NoteMap, and BrainStorm.
> >I recall one of your main concerns was finding an optimal
>writing environment. How does Scrivener compare to what’s available on Windows?

I didn’t spend much time reviewing Notebook, because NoteTaker seemed to have more active development. NoteTaker is all about lists and outlines, too. Like OneNote, each list element can have its own attributes. NoteTaker is definitely not nearly as powerful as OneNote. In fact, I’ve been a little disappointed with it. One feature it has (and it may share this with Notebook—I’m not sure) is that it automatically builds indices of the words in your notebooks for quick reference.

I had read that OmniOutliner handles inline text better than Tao, so I didn’t spend much time looking at the latter, and I’m still reviewing OO. The inline text and fully customizable columns give it a leg up on Brainstorm, NoteMap and MaxThink. Though the things you can do with Brainstorm, you can’t do nearly as readily in OO. Also, MaxThink is more powerful in its “thinking” functions—its ability to quickly view your entries in various ways and reorganize them. Now, I use the word “quickly” advisedly, since I feel MaxThink’s interface is antiquated and nonintuitive, so that I never did get “quick” at it.

OmniOutliner is the closest thing I’ve seen to GrandView—although it lacks some of GVs features, notably its calendar function. It also isn’t as keyboard friendly—at least I haven’t found it to be so as yet.

But I’m still trying it out.

Steve