Notefrog Pro on Bits du Jour today ...

Posted by Hugh
Aug 30, 2009 at 10:13 PM

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Steve, thanks for the overview.
> >I am curious why you did not mention the Omni group of
>products? Have they been outpaced by the other software you
>mentioned?
> >Thanks.
> >Daly

Daly

Blithely following Steve Z. off-topic, I would endorse all he says about the Mac platform and Mac applications (with a slightly stronger recommendation of Scrivener of which I’ve been a perhaps tediously long-term fan - the developer has been very open about the timescale of his version 2.)

Personally, I also like the Omni products quite a lot. All of them are still maturing (with the possible exception of OmniGraffle, which on the Mac is almost certainly the best of the diagramming breed ? not that it has many competitors on the platform ? and may rival Visio on Windows.)

None of the other Omni applications is yet quite there ? but they’re on the way. Omnifocus, as I’m sure you’re aware, is one of the most sophisticated GTD-biased task managers on either platform, but is still developing, and OmniOutliner has a clean and clear UI but is less powerful than TAO. OmniPlan is rather a good project manager at the simpler end of the spectrum (especially for non-project managers), but is still lacking functionality compared with rivals.

But the key thing about Omni it seems to me—relating to something else that Steve wrote ? concerns its organisation. It’s a corporation, not a one-man band. As such, it’s not of course an 800-lb MS-style gorilla, nor even a Steve Jobs orang-utang, more a 25-lb woolly monkey… But it does have a number of employees, they appear to be full-time, their profile is lively and friendly towards their customers, and they continue to churn out betas and upgrades on a regular basis. So there’s a strong sense of permanence about them and the development of their products which seems to inspire confidence in users.

In this user anyway.