Back to Mac

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 6, 2010 at 08:12 PM

Hi, Daly,

You’re where I was two years ago when I switched back to a Mac for my personal use (still on a PC at the office). Luckily from a CRIMP overload standpoint there are fewer choices on the Mac than for Windows. Anyway, for what it is worth, here is my two cents:

The can’t miss application for any CRIMPer with intentions of writing is, of course, Scrivener. It’s a dream application, with one of the most active user groups I’ve ever seen.

I wouldn’t bother with Mori, as the developer—not the original developer, but someone who took over development a couple of years ago—seems not to have any interest in further improvement, and I found it a little buggy when I tried it.

OmniOutliner is probably the second most powerful outliner for Mac, after TAO (and now NEO, if that has been officially released, by the same developer as for TAO). OmniOutliner is a little more user friendly, but in truth I haven’t warmed up to either one. Since I purchased Tinderbox, I use that for my outlining, but I wouldn’t recommend spending all that money just to use the outliner mode.

The other unusual choice as an outliner, one worth checking out, is Taskpaper. It is developed by the original developer of Mori (which used to be called Hog Bay Notebook or something like that). Taskpaper doesn’t provide columns, but it does allow you to tag any item. It’s quite ingenious and very elegant in its simplicity.

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

The problem with Mac software, as I see it, is so many of these developers have turned their attention to creating iPad apps. I’m not sure how much further development their Mac apps will get, at least in the short term. That’s another reason to choose Scrivener as Keith has stated in no uncertain terms that he’s not interested in developing for the iPad.

Steve