Mac Saga Ending

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 12, 2010 at 03:41 PM

Thanks to everyone who responded to my various posts about the Mac and my experiences with the software.

The Mac will be history by the end of the week; I am going to Staples this afternoon to look at PC laptops running Windows 7. If anyone has suggestions, I will gratefully receive them.

When push came to shove, I have neither the time nor the money to invest in learning Mac programs, most of which seem to be less than what is available on the PC. Mac’s reputation is overstated in some ways, and it looks to me like some developers are coasting on Mac’s past successes.

With the exception of DevonThink, the software available on the Mac in terms of outlining and information processing does not justify the premium in price to buy the Mac, or the decreased functionality. I was somewhat taken aback that DevonThink overstated the number of free hours before a 30-day registration was required (I had not even had the Mac for the number of hours of free run-time DevonThink offered), and that when this little fact was brought to their attention, no apology or explanation was offered. On the other hand, the 30-day free license was provided very quickly.

Yesterday I spent many hours comparing and contrasting MyInfo and UltraRecall with the various Mac outliners I had downloaded. I have also looked again at Infoqube - which I believe has a positive, and profitable future.

In terms of intuitive functioning, range of features, and features actually doing what they are purported to do, My Info and UltraRecall outperformed the Mac products.

In raw power, UR probably has an edge over MI; however, in ease of use, clarity of help files, and responsiveness of the developer, Petko, MyInfo has an edge as fas as I am concerned.

This week, also, Petko confirmed to me that the next service upgrade of MI will allow for multiple open windows. This feature in itself is fairly rare among information and outliner programs, but is very valuable to anyone doing writing and research.

Having set up an information structure in NoteBook, I have replicated the headings in an MI Topic, added to it, created appropriate columns, utilized MI’s task features, etc. Working within MI is faster than NoteBook.

I agree with a writer on the MI forums who made the point in recent days that MI is under-rated among PC information/ouliner programs.

I will miss the opportunity to use Scrivener, learning about its features. I took a quick look at it, and was interested. But I am told it is coming to the PC. I realize that for the writing I am doing now, I do not need its power.

Similarly, I do not need all the power of DevonThink - though at some future point I may. EverNote and Surfulater can, and will hold my web-based material. One hopes EverNote will get the point, though, that there is more to information management than collecting data and working on every operating system.
Surfulater has a neat way of handling items with more than one tag, and Neville is talking about syncing to the cloud.

So that’s where it’s at. Thanks again for the feedback during the last week.

Daly