I've been following this forum with great interest for the last six months or so with great delight since I share many of the obsessions of the community. I am a historian working with a combination of biblioscape, brainstorm, whizfolders, microsoft word, and I've been playing around with zoot. Lately, however, I have become obsessed with two programs for the mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any experience with these? Please tell me that they are not that great and I should stop fantasizing about switching platforms when really I should be writing.

Lately, however, I have become obsessed
with two programs for the mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any
experience with these? Please tell me that they are not that great and I should stop
fantasizing about switching platforms when really I should be writing.

Sorry, Matty. But Scrivener is by far the best writing app I have ever used.

Franz

I agree.

Buy a Mac, Matty. You won't regret it. I haven't.

Scrivener is great. I used a bunch of Windows writing and outlining tools, and was almost happy that my choices were narrowed after I switched to a Mac, about 6 months ago now. Check out Journler too, and if you do lots of outlining, OmniOutliner is tops. You won't regret making the jump.

Scrivener is a really nice app, there's no denying it. DevonThink on the other hand I think is a little overrated. It needs an update... it is actively developed and one is due down the pipe any time now, but until then, its UI is less intuitive than some of its competitors (Yojimbo, Yep/Leap, EagleFiler, etc.). Note that the "artificial intelligence" feature they tout is a classifier algorithm. That might help you to pin it down if you haven't tried it. Even if you don't like DevonThink though, there are an embarrassment of riches in terms of actively developed Mac apps to choose from.

Since this is an outliner forum, it's worth mentioning that OmniOutliner is pretty much the best single pane outliner on any platform (especially now that NoteMap has ceased active development and doesn't have columns). If you want something a little more feature-rich (not that OO is not feature-rich, but I'm talking over the top, MORE-inspired), there is always TAO (no relation to TAO Notes for Windows). No question, TAO is the most full-featured single pane outliner currently available on any platform. It's not as nice to use as OmniOutliner though.

So even though I'm not the biggest DevonThink fan, I really would suggest a Mac. There has been an explosion of software development on the Mac in the last three years, perhaps because it's become the platform of choice for a lot of geeks, and there is a lot of really great software. OmniFocus is a pretty good stab at Ecco. And there's no question in my mind that Leopard is much better than Vista. I hate sounding like a platform advocate, because I'm not, but on a rational assessment the Mac is a good place to be right now for a whole lot of reasons.

-- Chris


Matty wrote:

I've been following this forum with great interest for the last six months or so with
great delight since I share many of the obsessions of the community. I am a historian
working with a combination of biblioscape, brainstorm, whizfolders, microsoft
word, and I've been playing around with zoot. Lately, however, I have become obsessed
with two programs for the mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any
experience with these? Please tell me that they are not that great and I should stop
fantasizing about switching platforms when really I should be writing.

Jonathan Probber wrote:

I used a bunch of Windows writing and outlining tools, and was
almost happy that my choices were narrowed after I switched to a Mac,

But not that narrow... Before I released Opal I was looking at a list of about 30 roughly comparable products that were available on the Mac. I think there are now more (especially if you take a more inclusive approach -- I didn't include writing software like Scrivener).

Speaking of Opal, there's currently a prerelease version that takes advantage of new Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) features. We should release it before too long.

Ask a question like that and you're bound to get encouragement to switch. Microsoft is the monopolist. Nobody has a great interest in its defense. Your sample is also biased, because those who have already made a Mac commitment are the ones in the best position to respond.

Nobody answers that Scrivener is good, but ignores the other side of the equation. Are BrainStorm and Zoot more or less valuable than DevonThink and Scrivener?

There are other matters to be concerned about when embracing the Macintosh. The biggest one, generally unmentioned, concerns the companies' policies on backward compatibility.

Anyway, before jumping platforms, check out the new MaxThink, the true state of the art pure outliner, guaranteed not remotely available on the Mac.



Matty wrote:

I've been following this forum with great interest for the last six months or so with
great delight since I share many of the obsessions of the community. I am a historian
working with a combination of biblioscape, brainstorm, whizfolders, microsoft
word, and I've been playing around with zoot. Lately, however, I have become obsessed
with two programs for the mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any
experience with these? Please tell me that they are not that great and I should stop
fantasizing about switching platforms when really I should be writing.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Nobody answers that Scrivener is good, but ignores the other
side of the equation. Are BrainStorm and Zoot more or less valuable than DevonThink
and Scrivener?

should read:

Everyone answers that Scrivener...

NoteMap hasn't ceased active development. Recently in fact there was an upgrade, although the changes were substantially cosmetic,bu inclded stronger ties to the litigation products, which includes a column-enabled specialized outliner. Perhaps it would be correct to say that develoment has been paused, even though even that much would be inference. I think it likely and anticipated by CaseSoft, now a division of Lexis/Nexis that plugging the outlner into the legal suite will ultimately stimulate demand for NoteMap.

Anyway, no announcement of cessaton of development and a definite signal of intent to develop the product (but without a known roadmap). All that can definitely be inferred is that the development of NoteMap has been slow. My guess is that it has a rosier future than OmniOutliner.

Chris Thompson wrote:

Since this is an outliner forum, it's worth mentioning that OmniOutliner is
pretty much the best single pane outliner on any platform (especially now that
NoteMap has ceased active development and doesn't have columns).

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

NoteMap hasn't ceased active development. Recently in fact there was an upgrade, although the changes were substantially cosmetic,bu inclded stronger ties to the litigation products, which includes a column-enabled specialized outliner.

I really doubt that NoteMap will have any upgrade. Reasons:

Examining the actual files in the program folder, I found that, with one exception, the most recent date was January, 2007. The exception was the file "license.txt," no doubt to add the Lexis-Nexis name.

It would be trivially easy to fix the MS WORD export bug, but it hasn't been done.

I received an email about it months ago with a phone number to call. I called it. It was actually a pitch to sell me the version I already have. The salesman claimed that it would be further upgraded, so I suggested that he post to this Web site asking for features people would want to see in an upgraded version. No such post ever occurred.

-c

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Ask a question like that and you're bound to get encouragement to switch. Microsoft is
the monopolist. Nobody has a great interest in its defense. Your sample is also
biased, because those who have already made a Mac commitment are the ones in the best
position to respond.

Nobody answers that Scrivener is good, but ignores the other
side of the equation. Are BrainStorm and Zoot more or less valuable than DevonThink
and Scrivener?

There are other matters to be concerned about when embracing the
Macintosh. The biggest one, generally unmentioned, concerns the companies'
policies on backward compatibility.

Anyway, before jumping platforms, check out
the new MaxThink, the true state of the art pure outliner, guaranteed not remotely
available on the Mac.



Matty wrote:
>I've been following this forum with great
interest for the last six months or so with
>great delight since I share many of the
obsessions of the community. I am a historian
>working with a combination of
biblioscape, brainstorm, whizfolders, microsoft
>word, and I've been playing
around with zoot. Lately, however, I have become obsessed
>with two programs for the
mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any
>experience with these? Please
tell me that they are not that great and I should stop
>fantasizing about switching
platforms when really I should be writing.

I am in the possibly happy position of running Windows on one machine and Macintosh OS 10.5 on another. I have licences for Zoot, Scrivener and DevonThink, and a copy of Ecco. Whilst recommending the Macintosh platform, I try not merely to post-justify a leap of faith.

In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as you can get; only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a "text-sippet manipulator/notes outliner", and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also unique; there is no drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I've probably tried them all!

DevonThink's current version is in some respects somewhat long in the tooth, as previously pointed out, but if you want a heavyweight personal file manager that takes classification logic to its furthest conclusion and is demonstrably stable and acceptably quick with thousands of files and millions of words, there's probably none better.

I don't have a licence for Brainstorm, but I trialled it some years ago. I thought it was a perfectly good piece of outlining software (though at the time I preferred NoteMap). But having used OmniOutliner Pro, I think it's better, and its development cycle is certainly faster than either (the Omni Group being a notably vigorous and expanding developer).

Omnifocus has been mentioned. Although it can't challenge Ecco as a fully-featured PIM, it's an impressive task outliner that's only the latest in a large number of such tools available on the Macintosh, several of which are at least as useful as MyLife Organized or Achieve Planner.

For me, though, what is most attractive about the Macintosh platform is not individual applications or even the OS itself (Leopard seems to be more nimble than Vista). What impresses me most is that I can see that if these applications lose their edge or die, there will soon be others to replace them that are just as good or better. To mix metaphors, the platform appears to be a relatively more fertile one for medium-to-small developers than Windows. Why this is so, I'm not in a postion to say, although, yes, Microsoft's much smaller presence in the Mac-world probably has something to do with it. It's true that backwards compatibility is an issue and Apple itself appears to be not immune from MS-like behaviour on occasions, but these disadvantages don't seem to deter developers or their customers - witness the writing niche.

And of course, since Mac went Intel, all Windows programmes (including MaxThink) can be available on the Mac using Boot Camp or Parallels - whilst the reverse is not possible without significant technical ingenuity and patience, and a willingness to defy Macintosh's licence.

Stephen is right, the question was poorly worded. I'm not so much interested in the differences between platforms as whether people had experience to share about scrivener and devonthink. I have heard nothing but raves about Scrivener, so the responses here were not too much of a surprise. What intrigues me about devonthink is its integrated OCR. So much of my research is in pdf form that is not searchable. The idea of having my own searchable database seems very powerful to me. It looks to me that devonthink handles different document types almost as well as Onenote with much stronger outlining/organizational/search capabilities. My problem right now is that I use Onenote for research that does not easily translate into text, whizfolders for material that I am going to actively work with in a writing project, and zoot for material that needs to be handled using sophisticated organizational tools. It would be lovely to be able to do all that in a single program...

It does seem to me that there is a lot of extremely powerful software geared towards research and writing that is being developed exclusively for the mac. I'm not about to run out and drop a couple grand for a new computer just to feed my crimpish tendencies, but it does seem likely that my next computer will run os 10 with parallels.

As for Maxthink... you can put me in the column of people who just don't get it. For whatever reason I can't get my head around the two-pane interface. For the kind of work it does I find brainstorm to be fantastically intuitive to use. BTW, the new update of brainstorm is nothing revolutionary, but they have added a couple of nice features. Especially welcome is the ability to mark 6 different locations to "throw" to.

cheers,

Matt

Hugh Pile wrote:

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>Ask a question like that and you're bound to get
encouragement to switch. Microsoft is
>the monopolist. Nobody has a great interest
in its defense. Your sample is also
>biased, because those who have already made a Mac
commitment are the ones in the best
>position to respond.
>
>Nobody answers that
Scrivener is good, but ignores the other
>side of the equation. Are BrainStorm and
Zoot more or less valuable than DevonThink
>and Scrivener?
>
>There are other
matters to be concerned about when embracing the
>Macintosh. The biggest one,
generally unmentioned, concerns the companies'
>policies on backward
compatibility.
>
>Anyway, before jumping platforms, check out
>the new
MaxThink, the true state of the art pure outliner, guaranteed not remotely

>available on the Mac.
>
>
>
>Matty wrote:
>>I've been following this forum with
great
>interest for the last six months or so with
>>great delight since I share many
of the
>obsessions of the community. I am a historian
>>working with a combination
of
>biblioscape, brainstorm, whizfolders, microsoft
>>word, and I've been
playing
>around with zoot. Lately, however, I have become obsessed
>>with two
programs for the
>mac, Devonthink and Scrivener. Does anyone have any

>>experience with these? Please
>tell me that they are not that great and I should
stop
>>fantasizing about switching
>platforms when really I should be writing.


I am in the possibly happy position of running Windows on one machine and Macintosh
OS 10.5 on another. I have licences for Zoot, Scrivener and DevonThink, and a copy of
Ecco. Whilst recommending the Macintosh platform, I try not merely to post-justify a
leap of faith.

In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as you can get;
only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a "text-sippet manipulator/notes
outliner", and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also unique; there is no
drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I've probably tried them
all!

DevonThink's current version is in some respects somewhat long in the tooth,
as previously pointed out, but if you want a heavyweight personal file manager that
takes classification logic to its furthest conclusion and is demonstrably stable
and acceptably quick with thousands of files and millions of words, there's probably
none better.

I don't have a licence for Brainstorm, but I trialled it some years ago.
I thought it was a perfectly good piece of outlining software (though at the time I
preferred NoteMap). But having used OmniOutliner Pro, I think it's better, and its
development cycle is certainly faster than either (the Omni Group being a notably
vigorous and expanding developer).

Omnifocus has been mentioned. Although it
can't challenge Ecco as a fully-featured PIM, it's an impressive task outliner
that's only the latest in a large number of such tools available on the Macintosh,
several of which are at least as useful as MyLife Organized or Achieve Planner.

For
me, though, what is most attractive about the Macintosh platform is not individual
applications or even the OS itself (Leopard seems to be more nimble than Vista). What
impresses me most is that I can see that if these applications lose their edge or die,
there will soon be others to replace them that are just as good or better. To mix
metaphors, the platform appears to be a relatively more fertile one for
medium-to-small developers than Windows. Why this is so, I'm not in a postion to say,
although, yes, Microsoft's much smaller presence in the Mac-world probably has
something to do with it. It's true that backwards compatibility is an issue and Apple
itself appears to be not immune from MS-like behaviour on occasions, but these
disadvantages don't seem to deter developers or their customers - witness the
writing niche.

And of course, since Mac went Intel, all Windows programmes
(including MaxThink) can be available on the Mac using Boot Camp or Parallels - whilst
the reverse is not possible without significant technical ingenuity and patience,
and a willingness to defy Macintosh's licence.

Hugh Pile wrote:

And of course, since Mac went Intel, all Windows programmes
(including MaxThink) can be available on the Mac using Boot Camp or Parallels - whilst
the reverse is not possible without significant technical ingenuity and patience,
and a willingness to defy Macintosh's licence.

Not entirely true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware

I have used this software to run Windows under Linux. It did a pretty good job. Can't imagine it wouldn't do a good job with Mac OS.

Tom S.
Tom S.

Out of respect for Apple's licensing terms, VMWare will not virtualize MacOS on Windows machines. (Leopard Server however can be virtualized since its license allows for virtualization.) Of course, you can virtualize Windows instances on Macs, assuming you have a Windows license that allows it (some versions of Vista don't).

There are unconventional ways to get MacOS running on generic boxes if you fall within a narrow range of hardware options, but it's not worth the hassle. You also miss out on a lot of niceties (MagSafe, keyboard lighting, the headphone jack that detects when you've pulled out your headphones and mutes immediately if that's what you want, FireWire target disk mode, etc.).

-- Chris


Tom S. wrote:

>the reverse is not possible without significant technical ingenuity and
patience,
>and a willingness to defy Macintosh's licence.

Not entirely
true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware

I have used this software to run
Windows under Linux. It did a pretty good job. Can't imagine it wouldn't do a good job
with Mac OS.

While DevonThink will do what you want, there are other options as well. Adobe Acrobat Pro for instance will OCR PDFs that are not searchable. That's the main reason I use it actually. Acrobat Pro's text recognition engine is very good, however if you enable the option to transform the document into vectors (rather than store as PDF+text, i.e. not changing the document visually, just embedding the OCR text behind the scenes), it's not all that hot. There are better options if that's what you want.

-- Chris

Matty wrote:

What intrigues me about devonthink is
its integrated OCR. So much of my research is in pdf form that is not searchable. The
idea of having my own searchable database seems very powerful to me.

Hugh Pile wrote:

In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as you can get;
only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a "text-sippet manipulator/notes
outliner", and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also unique; there is no
drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I've probably tried them
all!

I don't know about the usability of statements like the last sentence above. It seems to me that if a program is that great, it is easy enough to say why. Harder in some instances than others but never a formidable expository task.

It isn't hard to make an a priori case that Scrivener cannot be so great. First, it tries to manage a writing project from start to finish in a single application. It is not, by pretension, a mere drafting tool. Generally you cannot get the best of all worlds using a jack of all trades tool. It is rather what someone who knows nothing about stereo systems (like me) might do when buying a pre-assembled set of components. Those in the know always buy separate components and I think the same goes for work tools. To get a competent all in one program for $39 is literally too good to be true.

From its web site, Scrivener has two main writing/organization tools: 1) an outliner; and 2) a corkboard. I'll stick for the moment with the outliner. What outlining features does it have? That nobody is too interested in spelling such features out should lead to suspicion that there is really something there besides the fluff.

If the outliner is not well-featured, who wants to use it as part of a writing project. Some will settle for an outliner less that the best in exchange for the integration, but not a truly puny or sub-modern outliner. This goes back to the matter concerning packages intended to cover all phases of work.

I have a speculation as to why programming on the Mac seems more fertile than on Windows. Apple has never had any concern with backward compatibility. Mac OS X left OS 9 programs completely unusable. The huge waste concerned Apple not in the least. Windows, on the other hand, carries the burden of maintaining backward compatibility with Windows 98 - or is it 95? Anyway, it goes back through a number of major revisions. I imagine backward compatibility imposes a considerable burden on programmers, who must incorporate all the workarounds that allow the program to work on earlier versions of Windows.

Stephen,

prompted out my period of lurking (I've been ill and moved house, and not really had the time for a while)

It isn't hard to make an a priori case that Scrivener cannot be so great.

As a great fan of Brainstorm and Zoot (and Ecco in the past) Scrivener is doing something very different, and I haven't come across anything on the Mac that is as good as Brainstorm and Zoot in terms of manipulating outlines or managing data.

For users into the sophisticated use of Outliners (as I presume many in this forum are) then Scrivener would be a disappointment. Nor is it much use as data repository, hence the many discussions on the Scrivener forum about DevonThink and TinderBox plus other programs such as EagleFiler. And again from the forum content there is an assumption that the Scrivener content will be moved to a word processor for finishing off.

I am not a sophisticated user of outlines, finding that I tend to spend time with a mindmap to get the key ideas sorted out, then move to an outline to expand some of the text. The structure by that time is fairly fixed in my mind and I then tend to expand the document in a linear manner.

The cork board in Scrivener woks well for me as I can fill in the 3x5 cards in a random fashion with each card representing a key idea then shuffle them around to change the order. These are then linked to each outline heading and I can add notes, and use them as reference while writing. i can add body text and and move the outline around either via the cards or the outline view. There are also some tools to tag parts of the outline so you pull all the outline that refers to the same topic together to check for duplication or inconsistencies. Plus several tools of this sort which I am still learning.

Scrivener also handles graphics well and this is important to me as so much of my writing tends to centre around graphs from statistical analysis.

For me, it seems to have struck the right balance of capabilities to make it one of my favourite programs and I have added it to my small list (Brainstorm, Zoot and Ecco) of the best programs I have ever used. Certainly in terms of a "writing" tool its the best I have ever used.

DevonThink, which I also bought when I acquired my first Mac a few months ago, is proving potentially useful, but I am finding it clunky and complicated. Hopefully this will improve as I find the time to learn it. As with Windows where I never managed to find anything as good as Zoot, I fear the same is true for the Mac.

From my explorations so far, anyone using Brainstorm or/and Zoot will not find full replacements on the Mac. Of course it is always possible to run these on the Mac using Parallels, and I am running a few Windows only programs using Parallels.

I have a
speculation as to why programming on the Mac seems more fertile than on Windows. Apple
has never had any concern with backward compatibility. Mac OS X left OS 9 programs
completely unusable. The huge waste concerned Apple not in the least. Windows, on the
other hand, carries the burden of maintaining backward compatibility with Windows
98 - or is it 95? Anyway, it goes back through a number of major revisions. I imagine
backward compatibility imposes a considerable burden on programmers, who must
incorporate all the workarounds that allow the program to work on earlier versions of
Windows.

I am not sure about this burden, I was forced to upgrade from Windows 98SE, to Windows 2000, and then to Windows XP, simply because several programs I use could not be run on the earlier versions. It is also reasonably common to see an older version of a Windows program still being available for download (but no longer supported) for people using older versions of Windows. Indeed something I have also seen with the Mac, where the OS9 version is still available but no longer being developed or supported.

Graham

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Hugh Pile wrote:
>
>
>
>In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as
you can get;
>only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a "text-sippet
manipulator/notes
>outliner", and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also
unique; there is no
>drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I've
probably tried them
>all!

I don't know about the usability of statements like the
last sentence above. It seems to me that if a program is that great, it is easy enough to
say why. Harder in some instances than others but never a formidable expository task.

Fair enough, Stephen. My comment was insufficiently expository (and analytical) - though I felt in writing it that I'd already written enough about what I see as the virtues of Scrivener in previous threads here.

Almost needless to say, I do endorse all that Graham has to say about this application, both negative and positive. In addition, here are a couple of other positive points:

- the integration and useability of its Quicktime interface, split-screen and full-screen modes (respectively of use to transcribers, translators and procrastinators...)

- its import and export capabilities, into and out of MS Word, for example, preserving annotations and footnotes, which make "round-tripping" between Scr. and a word-processor possible (when dealing with editors, for example)

- little touches, like its semi-translucent scratch-pad, its snap-shot function (a simple type of versioning), its "heads-up display" of project and document notes and other meta-data, and its annotations in "ghost" mode (which dims the brightness of in-line annotations until your cursor hovers over them)

- the extent of the functionality of its user-interface - it's quite common on its forums for someone to come up with a suggestion for change, only to discover the improvement is already embodied - this is particularly common with keyboard shortcuts, of which there's an abundance

- the extent and detail of its documentation, which IME is very unusual for such a tool (help files, tutorial, large FAQ, video, forums) - compare, say, Zoot's documentation, especially at a similar stage of maturity - the challenge for users is often not in finding that a particular function that they need doesn't exist, but in finding the time to learn about it...

- the clarity of vision and responsiveness of its developer, who usually answers any issue within a few hours

No Windows drafting tool has all these features (plus those Graham has listed), and is at the same time stable to the point of trustworthiness for long-form documents. Even MS Word, which IME is very good for short-form writing and day-to-day document layout, has well-discussed question-marks over its stability when handling long documents. Scrivener does not have such question-marks.

A point about DevonThink. I agree with Chris: there are other ways of managing OCR'd PDFs on either the Windows or Mac platform that might be at least as useable and value-for-money as DevonThink. Nor are DT's outlining functions, other than as a database manager, or its writing functions anything to write home about. I believe that DT's main pluses lie with its stability, speed, capacity and classification algorithms when storing, indexing and searching large numbers of files, OCR'd or not. But if you do go down the DT route, and have a lot of paper that needs to be digitised on a frequent basis, IME a Fujitsu ScanSnap for Windows or Macintosh (I think 510 is the lastest model) is a worthwhile investment, and pairs well with DT Pro Office.

Did you see these threads on the Scrivener forum, Matty? They were kicked off by historians:

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1795&highlight=historian

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1317&highlight=historian

P.S. In the litany of Scrivener attributes above, I forgot to include two of the most useful: the ability to merge very easily one or more chunks of text, temporarily or permanently, and the ability to split a longer passage into numerous pieces, again very simply.

Meant "... two or more... ".

Of course. : - )

Matty wrote:

Please tell me that they are not that great and I should stop
fantasizing about switching platforms when really I should be writing.

Having been woken from my temporary hibernation from this forum and responded to a post from Stephen, I feel I should also comment on your original post.

If you have read my other post you will see that I am very impressed with Scrivener, and it has several features which make it the best tool I have come across for pulling together a paper or article. There are some similar tools for Windows such as liquid story binder http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/ which I trialled at one time, but for reasons I can't remember didn't suit me - but worth looking at. I know it says its designed for fiction writing, but I wouldn't let that put you off having a look.

DevonThink I am less convinced about. I bought DevonAgent at the same time, and in theory it should provide an all in one data management tool, and maybe it will if I put enough work into it. I was put off by its failure to import my emails as that was one of the reasons I bought it. The demo is limited to importing a small number of emails, which imported perfectly, but once bought and registered I discovered it crashed on anything more than a couple of hundred emails (Eagle Filer on the other hand imported them fine). Having said that I still think it shows promise, but I'm not convinced it has any properties that lifts it above the alternatives available on Windows. then again, I haven't really explored it fully.

The other issue is that Macs are very different to Windows and as well as leaning Scrivener and DevonThink there is a steep learning curve getting up to speed with OSx. In spite of all the hype, Macs are not that intuitive for anyone with an in depth experience of Windows. But in general, while I find myself cursing windows rather a lot, in contrast, as I have become familiar with OSx, I have found myself repeatedly muttering "that's clever" "this is good" "I like this" etc.

So I am certainly happier with the Mac than I have ever been with Windows, but whether its worth the money and effort to switch, I'm not sure. I wouldn't switch for DevonThink.

Scrivener on the other hand is a bit special and if it suits the way you work, I doubt there is anything better. I am also finding the Mac a slightly better working environment than Windows.

Graham

Just a couple of followup points to various posters.... I definitely agree with Hugh about the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners. One of those will change the way you work with physical documents, regardless of what software you use. The ScanSnaps also come with a license for Acrobat Professional, which is valuable in itself. Unfortunately Fujitsu persists in selling "Mac" and "PC" versions of the same scanner, differing only in color and in bundled software, so one has to have an OS in mind before buying.

Regarding Stephen's comments about the low prices of Mac software seeming "too good to be true"... there are several factors that go into it. First, for a variety of reasons Mac users tend to buy more software. If you look at Adobe's sales for Lightroom, which is available for both Windows and Mac, they've actually sold more units total of the Mac version, despite a 20 fold difference in market share for the two platforms, and despite the existence of a competing product on the Mac (Aperture). Second, though undoubtedly related, there is more competition in the Mac market, keeping prices down. Third, the Cocoa programming interface is just a lot easier to deal with for smaller teams of developers, increasing productivity without driving up costs. It's also considerably richer and better thought out, having the benefit of nearly 15 years of experience (dating back to the NeXT days). For instance, every application using the Cocoa text framework got inline grammar checking and smart quotes for free when Leopard shipped, without needing to be recompiled or changed. I find it quite beautiful that I now have access to on the fly grammar checking in OmniOutliner, even though they haven't shipped the next version of the product yet. There are many of these kinds of powerful building blocks. It's a healthy environment for developers, both from a commercial perspective and a technical perspective.

The one thing I'm really looking forward to is Leopard's cross-application, unified PIM functions becoming more widely adopted, making the whole OS more Ecco-like. Even now, it's great to be able to create a task attached to an email message in Mail, see it automatically in iCal, and also see it automatically in my time billing application (TimeLog 4). Once it's possible to attach a todo to an outline item or column entry in OmniOutliner, viewable in every application that's PIM-aware, in some ways we'll have a working environment surpassing Ecco as a general purpose tool. As icing on the cake, the unified PIM functions are CalDAV-aware, making them shareable and networkable. Some great stuff is coming down the pipe.

-- Chris

Regarding outline processors.... I have probably downloaded and tried every outline processor available for both the PC and the Mac. Back in 1992 I purchased an inexpensive outliner ( Think Tank ) for my brand new 128k Mac. Over the years that software was upgraded several times and eventually changed names to More 3.0. In the late 90's Symantec acquired it and immediately took it off the market.....go figure. Anyway, to this day, even though I operate primarily with PCs, I still have a G4 setting near my desk with More 3.0 on it for doing serious outlining. Copies of it can be downloaded from the web at no charge with a little googling effort to find it. It only works with OS systems < 10.0 so you may have to download one of the earlier OS's to use it.

I just posted in the thread on Windows vs Mac OS X, but I have a short break before my next meeting so I figured I would chime in here.
I switched to the Mac because of Devonthink, Eaglefiler and Aquaminds Notetaker. I like both Devonthink Pro and Eaglefiler, but I haven't put as much stress on them as I should have. I also like Notetaker, but it is taking a bit of getting used to. It doesn't quite work like Onenote does.
At work(where I am now)I am limited to a Windows XP machine. I use Onenote, and used to use Zoot. I haven't tried installing the new version yet.
I like both of my machines, and can get done what I need to do using either machine.

The thing that I am excited by now is the wealth of info manager software out there on both platforms. Those of us who have been doing this for a while can remember the day when there was a dearth of both outliners, and decent info managers. Now there's lots.

Find software that you like, and then make the operating system choice.

That being said, if you are taking a look at Devonthink, take a look at the info from Melodie Neal:
http://melodien.blogspot.com/2007/03/litter-sorters-personal-evaluation-of_15.html

Also take a look at any of Ted Goranson's posts at About This Particular Outliner:
http://www.atpm.com/Back/atpo.shtml

And if anyone switching to (or already using) Mac OS X is interested in Opal, contact me (david AT a-sharp DOTCOM) and I'll send you a coupon for $12 off. (And FYI, a new version to take advantage of Leopard features should be released soon.)