I think that I have asked this question before on this forum, but you know how it is with these senior moments-Does anyone know what is going on with Notetaker from Aquaminds Software? I haven't used it for a while, but I fired it up this morning to see how it compares with some of the other stuff that has come up in the last few years. The build that I have is from 2011, and when I looked to see if there were updates, the software told me that I had the most up-to-date version. I took a look at the Aquaminds website, and it doesn't look like it has been updated since 2011. The latest blog posting is from May of 2011.


Jim

Can't say, but looking briefly at the site, I see that they have an unusual Linux download (free trial) - a world in which there are very few competitors. Aside from its future, what do you think of Notetaker's current capabilities? I gather you don't use it much these days.

Notetaker is on sale in the Apple App Store for Mac, but the latest update dates from Dec 2013.

NoteTaker and Circus Ponies Notebook were neck-and-neck about 8 years ago, then NoteTaker took an odd direction with its iOS app. Notebook also didn't do well with iOS, but that seems to have shaken out better. For myself, I think ultimately Alfons Schmidt's Notebooks outdid them both.

jaslar wrote:

Aside from its future, what do you think of Notetaker's
current capabilities?

I've wanted very badly to like both NoteTaker and CP Notebook. NoteTaker was one of those apps that I was drooling over when I was stuck in Windows-land. And Notebook was one of my first purchases once I moved back to the Mac. There is something seductive about that darn notebook metaphor. But I just can't warm up to either one of them. Curio is a better notebook choice on the Mac, I believe.

Steve Z.

Didn't they both emerge from, as it were, the same creative womb? And NoteTaker then diverged. Like Steve, I admired Circus Ponies Notebook for years from afar (well, Windows) - and even now it feels like something I ought to like. The equivalent iOS app, when I last looked, seemed to be skeumorphism carried to the furthest extreme, rather cleverly I thought - but in the case of neither app have I found myself needing to use them on a regular basis (although CP Notebook should be good for outlining). Somehow or other I use outliners for outlining, and simple - very simple - notetakers like nvAlt for note-taking, because speed is usually of the essence, and rapid propagation important.

I do empathise with Steve's description of remote drooling! Indeed, CP Notebook was one of my earliest Mac purchases. And I never use it.

In fact, I think it's an interesting indication of the peculiarly limited appeal of skeumorphism. It looks great - from a distance - but start to work with it, and you soon discover that it's fiddly and irritating. A number of my formerly favourite apps have gradually fallen by the wayside as their skeumorphism has first irritated me, then become positively distracting. Live long and prosper, Jony Ive, is what I say!

All my current go-to apps are super-streamlined, my favourite (at the moment, okay, okay, I know!) being Ulysses 2.0, which is an awesome interface achievement. I'm also looking forward to the next version of Scrivener which (rumour has it) will be more streamlined and less fussy than the current one. And support dual panes on the iPad, something I find myself increasingly in need of, especially when writing. Currently I use a rather clunky mix of Ulysses and the good (if somewhat quirky) Side by Side+. I've tried using Tapose, but despite my goodwill towards what is undoubtedly an extraordinary concept, it definitely falls into CP Notebook-land - i.e. something that's just too fussy and irritating to use all the time.

I wonder if developers really understand how useful dual panes would be on the iPad? It's striking that the only one who's confirmed multiple times that his (writing) app will definitely have two panes on the iPad is himself a writer (Keith at Literature & Latte). Because writers of anything of any sophistication/complexity KNOW that two panes simply make sense (notes/ideas/reference material in one, actual text in the other; or in the case of us translators, source text/reference material in one, target text in the other etc. etc.). From this perspective, Side by Side+ was actually way ahead of its time, being capable of opening more than two panes simultaneously (by default up to four, but more if you want them). The latest version of Side by Side+ also syncs automatically with Dropbox, which makes it surprisingly flexible. But I'm wandering off-topic...

Is this the Side-by-Side you're using:

http://sidebyside.sourceforge.net

?

Or is it something (relatively) new, for Windows? I haven't tried it yet, but it could be somewhat helpful when working with text files. Development, unfortunately, seems to have ended.

Sorry, Bob, I realise I was waffling rather uselessly, with less than exemplary clarity.

No, Side by Side+ is an iOS app running on my iPad(s). It's designed specifically for iPad, in fact. It's capable of opening multiple "windows" in a single screen (side by side, top and bottom, or in quadrants), and has four basic functions: Dropbox sync (with a named folder in Dropbox - this happens automatically), a Files function (allowing you to see the text files you've created in Dropbox), a Notes function (allowing you to create new notes or copy stuff over from the clipboard) plus a browser function (set to Google's standard search page by default). You can choose one of those three functions (Files, Notes, Browser) in each window, so you write notes about an online article while reading it, for example.

And I run on Mac now, exclusively. No more Windows! And you know what, despite all those sexy little touchscreen machines, I don't miss it at all.

But I have been dribbling over the new MacBook...

Some of the backstory is here:

http://www.atpm.com/10.05/atpo.shtml

My experience with CP Notebook was the same as others here- it looked absolutely awesome, and was one of the first Mac apps I bought (I still have the box somewhere.) But I haven't used it in years, the eye candy that attracted me to it ultimately turned out to be superfluous and unnecessary.

I try to stick to text files as much as possible nowadays, plus The Hit List for task management. The one thing missing for me is an outliner program that uses text files as main file format. I would love to have an outliner with most general outlining features that used tabbed text (with some metadata tags) files. The functionality would not be as good as OmniOutliner, etc., but with Dropbox I could access these files anywhere- iOS, Android, Mac, Win, etc. OPLM is good for this too, although different apps tend to have slightly different implementations (for stuff like note text) that complicate things.

Hugh wrote:

Didn't they both emerge from, as it were, the same creative womb? And
NoteTaker then diverged. Like Steve, I admired Circus Ponies Notebook
for years from afar (well, Windows) - and even now it feels like
something I ought to like. The equivalent iOS app, when I last looked,
seemed to be skeumorphism carried to the furthest extreme, rather
cleverly I thought - but in the case of neither app have I found myself
needing to use them on a regular basis (although CP Notebook should be
good for outlining). Somehow or other I use outliners for outlining, and
simple - very simple - notetakers like nvAlt for note-taking, because
speed is usually of the essence, and rapid propagation important.

I can't say that I really like it very much. It was one of the first pieces of software that I bought when I bought my mac. I thought that the idea of a notebook that I could keep stuff in and that had an outlining capability would be very useful. It didn't turn out that way. I tried to use it for a snippet keeper, but without the ability to install a bookmarklet that would grab the page I was on it was not really good at that. I tried using it for a while, but the interface kept getting in my way. While not as skeuomorphic as other software, I decided that I don't like the paper notebook metaphor that they use. It never really got me excited about using it.

I moved on to other software as snippet keepers-I used Devonthink for a time, but that seemed like overkill. Now I use Notesuite-it runs on the mac, it runs on my iPad, it is simple and quick, and it doesn't have those silly notebook paper like lines in it.

Jim