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Circus Ponies suddenly ceased business
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jan 6, 2016 at 12:13 AM
I bought Notetaker for Windows a few years ago. It failed to do one of the key things I bought it for. Trying to get that problem corrected was useless because no response from Aquaminds who appear to have abandoned their prouduct, and might as well be out of business. It is too bad because Notetaker is clever, and except for one issue is very good.
Perhaps with Circus Ponies gone, Aquaminds might wake up, see what they have, and get Notetaker for Windows into shape. I’d be willing to beta test because product concept is excellent, and it falls down in only one - albeit a major - area. No Windows program implements the notebook metaphor the way Notetaker does.
Daly
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
Slarti,
>
>Notebook was a forked product, I believe, when the developer split with
>a partner, who went on to develop a very similar app called Notetaker:
>
>http://www.aquaminds.com/
>
>Notetaker did get something of a Windows version, which I tried and
>thought was very, very lightweight compared with the Mac version.
>
>Anyway, Notetaker is at least still in business—though development is
>super slow, if not suspended.
>
>Steve Z.
Posted by Anthony
Jan 6, 2016 at 10:18 AM
Not a Mac / iOS user now, but nevertheless sorry to see reduced the Outliner software space.
Here an account of the last sighing sounds before the end:
http://www.maclitigator.com/2015/12/06/circus-ponies-notebook-may-be-dying/
As a general observation, I found difficult to understand why a developer that regards his app so highly, does not offer it a second chance (and life) as Freeware. The story of the contended son and King Salomon judgment, does not teach enough to many developers - if you love your software, it is preferable to let it live in the hands of others that let it kill. Among other things, this would give some real competition to other similar apps against which the developer may fill bitter.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 6, 2016 at 09:41 PM
If you go to the Circus Ponies page, they removed the reference to turd note-taking apps. A smart decision, I’d say.
Steve Z.
Posted by mprazoff
Jan 6, 2016 at 11:44 PM
I too will miss Circus Ponies NoteBook. It made for an excellent personal journal, over many years. It was one of the first programs on iOS that worked with rich text. The iOS app was rather slow and perhaps one of the most skeuomorphic ever created. Circus Ponies always had an undercurrent of pissing off their user base. When version 4 came out, they removed some features from previous versions, like Writing Pages. Apparently page types were too confusing for new users. Then it became apparent that page types weren’t removed, but just hidden. Even then, Circus Ponies insisted that you needed to write them for the method of turning features back on, rather than simply posting the terminal commands. Sadly, their attitude towards their user base is reflected in the final message on their Web site, even after a bit of editing.
Notetaker, the other branch of the original NeXT program, also seems to be dead parrot-ware (somewhere between “pining for the fjords” and actually “nailed to the perch”). This double loss leaves a gaping hole in Mac outliners/notebooks. Curio remains as an option, in fact, an improvement over NoteBook, and one with a responsive developer whose attitude is the polar opposite to Circus Ponies. I am also experimenting with another option: combining OmniOutliner with a program like Together or DEVONthink. This way a number of OmniOutliner documents can be displayed (albeit, the QuickLook preview, which nonetheless does allow levels to be hidden or shown) and indexed, thus being searchable and able to be organized in a notebook like hierarchy. Clicking on an outline opens it in OmniOutliner for editing. I guess it takes more than the loss of a good old friend to get in the way of some quality CRIMPing.
Posted by mprazoff
Jan 7, 2016 at 05:00 AM
VentureBeat is now report that Circus Ponies has been bought and shuttered by Google! Strange.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/06/google-acquires-and-shuts-down-notetaking-app-circus-ponies/