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Bear review
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Posted by bigspud
Nov 5, 2016 at 01:03 AM
Just curious if anyone else tried their previous work.
Pixa was a hot mess.
The support responses consisted of ‘hey, we tried’ responses with few solutions.
Bear sure does look pretty though! I hope it does them well.
Posted by Luhmann
Nov 5, 2016 at 07:02 AM
I have not used earlier software by this team, but their support staff has been first rate for Bear. During the beta period and even after launch (when I’m sure they were very busy) I received a lot of excellent support, replies to my feedback, etc. In fact, it is this, more than the shipping 1.0 product itself, which has me so excited about Bear.
bigspud wrote:
>The support responses consisted of ‘hey, we tried’ responses with few
>solutions.
Posted by Luhmann
Nov 5, 2016 at 07:08 AM
Paul Korm wrote:
It’s pretty. Before I plunk down $15 annual for 7 other dark mode
>styles and PDF export I’d like to see some evidence that Bear has
>amazing features no one has ever done or done as well—other than
>being pretty.
The main feature of Pro is not the dark mode, or PDF export, but sync. They have built their own sync service on CloudKit (different from iCloud) which I find to be much better than the sync used by some other apps (such as Ulysses). I also think it is a mistake to see form and function as separate. While that may sometimes be the case, good form often has benefits for function.A function that is difficult to use isn’t very functional! As to what features are there, I think the review I linked to as well as previous comments in this thread make it pretty clear what those functions are. Finally, you needn’t pay $15. You can pay a buck fifty to try it for a month before signing up for an annual subscription. I personally think it is foolish to move software if you are completely satisfied with your current solution, but if you are looking for something better than what you have now, Bear might be worth trying out…
Posted by Luhmann
Nov 5, 2016 at 08:43 AM
The developers also seem to be offering a one month free trial for annual Pro subscriptions (one week for monthly subscriptions).
Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 5, 2016 at 02:43 PM
CloudKit is not “different from iCloud”—CloudKit is Apple’s framework for iCloud sync and collaboration. Apple Notes uses the CloudKit framework, for example. As you mentioned, Ulysses decided to go in a different direction. I’ve had endless problems with Note’s sync failures, so I hope Bear overcame those difficulties. Like Notes and Ulysses, your data is buried in non-obvious folders deep in ~/var on OS X—this is not necessarily an issue, but users should be aware there is a certain degree of lock-in (better to call it an “access challenge” rather than lock-in) until they export a file from Bear. Also, curiously, in my opinion, for a modern OS X app, Bear does not offer a share extension on OS X. Since many of us use editors as a path in a process to get data from one point to another, not participating in OS X’s Share infrastructure is miss.
Oh, and yes I participated in all the betas on OS X and iOS, aslo.