"Introducing OmniOutliner Essentials: An Outliner for Everyone"


This is the header for an announcement for a low cost (1/0 the price of OmniOutliner 5) outlining app for the Mac. Got the notice in an email this morning.

Jeffery

I think it is probably a good idea to offer a low cost entry for OmniOutliner. Many people were not willing to pay that much for a program that they probably would not use to its fullest.

Hopefully this will bring in a large number of users, some of whom will upgrade to the Pro. OmniGroup makes great products and we definitely want them to succeed.

Even offering it for free might be a good idea. I have found no better outliner than Omni. When I try a free version of a program and like it, I'm usually happy to get the paid version.

I really don't need or want most of the "pro" features, which is why I never felt it was worth spending the money. But I'm perfectly happy to buy the essentials version. I'm testing the beta out now and it seems great. I'm happy to see that the Essentials version will also sync with the updated iOS app when that comes out. I suspect that Outlinely will have to lower their annual subscription fee if they want to compete with this. Does OO offer sync for free or do they charge like some companies?

I only use the OmniSync with OmniFocus, and I'm pretty sure that it's free. I find that OO 4 Pro is too big to use for lists like tasks, so I still use Notetaker (which appears to be turning into neglectware). This lightweight version may fill that bill.

Luhmann wrote:

I really don't need or want most of the "pro" features, which is why I
never felt it was worth spending the money. But I'm perfectly happy to
buy the essentials version. I'm testing the beta out now and it seems
great. I'm happy to see that the Essentials version will also sync with
the updated iOS app when that comes out. I suspect that Outlinely will
have to lower their annual subscription fee if they want to compete with
this. Does OO offer sync for free or do they charge like some companies?

OmniGroup says

If we add some new feature that takes up a lot of processing power, a ton of storage, or delivers coffee every morning, we reserve the right to charge for it. But all functionality that you see right now is free, and we have no plans to start charging!

at

https://manage.sync.omnigroup.com/about

My own take on this is that it's a reaction to the unexpected brilliance of Outlinely - and the fact that Outlinely development is powering along (at the moment).

Which is a good thing. OmniOutliner had the market to itself for a long time, and didn't do enough to make itself desirable. The latest version (yes, I've been playing) is a big leap forward!

For workflowy users looking for a desktop app with iOS sync I think Outlinely is still the better option. However, OO does feel more robust. Lots of work is still needed on Outlinely, but it is improving fast. Great to have some real competition on this front!

Just had a quick play with the Essentials/Standard beta version of OmniOutliner (clearly they've only just thought of the new name, and it hasn't been applied consistently across the product).

It's not bad. Not a candle on Outlinely, yet, but that will probably change. Although Outlinely's recent support for two types of tagging put it fairly convincingly ahead in the organisational stakes.

On the other hand, OmniOutliner is strong in the moving stuff around stakes. Which I think is crucial for an outliner. And the Essentials version only costs USD 10, which is certainly better than Outlinely.

It doesn't have a library, but it's got filtering and a nice search function. Both of which Outlinely has got, too.

How exciting!

Hm. Amusingly, the filter doesn't work if the row with the term you're looking for is folded. The filter simply doesn't find it (reminds me of early versions of Cloud Outliner!).

However, the search function does.

I hope they sort that out before they release it!

Oh, and there's a "ghost" column on the far right - you can make the main (only) column in Essentials wider or narrower by fiddling about with the margin of this "ghost" column.

That's quite funny!

Having played around with Outlinely in rich text rather than Markdown mode, it's interesting to see the differences. Outlinely's rich text mode doesn't support underlining, or rich text in notes (notes to outline items). Amusingly, you can format text in notes in Markdown mode (e.g. use bold, italics etc.). You can also use lines, which rich text mode doesn't support. But rich text mode still supports tags, something OmniOutliner doesn't have.

Nothing beats Bear for search, however - everything beautifully highlighted, both in the results summary and in the note itself. Lovely!