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Posted by Chris Thompson
Apr 17, 2008 at 09:33 PM
Curio is actually quite good. Curio is probably the closest to OneNote in the sense that it’s designed for arbitrary content placement on a page. (In terms of actual use, though, I think Circus Ponies Notebook is closer, but it uses a structured outline metaphor for all content.)
SOHO Notes isn’t really all that good. There are better options out there (Together, Yojimbo, Journler, Eaglefiler, etc.).
—Chris
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Two additional Mac PIM-like apps cropped up from the references you all supplied
>me:
>
>1. Curio (http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/)
>2. SOHO Notes
>(http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html)
>
>Anyone have any
>experience with these? If so, what do you think? (Should I infer from the fact that no
>one mentioned them yet that they fail to make the grade?)
>
>Thanks!
>
>Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Apr 17, 2008 at 09:42 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Two additional Mac PIM-like apps cropped up from the references you all supplied
>me:
>
>1. Curio (http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/)
>2. SOHO Notes
>(http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html)
>
>Anyone have any
>experience with these? If so, what do you think? (Should I infer from the fact that no
>one mentioned them yet that they fail to make the grade?)
>
>Thanks!
>
>Steve Z.
SOHO Notes is in theory one of, if not the, most feature-rich of the “note-taker-type” Mac apps. In practice, unfortunately, the review boards contain numerous complaints about the alleged instability of the software and the unresponsiveness of the developers to requests for technical support. To be fair, there are also some users who say it’s stable, it works and it’s very good. I think many of the complaints seem to date from one upgrade that corrupted pre-existing data. But possibly not all. I downloaded a trial and deleted it but still have bits hanging round my MacBook.
Curio, by contrast, is a stable and excellent but sometimes overlooked programme, for which I have a licence. I don’t know of a direct Windows equivalent. The best description of it that I can think of is that it is a hugely-extensible virtual whiteboard, on which you can place files, text-boxes, images, simple mind-maps, freehand witing and drawing, all graphically linked and supported by a database and a web browser dedicated to searching image-banks. I use it for brainstorming, when you throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I wouldn’t use it for outlining factual composition, where the logic of the material often tends to impose its own form on it, and there are other requirements as well. But for anything freeform, it’s pretty useful.
H
Posted by Hugh
Apr 17, 2008 at 09:56 PM
One other suggestion (which you may have followed already) is to spend some time reading the Scrivener forum (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/) which is a crimper’s box of delights…
Of course there’s a great deal on Scrivener itself. There’s also an entire board on “Other People’s Software” where many of the applications already mentioned here, such as DT, Curio and Tinderbox are discussed in detail, plus some others including utilities. And there’s even a thread currently running discussing what software to put on a “writing” Mac laptop.
Posted by Derek Cornish
Apr 18, 2008 at 04:58 AM
Franz Grieser wrote:
>- Mac
>Mini (Intel DualCore) - because I already had an excellent 20” display and wanted a
>(relatively) cheap and silent computer;
>- iBook G4, 12” screen - because I wanted the
>smallest Mac portable as I only use it for writing when out of the office and do not need a
>huge display; the Macbook Air was not available when I got my iBook but I wouldn’t have
>bought it as I wouldn’t carry around such an expensive machine.
>
Thanks, Franz. That’s helpful to know.
Derek
Posted by Randall Shinn
Apr 18, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Stephen,
I am crimping away, having just made the switch. So far Eaglefiler, Curio, Circus Ponies Notebook, OmniOutliner Pro, and Scrivener have all seemed potentially valuable enough for me to license.
There are a wealth of sources for information. Some people feel that Mac users are much more likely to upgrade their operating systems and stay on the cutting edge than Windows users. (In my case I was unwilling to move to Vista, having heard so many unfavorable reports.) And since OS X Leopard offers software developers some nifty possibilities, new software and updated versions are rampant.
One interesting site is http://tagamac.com/. Ian Beck has interesting insights into tagging practices, and recommends programs that he feels offer exceptionally good tagging capabilities. He is, for example, an Eaglefiler fan, but he also recommends Together and Leap (both of which I am considering). MailTags is a program he recommends for helping sort your e-mail, and some programs that you can use for long-term e-mail storage will import the tags as well.
As others have suggested, some of the newest programs require Leopard to operate, and I think one way to gauge how up to date the software development process is in a given company is to check whether or not their program has been updated to Leopard. And if you notice that a program requires Leopard to operate, that may well be a sign that the program takes particular advantage of the new OS capabilities.
One last mention. MacSpeech Dictate http://www.macspeech.com/ apparently brings the Dragon Speech engine to the Mac world, so that Macs can now equal Windows in speech recognition software if that interests you.
Randall