I've been dabbling with my new MacBook for the past week and a half. I've downloaded several outliners/information managers/writing tools... major CRIMP action! I'm a long way from being able to give any kind of in-depth commentary on these tools, but I did want to share some of my initial reactions:

1. The MacBook is a sweet machine. The keyboard is great, the screen bright and easy to read. It powers up much faster than my Dell Lattitude 420, and shuts down more quickly. The battery lasts three or four hours depending upon what I'm doing. I've never been a fan of track pads, but the one on the MacBook makes it bearable to use. The pad is smart enough to know the difference between a deliberate motion and an incidental contact, so there are not the accidental cursor juggling that I've experienced in the past.

2. The Mac operating system appears efficient and easy to use, although I'm still getting used to the different conventions. Installing software is as simple as dragging an icon to the Applications folder. And uninstalling it requires dragging the icon to the Trash bin.

3. All the software I've used could have all come from the same developer... that's how standard the interfaces are. This is both good and bad. Good in that they all operate the same way, so once you learn one, it is easy to pick up the conventions of the others. However, the sameness of it all is a little disturbing... it almost goes against that famous 1984 commercial in which the Mac broke through the blandness of conventional thinking. To some extent I miss the haphazzardness of the software I'm used to in a Windows environment.

4. A further benefit of the sameness is the amazing amount of interoperability between the applications. Programs share information easily... the calendar, address book especially.

5. There seems to be much less ability to customize programs... especially toolbars. I've found this to be a problem when trying to add a toolbar button for functions that seem to have no keyboard shortcuts... such as bulleting a list.

6. There are some nice applications for the MacBook, but none that have really blown me away and made me think that, yes, this is lightyears ahead of what you can get on a PC. In fact, most of these programs are less powerful than some of the Windows applications I use -- nothing comes close to Zoot (excepting Zoot's lack of text formatting, of course). There is nothing I've found as powerful as WhizFolders Deluxe. But the interface on the Mac is easier to use... what I mean by that is, though I have admired the power and functionality of WhizFolders, I never use it because I found it too clunky and unintuitive (I know this is a subjective assessment, one not shared by everyone). So, even though some of the programs are not as feature-rich as their PC counterparts, I find them to be somewhat more user-friendly.

The software I've looked at includes the following titles:

Scrivener (writing)
Journler (note taker, journaling, not mis-spelled)
Mori (note taker)
Yojimbo (info organizer)
EagleFiler (info organizer)
Curio (mind-mapper plus)
Bento (scaled down version of FileMaker)
Voodoo Pad Pro (wiki)
OmniOutliner (outliner)
Opal (outliner)
Tao (outliner)
NoteTaker (OneNote-style note taker)

So far I have bought licenses for Scrivener, NoteTaker, Yojimbo and Opal. My purchase of the NoteTaker license may have been premature, as I've found other note-taking applications may be superior (Journler, for instance).

Overall, I am glad I bought the MacBook. I think that the overall effect will be positive, because of the integration of the applications. (For the record, I still spend most of my time on a PC -- at the office. Plus, my desktop computer at home is a PC, so I am a long way from leaving Windows behind.)

Steve Z.

A couple of thoughts, Steve:

- if you're trialling a lot of software, you may find Hazel useful (http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php especially if deployed as in this blog series: http://kinkless.com/article/kinkless_desktop/1_no_mercy_cleanup The software describes itself as a virtual housekeeper - accurate IME. One of its functions is to clear up wayward files from downloaded applications you've consigned to the trash (if of course downloaded after Hazel has been installed).

- in the previous Mac thread I was sceptical about SOHO Notes. However... encouraged by a poster on another forum who said he uses it with full confidence for fiction-writing research, I've given it another whirl. And maybe it's not so bad. There have been one or two odd freezes at unexpected moments, and (possibly) inability to find stuff it should have done. But nothing's been lost. And it remains one of the few Mac note-taking programmes (the only one?) to to be able to take in data or files or search for a note when the application itself is closed, both of which it does with no fuss. As I said before, parts of its reputation rest on misconceived upgrades in the past. Perhaps that's history now...

H

Stephen, please be sure to try out DevonThink Professional (http://www.devonacademy.com and Tinderbox (http://www.eastgate.com/tinderbox - my main instruments for writing, research and education ( I work as a teacher). You may need to spend some time with them, especially Tinderbox is not easy to master, but I am sure you will like them.

Andreas

Sorry, I meant http://www.devon-technologies.com

My last reply. Watch out for deals like on http://www.mupromo.com/ or http://www.macheist.com - they are selling bundles of often great software for a fracture of the original price.

That's all. Bye.

Thanks for the recommendations, Hugh. I had seen Hazel talked about, but wasn't exactly sure what it did. I'll take a closer look.

Thanks, again.

Steve

Harlander wrote:

Stephen, please be sure to try out DevonThink Professional
(http://www.devonacademy.com and Tinderbox
(http://www.eastgate.com/tinderbox - my main instruments for writing, research
and education ( I work as a teacher). You may need to spend some time with them,
especially Tinderbox is not easy to master, but I am sure you will like them.

Andreas,

I did, in fact, download and install DevonThink Professional, but I honestly didn't give it much of a look. At this stage of my MacBook usage, I thought it might be overkill and it is a bit more costly than other options -- I need to give my budget a rest. However, I will give it another look. My CRIMP affliction can't pass up such a recommendation.

Thanks!

Steve

Hugh wrote:

it remains one of the few Mac
note-taking programmes (the only one?) to to be able to take in data or files or search
for a note when the application itself is closed,

Don't forget that Mac OS X has Spotlight. You can find text in Opal outlines when Opal is closed.

And a number of Mac tools have the ability to create notes without launching the application first. Heck, this comes with Mac OS X -- check the Services hierarchical menu under the application menu, which includes Make New Sticky Note.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

6. There are some nice applications for the
MacBook, but none that have really blown me away and made me think that, yes, this is
lightyears ahead of what you can get on a PC. In fact, most of these programs are less
powerful than some of the Windows applications I use -- nothing comes close to Zoot
(excepting Zoot's lack of text formatting, of course). There is nothing I've found as
powerful as WhizFolders Deluxe. But the interface on the Mac is easier to use... what I
mean by that is, though I have admired the power and functionality of WhizFolders, I
never use it because I found it too clunky and unintuitive (I know this is a subjective
assessment, one not shared by everyone). So, even though some of the programs are not
as feature-rich as their PC counterparts, I find them to be somewhat more
user-friendly.

The software I've looked at includes the following
titles:

Scrivener (writing)
Journler (note taker, journaling, not
mis-spelled)
Mori (note taker)
Yojimbo (info organizer)
EagleFiler (info
organizer)
Curio (mind-mapper plus)
Bento (scaled down version of
FileMaker)
Voodoo Pad Pro (wiki)
OmniOutliner (outliner)
Opal (outliner)
Tao
(outliner)
NoteTaker (OneNote-style note taker)

So far I have bought licenses
for Scrivener, NoteTaker, Yojimbo and Opal. My purchase of the NoteTaker license may
have been premature, as I've found other note-taking applications may be superior
(Journler, for instance).

Have you had the chance to compare Aquamind's NoteTaker to CircusPonies Notebook? They started out as one project, and the two developers split. Since then they seem to have diverged further. NoteTaker is said to emphasize information management more than Notebook, which tries to be more of an outliner too. This is all hearsay, but at least one poster raved about CircusPonies Notebook.

Tao is supposed to be the most powerful pure outliner on the Mac; Omni the most popular and versatile; Opal might be the most facile, judging by its predecessor, Acta. I would be interested in your comparisons with MaxThink, NoteMap, and BrainStorm.

I recall one of your main concerns was finding an optimal writing environment. How does Scrivener compare to what's available on Windows?

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

1. ... I've never been a fan of track pads, but the one on the
MacBook makes it bearable to use. The pad is smart enough to know the difference between a deliberate motion and an incidental contact, so there are not the accidental cursor juggling that I've experienced in the past.

----------
Steve,
I used to feel the same as you about track pads. I have both exaggerated essential tremor and poor fine motor control (at least much of the time). I used to use a large track ball (Kensington Expert Mouse), but it caused problems on my Toshiba with XP Media Center Edition. So I was forced to learn how to change the track pad settings. I now have them set FOR ME and am much happier than if I were using a trackball or mouse. Try it, you'll like it!
-c

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Have you had the chance
to compare Aquamind's NoteTaker to CircusPonies Notebook? They started out as one
project, and the two developers split. Since then they seem to have diverged further.
NoteTaker is said to emphasize information management more than Notebook, which
tries to be more of an outliner too. This is all hearsay, but at least one poster raved
about CircusPonies Notebook.

Tao is supposed to be the most powerful pure outliner
on the Mac; Omni the most popular and versatile; Opal might be the most facile, judging
by its predecessor, Acta. I would be interested in your comparisons with MaxThink,
NoteMap, and BrainStorm.

I recall one of your main concerns was finding an optimal
writing environment. How does Scrivener compare to what's available on Windows?

I didn't spend much time reviewing Notebook, because NoteTaker seemed to have more active development. NoteTaker is all about lists and outlines, too. Like OneNote, each list element can have its own attributes. NoteTaker is definitely not nearly as powerful as OneNote. In fact, I've been a little disappointed with it. One feature it has (and it may share this with Notebook -- I'm not sure) is that it automatically builds indices of the words in your notebooks for quick reference.

I had read that OmniOutliner handles inline text better than Tao, so I didn't spend much time looking at the latter, and I'm still reviewing OO. The inline text and fully customizable columns give it a leg up on Brainstorm, NoteMap and MaxThink. Though the things you can do with Brainstorm, you can't do nearly as readily in OO. Also, MaxThink is more powerful in its "thinking" functions -- its ability to quickly view your entries in various ways and reorganize them. Now, I use the word "quickly" advisedly, since I feel MaxThink's interface is antiquated and nonintuitive, so that I never did get "quick" at it.

OmniOutliner is the closest thing I've seen to GrandView -- although it lacks some of GVs features, notably its calendar function. It also isn't as keyboard friendly -- at least I haven't found it to be so as yet.

But I'm still trying it out.

Steve

Still using my MacBook and loving it.

I didn't try all of the different software that has been discussed. I have tried Yojimbo, Devonthink Pro, and Eaglefiler. I bought licenses for Devonthink and Eaglefiler, but most of the time I spend in an info organizer I spend in Devonthink. The user interface is a bit clunky, but I like the easy way I can get info in and out of it. One thing that Devonthink doesn't allow you to do is have more than one database open at a time. I keep a single database called Incoming open, and everything gets put in there. I then have different groups within that database to which I split things up later. If I had my druthers, I would have the incoming database and then other databases depending on subject. I am hoping that the next major revision of the program will allow this.

On trackpads and mice-I don't like trackpads much at all. Very soon after I bought my MacBook I bought a bluetooth Mighty Mouse from Apple. It is very nice. It is small, and I can toss it in my bag with my computer. And I particularly like the fact that you can program it easily. I have the scroll knob(it is really too small to call a wheel)programmed to bring up Expose, and it also has a left and right mouse button. Very nice, and as Jerry Pournelle would say "Highly recommended. "

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I had read that OmniOutliner handles inline text better than Tao, so I
didn't spend much time looking at the latter, and I'm still reviewing OO. The inline
text and fully customizable columns give it a leg up on Brainstorm, NoteMap and
MaxThink.

What do you mean by "inline text?" I'll bet almost all the Mac products are using the same text engine (NSTextView). Sure, they can customize it slightly (OO and Opal do slightly different things when you drag in an image or movie file), but I wouldn't expect huge differences.

David Dunham wrote:

What do you mean by "inline text?" I'll bet almost all the
Mac products are using the same text engine (NSTextView). Sure, they can customize it
slightly (OO and Opal do slightly different things when you drag in an image or movie
file), but I wouldn't expect huge differences.

By 'inline text" I mean that text which is associated with an item heading, but not the heading itself -- when that text can also appear in the outline. Okay, that was confusing. Let me try again. In Windows, most of the outliners we discuss are two-pane outliners. You create a heading in the tree pane and the content of the heading in the editor pane. When the content text can appear in the tree pane, we call it inline text. That's not to confuse sub headings as inline text. Sub heads are separate ideas. The best outliner of all-time, in my opinion, was GrandView and it handled inline text beautifully.

I probably haven't explained this very well, but you can see a screen shot showing inline text (OmniOutliner refers to it as "inline notes") at http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/

Steve Z.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Have you had the chance
to compare Aquamind's NoteTaker to CircusPonies Notebook? They started out as one
project, and the two developers split. Since then they seem to have diverged further.
NoteTaker is said to emphasize information management more than Notebook, which
tries to be more of an outliner too. This is all hearsay, but at least one poster raved
about CircusPonies Notebook.

Stephen,

Notebook looks set for a major upgrade (see this page: http://www.circusponies.com/notebook30.html These additional functions will put it way ahead of NoteTaker, in my opinion, and approaching OneNote in power.

By the way, I have ended up buying DevonThink afterall. Its features really blow away the competition. One thing it appears to lack -- unless I've missed it (entirely possible) -- is cross-database searching. If indeed missing, this is a major drawback and one that puts it behind several Windows information managers (UR, MyInfo to name two).

I really like my MacBook, and the operating system is so much nicer to use than Windows. But I don't think the software applications are as sophisticated as much of what I use on Windows. There are exceptions, of course. DevonThink's AI functions are powerful and not to be found in Windows. Scrivener's GUI and overall functionality is unique to Macs. And most of the Mac software seem to use OS X's nice editor -- so almost all of the applications have the same editing fuctions, including a full array of extended selection features. This is very helpful... I find it very distracting to have to remember if triple-clicking in an application will or will not select the whole paragraph, for instance.

Steve Z.

Steve

No cross-database searching with DT (except of course via Spotlight).

For this and other functions we all await Version Two.

H

Hugh wrote:

A couple of thoughts, Steve:
in the previous Mac thread I was sceptical about SOHO Notes. However... encouraged by
a poster on another forum who said he uses it with full confidence for fiction-writing
research, I've given it another whirl. And maybe it's not so bad.

Hugh,

SOHO Notes feature set seems really impressive and I'd love to give it a whirl, but I've tried repeatedly to install and run the program to no avail. (I believe the problem has to do with its database engine, OpenBase.) It sort of reminds my of InfoRecall, which is loaded with features, but so bug-infested that it's next to impossible to use. Perhaps in a future release it will work on my system.

Steve Z.

Sorry to hear this, Steve. Previous experience seems to have been that SN increases in stability as its versions ascend the decimal points, then takes a step backwards when they hit a round number. Maybe the 7.x versions will show the same behaviour. With a stable and secure long-term datastore in DevonThink and off-site back-up (has anybody here tried the beta of Dropbox - www.getdropbox.com ? - for Windows as well as Macs - well worth investigating), I've been ready to take a risk with SN as a first-resort, ever-ready hold-all, and so far it hasn't let me down. (Of course there's always a first time...)

H

Hugh,

Thanks for the heads up on Drop Box. Looks like a great program. I signed up for the beta announcements. I am using Evernote now, and would like to see this functionality added to that program in the future. We are always moving files between my Mac and our other PCs.

Vince

Hugh wrote:

Sorry to hear this, Steve. Previous experience seems to have been that SN increases in
stability as its versions ascend the decimal points, then takes a step backwards when
they hit a round number. Maybe the 7.x versions will show the same behaviour. With a
stable and secure long-term datastore in DevonThink and off-site back-up (has
anybody here tried the beta of Dropbox - www.getdropbox.com ? - for Windows as well as
Macs - well worth investigating), I've been ready to take a risk with SN as a
first-resort, ever-ready hold-all, and so far it hasn't let me down. (Of course
there's always a first time...)

H

Update from Devon Technologies on progress towards DevonThink v 2.0 (including multiple databases): http://www.devon-technologies.com/scripts/userforum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6302

H