Hi Outliners !

I've been following this forum for quite many years and have contributed at times on various subjects, some, if not most of the time, I admit, to inform / promote the Windows software I've developing.

As time goes by, it seems that most of the discussion here revolves around MacOS and IOS apps.

Are there still a "typical" share of Windows users here ? After all, latest stats still show MacOS having less than 6% market share, the bulk of the rest, some 90%, being Windows...

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qpsp=2016&qpnp=2&qptimeframe=Y

Do Outliners have more choices and innovations in Mac world ?
Or is there such little interest in outlining for Windows users / developers ?

Just asking...

Pierre Paul Landry

I also use Windows for some tasks.

For me, Onenote in the Windows so good that I rarely look for another note writing software. Furthermore, many of the cool features that we talk about in the Mac ecosystem are rarely impelemented in the Windows:

the features that usually come up in the mac:

sorry, I hit the touchpad...posted before I finish

I don't know many windows apps that do my favorite features:
- (Finder) tags
- transparent storage of files to a folder
- smart folders
- saved searches
- RTF(RTFD): markdown

if there are no attractive features for a third party app, for me, it is better to rely on the big corporate tools like Onenote as they are more likely to stay around longer. Office has been around for ages.

- I find Onenote in the windows very efficient. The whole ecosytem, syncing, export...clipping... it is also great. Note other outliner has as many features as Onenote.
But, it would be interesting if Tinderbox is released for Windows.


What app are you developing?

I too would be interested in knowing how many Windows users there are in the forum. I suppose Steve might be able to tell us, if he's using Google Analytics?

I use Windows 10 and macOS on the same machine -- with a Parallels VM for the Windows instance. I'm in Windows about 50% of the time, because

- Outlook for Windows is much better at living with calendar invitations than Outlook for Mac, and Calendar for Mac simply cannot deal with calendar invitations from Outlook users. Seems like a simple thing, but my work depends on meeting with clients and if I don't get their meeting schedules right, I'm dead in the water.

- OneNote for Windows is better than on any other platform -- the instances for Mac and iOS are only partial reflections of the original.

- MindJet Mindmanager for Windows is the only platform that is fully featured -- the app on Mac is abandonware, essentially, and the app on iOS is a joke -- Mindmanager is far better than any mind mapper on Mac

- ConnectedText lives only on Windows. I've tried using ConnectedText with Coherence and felt I had regressed three decades from a display perspective. The underlying open source technology in Coherence cannot deal with Retina displays

- Other apps I use that live only on Windows: Southbeach Modeler, MS Project, Vizio, Access

- MS Office programs are still better on Windows than on Mac.

Even though all my data files live in the macOS filesystem so that I can access them when the VM is not active, I can easily access glue the two environments together with Dropzone, which is the best macOS app that no one posts about.

I use both platforms. While I'm Mac for personal use, at the place I work we use Windows 7 PCs. So I probably spend 75% of my computer time on Windows. I'd guess that one reason it seems so many of us use Macs is that Mac software (in general and InfoQube as an exception) is more interesting. Microsoft dominate so much on the Windows platform that perhaps there is less to talk about. Just a theory.

Steve Z.

Only Windows for me. Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10.

I work only on Windows. The main reason is, that it is much cheaper (hardware and software). Other reasons:
- Connected Text
- Better MS Office
- Better cooperation with Android apps

Drawbacks:
- a lot of interesting apps are not available (Tinderbox, Devonthink)
- Some other (esp. Scrivener) lag behind the Mac version,

Yes, I have also taken a back seat in this forum recently because it seems to have become an Apple dominated space .... I would never, and could never, move to an Apple computer. Apart from disliking the company and the cultish devotion it seems to inspire in some, my main work software (Visual Foxpro) will not work on a Mac. My information management setup has also become more stable - FoxPro, OneNote, ConnectedText with a little HyperPlan, Goalscape and Ariadne thrown in as and when the need arises. I am looking again at The Brain for a current project but version 9 is still incredibly buggy and missing a lot of features from earlier versions.

Dellu wrote:

What app are you developing?

I'm developing InfoQube, an Ecco Pro inspired outliner / information manager, with hybrid 1-pane / 2-pane / 3-pane outliners (Grid, 2D Surface) with strong project management and data manipulation / analysis capabilities.

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=booktree

I don't belong to any cults (at least, not consciously) but one reason I migrated to Mac for a lot of my work -- and a reason that probably affects the Mac-centric postings here -- is the pervasiveness of iPhones and iPads and that Apple has explicitly focused on helping developers integrate between macOS and iOS. More people need to work between platforms and because of the App Store there are more choices. "More" but not necessarily better.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Yes, I have also taken a back seat in this forum recently because it
seems to have become an Apple dominated space .... I would never, and
could never, move to an Apple computer. Apart from disliking the company
and the cultish devotion it seems to inspire in some,

Windows only. I confess that I've lost some interest in the forum lately because the discussion has become dominated by Mac users talking about software I'd love to use, but can't.

It's a shame that more Mac developers don't follow the lead of Literature & Latte and develop Windows versions of their software. I wonder how many Windows licenses for Scrivener that L&L sell versus Mac licenses. It must be worth their while.

Windows 7 and ChromeOS / Android user here, for the foreseeable future. My toolbox is pretty stable and my system fine-tuned (over 100 pieces of software, though most of them are scripts and various customisations). ConnectedText is one good reason I don't feel like switching.

I do have an iPod Touch, but I have also developed a dislike for iOS and the way the Apple ecosystem works (I get worked up every time I need to use iTunes or deal with some burried iOS settings), so I'm strongly considering switching over to some Android smartphone in the future and bidding Apple good-bye.

But I don't mind hearing about outliners for Mac, it's good to know what's going on in that world too.

Windows 7 PCs, Android phone, a Chromebook and iPad tablet(s). I am pretty much agnostic and find pros and cons with each platform.

--Ken

Hi, Graham,

Two things:

First, is Ariadne still being developed or are you just using a legacy version from years ago?

Second, I've been using version 9 of TheBrain and I haven't found it to be buggy -- there are some missing features though. Have you tried it lately?

Steve Z

Graham Rhind wrote:

and Ariadne thrown in
as and when the need arises. I am looking again at The Brain for a
current project but version 9 is still incredibly buggy and missing a
lot of features from earlier versions.

I use Windows 10 on a Dell XPS 13 and have an iPad and an iPhone. Thought about buying a MacBook last time, but the cost was prohibitive. I'm happy with the Dell, though.

FYI, here are the visitors to the forum by operating system for the past year:

1. Windows 42.00%
2. Macintosh 29.90%
3. iOS 15.68%
4. Android 7.59%
5. Linux 3.62%
6. Chrome OS 0.77%

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Two things:

First, is Ariadne still being developed or are you just using a legacy
version from years ago?

I'm using the legacy version 5.20.70 from yonks ago. It is still being developed (up to version 6.32 now), very slowly, but that is such a different beast from version 5 and I find it unusable in its current form.

Second, I've been using version 9 of TheBrain and I haven't found it to
be buggy -- there are some missing features though. Have you tried it
lately?

Yes, daily. It doesn't sync, the note pane has loads of issues .... I have a number of support tickets outstanding, and just checking the forum daily highlights many new bugs. I think their choice to make version 9 the preferred version for download was premature, though I know many people find it stable enough. I still prefer version 6, and only moved to version 9 because of the cloud syncing, which I need for this project, but as that currently doesn't work .... :-(

I'm using Linux, Windows, MacOS. Currently my workstation runs a Linux Ubuntu Desktop where i use developer programs and Atom for markdown notes. Our private computer in the garden is MacOS where i spend lots of time now, including work time (thanks to a home office job).

The free accessable netshare statistics are pretty worthless. The average makes no sense, first you have Windows in all the restricted office spaces and all the 3rd world. Usage in western/industrialized nations and among people who use computers for serious work is much higher. Even Linux is among programmers in the 10% range now (thanks to Win-10 spy ware).

PS: My workstation is an hexboot system (Win7, Win10, Linux, Hackintosh, Solaris, FreeBSD). Why? Because i can and it makes me look like the best geek in the company.

If you could slip in iOS and Android emulators you might be the hacker-king of the universe LOL

Lothar Scholz wrote:

PS: My workstation is an hexboot system (Win7, Win10, Linux, Hackintosh,
Solaris, FreeBSD). Why? Because i can and it makes me look like the best
geek in the company.

I use both Windows and Mac.

My Hyper Plan product is also cross platform, Windows and Mac. In case anyone is interested, visitors to the http://www.hyperplan.com website breakdown as follows:

Windows: 56%
Mac: 27%
other: 17% (Linux, mobile etc)

I have 6 computers in the house. Two run Windows 7, the rest Linux Mint. I rarely use the Windows machines, one laptop and one desktop, only when I need to write a letter or some such (WordPerfect RuLeZ). Windows was a much bigger part of my life before I retired (I used to be a lawyer).

My outliner is NoteCase Pro, which runs on Windows, OS X, and multiple flavors of Li/Unix (full disclosure, I assist in NC Pro's development).

Treepad Biz works just fine for me, for every note & outline task I need; and most word processing tasks as well. It's old, hasn't been updated in ages, but it still works great. I use windows, exclusively, because TP is a windows-only program and so is just about everything else that I use. Especially now that their hardware lags so far behind windows machines and costs so much more, that's probably not going to change.

There's a reason that the Mac has only 6% market share. Obviously, the Mac works fine for those who still use it, but not for me.

Windows and Android. I may eventually give Linux a shot, depending on where Microsoft ends up taking Windows 10, but for now I’ll stick with those two.

I bought a Mac laptop some years back specifically to give OS-X a serious try and found it wanting in ways that made it almost unusable for much of what I do. Yes, things just work, and they work very well, as long as what you want to do is within the limits of what Apple designed into it. But if you need a little more, or something a little different, it often isn’t available, whereas you can almost always find some kind of acceptable solution in the far more diverse Windows software ecosystem.

As a onetime ECCO Pro user, I like the general idea of InfoQube and have looked at it (I even checked out the latest version after reading PPL’s original post in this thread), but find it much more complicated than I’m willing to devote the effort to learn, at least for now. I also find it hard to use on a high-res monitor.

I am system-agnostic, having worked in applications development and support on different IT systems (including mainframes. minis, MACs, micros, PCs, thin client systems and even NC systems), for scientific, business and financial systems.
Nowadays, for desktop technology, I exclusively support and use Windows-based systems and applications, having formerly supported/used Appe/Mac systems (and applications) a great deal and Linux just a little (for research).

My work role necessitates that I take an objective approach to the use of technology, focusing on that technology which can be definitively shown to meet client requirements at the optimum cost-effectiveness for clients' purchase/use. This approach is really only relevant where the selection of IT needs to ultimately be a rational business decision - as opposed to being (say) an ideological bias/policy or technical decision.

I have been a reader of, and occasional contributor to this forum for several years as it seems to have a relatively even spread across the main desktop OSes, though obviously the scope/experience of users who post here may sometimes necessarily be narrow - e.g., limited to (say) typically one or two OSes at most. Their experiences are important to me thuigh , as I am very interested in the use of PIMs and learning of users' different real-world experiences with them and any mistakes they may have made along the way.