I love tinkering with Scrivener and Devonthink on the Mac.There are lots of other good powerful Mac programs Tinderbox, Curio etc. I know for windows users there are some good programs also..

However are these operating systems doomed? Is touch/voice the future. With my iPad Pro I can do 95% of my work.However I love using Devonthink on the Mac and it is way more powerful than the iOS version.I feel more productive at the desktop...but is that because I am just used to it and old.(48)

My three kids prefer iOS. They haven't known any different...I think Apple is putting all its resources into iOS and Siri as the way of the future...

What will CRIMPing look like in 5 or 10 years...we are in a time of immense change although ti is difficult to see

I envisage voice or some kind of heads up display. You will say something like "Siri, show me my Car Insurance Certificate" and it will appear on the display...I don't think we are that far off.

For me, ios is just over rated junk. I find it so frustrating to do tasks on the ipad.
I have an ipad since 2011: I doublt if I have accomplished a singel serious task on it. It is just laying around collecting dust. I pick up, charge it, configure it (install some up) thinking I will use it this time--finally drop it after some tinkering. This has been going on for years.

Sycing between mac os and ios is just so inefficient. I sometimes feel that the cloud and syncing stuff is just a hype: not a truly functional system.

Dropbox and icloud work: but, they store just files.

I tried to sync my Bookends; or, sync 10,000 pdf files across the two systems: it is just broken. It will not work. It takes ages to sync. A simple transition from Mac to the ipad, and vise versa, is just nightmare.

Pdf files I have been annotating on the mac rarely show up in the ipad (which ever system I tried) immediately.

For me, the future is to completely drop ios--sell my ipad in the flee market; simply stay with the mac.

The macs are getting lighter and more efficient. I can carry them around; I can take them to my bed. Why do I have to worry about the sync; why do I have to pay extra for Icloud (dropbox)?

First, I don't think CRIMPing qua CRIMPing goes away or changes.

Yes, phones and mobile devices are and will continue to be more prevalent -- but look at what most people do with phones: text and images (photos or videos). That's not really the focus of CRIMPing.

I think the important change that will affect what we CRIMP is not something like Siri or Alexa -- those are just voice-controlled data entry with limited AI and search in the background -- and they will always be too lightweight for serious long-term working sessions. The ongoing change will be what Google calls "fluid movement between devices" or (not the same thing) Apple's "handoff". Eliminating the friction of moving data, function, and features between devices is what is needed to make computing ubiquitous.

The current state of the art in ubiquitous computing is still lame. What I want to see is the computing portrayed 8 years ago in Avatar (and others -- such as, recently, The Expanse): what I'm working on with this screen I swipe over to another screen I pick up and carry with me, and when I get to work I swipe that app and data over to another screen. In other words, the device is irrelevant -- the flow is everything. Coupled with augmented reality and microchip implants - that to me is an exciting future that is not very distant. No one playing Atari Pong in 1972 would have imaged it evolving to the Switch in 2016. So what will fiddling with ConnectedText today be like in this new world of computing in 10 years?

Paul Korm wrote:

Eliminating the
friction of moving data, function, and features between devices is what
is needed to make computing ubiquitous.

The current state of the art in ubiquitous computing is still lame.

Ubiquitous computing is already here and working quite well, as long as you can survive living within the Chrome OS + Android system.

I have several Chromebooks, two at home and one at work, and it's quite amazing how seamlessly I can move between them.

They are almost exact copies of each other (I say "almost", as not all three have Android integration yet), with all the relevant data synced automatically.

And I would expect the Android integration to improve further, as Chrome OS gets more broadly accepted. All new Chromebooks come now with Android enabled by default.

As I understand it, CRIMPing is a psychological condition. It is the restless urge to manage one's affairs by diverting energy to management systems rather than to the tasks themselves. Sadly, at least in my case, I don't think that's liable to change whatever the operating system or underlying technology.

The difference maker would be multi-purpose software and whoever is smart enough to develop that at the right time when the technology is there.

Right now the tablets are still expensive counterparts to laptops which are expensive counterparts to the desktop utility wise. Obviously this is not an accurate analogy in terms of actual usage but in terms of a metaphor for what CRIMPing can be habitually done based on the potential of each hardware then I believe it's close to accurate.

What I mean by this is that right now CRIMPing is stuck in the old cellphone model where multipurpose equals music, mini-games and small things tacked on to distract from it being a phone. The smartphone changed that and apps made up for the phone services being now much more complicated to look at but still a multipurpose distraction to a laptop or desktop.

This in-between stage is where CRIMPing in the future is currently at. It's still in a primitive stage of importing over micro-distraction apps with a few killer apps. In the future, it will be much closer to true multipurpose software.

An example of this would be the implementation of a meditation PIM. You can modify the OS entirely for a task rather than opening up an app. This OS can be swiped with a specific calendar that would schedule a specific set of guided meditations that would auto-set the calendar to machine learn your free time habits that would auto-play relaxing music whenever you open up an editor that would auto-shutdown the OS "app" when you say sleep while holding the close button on any particular software as every button can be a talk button and you can swipe this OS away like a youtube video in a youtube app and switch to another recommended OS.

OS to OS sharing will be the first key evolution as you will do the equivalent of picking a Linux distro for cooking, kid's profile viewing, programming in a non-distraction environment, writing in an academic setting versus a novel setting, etc. etc. etc.

Browsers in turn would be less like browsers and more like hubs for personal database. Online bookmarks can do offline clippings without the need for a separate Evernote app. Search would not only be voice activated but OS integrated. Example would be "Firefox open OutlinerSoftware.com besides split tab Google.com".

Most radical would be how the smartphone would become a sort of advanced clicker for the laptop/desktop/tablet. Instead of remote viewing you will have remote controls that can send one Google Keep audio note to another account within a preset range. VPNs would be more advanced than current versions to combat trolls obviously. Smartphones can voice control on apps that don't support the feature or aren't made by the same developer. Locked passwords would be replaced by a smartphone security feature. Bits and pieces of information that can be stored within a disk drive connected to a PC/Mac would finally made into fruition the HDD with a large screen idea that tablets were meant to replace.

I agree with jaslar and Paul on this - CRIMPing is a state of mind, and the outward structures or interfaces don't actually change that state of mind; bring it on Minority Report, I say.

I'm sorry Dellu has had such issues with syncing between Mac and iOS. While I think it's still not as great as it should be, I happily transfer significant amounts of information between both platforms using a variety of apps, and really don't come up against the kinds of problems that people (including me) used to swear about as recently as a couple of years ago. Things have improved! All the Apple apps sync instantly. Bear, Outlinely, Ulysses sync instantly. DEVONthink and Together sync instantly. Readdle Documents syncs instantly. AutoTask (our business equivalent of Dropbox) syncs instantly, as does Dropbox. I don't use Bookends, so can't comment, but much will depend on whether developers are using the latest Apple CloudKit (or whatever they're calling it nowadays).

iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra are looking very promising, too, and should transform the whole iOS scene. However, I'm afraid one may have to invest in an iPad Pro to gain maximum benefit. Which is irritating - my wife recently got a brand new iPad (one of the standard "nameless" consumer models) and the price-performance ratio is very impressive. She uses it all the time! I'll be interested to see which iOS 11 features it does/doesn't support.

But I'm fascinated to hear about Dr Andus's clearly very successful experience with Chrome and Android. On the other hand, I have much the same (albeit undoubtedly more expensive) experience on Macs/iOS devices, so it's horses for courses, I suppose.

Talking of which, I wonder if anybody's acquired one of the latest Logitech mice? The ones that allow you to swipe across multiple computer screens (on multiple platforms)? That has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen!

Cheers,
Bill

Bear, Outlinely, Ulysses sync instantly. DEVONthink and Together sync instantly. Readdle Documents syncs instantly. AutoTask (our business equivalent of Dropbox) syncs instantly, as does Dropbox.

My frustration is mostly on Pdf files; as they grow large.
For small, text files, I agree with you, everything seems to work fine.

Readdl's Document (PDF expert pro): that is one of the apps I have tried and tried for many years. It works so far as the documents are within 4000 range. Beyond that, it wobbles; cries and fails. Searching becomes almost impossible.

I am not also very satisfied with the Devonthink's syncing capability. My experience is the same. they work great so far as the data is smaller in size. As it grows larger, they break down.

One promising technology I have been thinking about latesly is the USB-C. One can store all the files in one USB-C external drive and plug them on any phone and computer as he/she moves around. that could work at least for bare files like PDF files and the like. Another advantage of this system is its Internet independence. My another issue with these systems, is that they all fall apart if you unplug your network.
Internet is a huge destruction. I sometimes want to go to monkmode (new Carlport calls this "Deep work")---disconnect all my Internet and work on my writing.

The cloud is no more functional. USB-c can still function, for example, if I like reading on the ipad (android tablet) and writing on the mac.

I think the DEVONthink folks intently wanted to avoid iCloud sync, which was far more unreliable at the time, and their "database" structure was too fragile to directly store in clouds -- especially Dropbox which rips DEVONthink databases to pieces without warning. So they invented a sui generis sync method that has literally taken years to perfect. And, as Dellu explains, it's far from perfect. (FWIW, I always sync DEVONthink to DTTG while my devices are on my own network, and never on someone else's network.)

But I don't think anyone's sync technology is up the the heavy demands of researchers and other users who need a lot of data moving back and forth between devices and the cloud. There are too many points of failure. Unless you are in your own physical domain with a network you built, the quality and capacity of the network infrastructure you are operating on at any given time is not transparent and is beyond one's average understanding and control.

So we cannot yet shove anything we want around any network anywhere. Dellu's situation is a case in point. And that's why there's no *real* ubiquitous computing yet. With respect, what I am envisioning is not what Dr Andrus points out as existing today -- I think of what he discusses as being more of a proof-of-concept than a product end state. It will get better -- due to society's insatiable demand for data, feature and function.

I'd have to agree with Dellu about very large quantities of data (that's why we use AutoTask, which has a very efficient Cloud repository); I too have been toying with the idea of iOS-optimised USB sticks. There are some good ones around nowadays - a far cry from the basic SanDisk WiFi 32GB microserver I still have somewhere around. For large quantities of data, I think they're a good option.

Paul Korm wrote:

And that's why there's no *real*
ubiquitous computing yet. With respect, what I am envisioning is not
what Dr Andrus points out as existing today -- I think of what he
discusses as being more of a proof-of-concept than a product end state.
It will get better -- due to society's insatiable demand for data,
feature and function.

The future is already here, in the sense that various conceptions of the future are competing with each other in the present, as beta features or strategic plans. The question is which vision is going to be the winner.

I'm not saying Chrome OS (+Android) are perfect or already there yet, but as far as pure Chrome OS (Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, Chromebases, and Chromebits) goes, ubiquitous computing is possible, as each device is a near perfect copy (as long as you don't save stuff to the local drive).

As far as I can see, Apple and Microsoft have been both caught out by the emergence of the Chrome OS model, and they are playing catch-up. However, it's a lot harder to try to turn Windows or a Mac OS into a 'dumb terminal' type system as an after-thought, then having it designed like that on purpose, bottom-up, as Google has done.

I was also one of those laughing at the first Chromebook when it came out, thinking why on earth would anyone want a computer that's just a glorified browser. But once you get used to the convenience of the 'dumb terminal' model, it's hard to go back.

Crimping in the Chrome OS context means finding online alternatives or Chrome browser extensions and apps (and gradually, Android apps, once all Chromebooks get Android) to replicate functions otherwise provided by traditional computer software.

There are still limitations, and I am not ready to give up my Windows 7 laptop yet, but the trend has been for me a gradual transition to using Chrome Drive and the Chrome browser (with extensions) even within my Win 7 machine.

Paul Korm wrote:

So what
will fiddling with ConnectedText today be like in this new world of
computing in 10 years?

Unfortunately the trend seems to be a general dumbing down, i.e. serving the needs of the lowest common denominator, rather than those of power users.

In fact power users have been subsidised by the masses up until recently in the world of traditional OS's. But as people will no longer need to have a PC at home, or even a laptop (a smartphone with a smart TV might take care of the average home user's needs), it will likely become more expensive for power users to enjoy all the flexibility and customisability they've been used to. That is the downside I see in iOS and the latest Windows adventures (Win8, 10 and RT). The trend is towards restricting customisability.

Chrome OS is an interesting exception and alternative in that it allows both for an extreme dumb terminal mode, and also for easy switching or dual booting to a full Linux distro. So you can have both a dumb terminal and a highly customisable OS.

Hmmm, maybe *your* future is already here. *My* future is not yet ready to arrive. LOL

IMO, the technology for ubiquity is still very low on the S-curve and has lots up healthy upside potential.

The dumbing down of features is occurring on the consumer side, for sure -- because the bulk of consumers have never been interested in the kind of computing that this forum tends to discuss. OTOH, what's happening in industry and within government (esp. military) is far from dumbed down. Technology developments in those arenas can be expected to filter into the open market to some extent.