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Current state of iOS/macOS outliners
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 7, 2017 at 02:19 PM
Thanks for the reminder about iThoughts, Paul - yes, it is quite impressive, and remarkably flexible, too. I’ve been playing (again), and although I prefer Outlinely for sheer speed and convenience (its syncing is also very quick), iThoughts at its best is extremely elegant - and has the added advantage of being able to act like a genuine task manager (complete with reminders etc.), which Outlinely doesn’t (yet) do.
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 7, 2017 at 10:42 PM
Luhmann wrote:
>Workflowy hasn’t shown much improvement on the iOS front, but they have
>hired new staff, started updating the web app more regularly, and
>introduced a desktop app, so I think we can expect to see some
>improvements soon on the iOS front as well.
Maybe your optimism is not unjustified, considering their call for alpha testers:
https://blog.workflowy.com/2017/11/07/help-us-design-workflowy-join-workflowy-alpha/
Posted by Luhmann
Oct 29, 2018 at 03:16 AM
It has been about a year since I wrote this last post, and nothing much has changed. Outlinely shows some signs of life, and has a new lifetime subscription, but many of the things that bother me about the app’s UX still haven’t been fixed and my emails to the developer (since paying for a subscription!) have all gone un-answered. Dynalist continues to ignore major problems that cause freezing on iOS. So I remain stuck between these two imperfect options. Workflowy has done nothing other than update their fonts (as far as I can tell). Hopefully the next year will bring some more substantial improvements to one of these platforms, or something new…
Luhmann wrote:
Another way of defining my personal “idiosyncratic standards” for an
>outliner might be to say that I want a Workflowy-inspired outliner that
>works across platforms.It still seems to me that only the four outliners
>in my original post meet such a requirement. Other people may not like
>the workflowy-model of how an outliner should work, but for me it is
>close to perfect, and Dynalist has come the closest to perfecting it on
>desktop, while Mubu and Outlinely have done the best on iOS.
Posted by satis
Oct 29, 2018 at 03:47 AM
Luhmann wrote:
> It has been about a year since I wrote this last post, and nothing much
> has changed.
I prefer my files to reside locally or on the cloud of my choice and I’d consider jumping onto Outlinely if I had any confidence in its continuing development, but so far it seems more like a side project that got some attention over the summer.
OmniOutliner has the most refined outlining on Mac and iOS but development has stagnated as Omni puts virtually all its efforts into OmniFocus and its upcoming web version. It’s what I’m still using, not all that happily, with occasional sojourns into TaskPaper.
I miss Tree.
I wish Ulysses or IA Writer built up outlining/folding into their products.
Gingko seems somewhat lost in the weeds - two different codebases, the web client being deprecated (then not, and now ...?) with the Mac app still being too rudimentary for me to use or trust.
Dynalist’s devs appear to have solid plans and (slow) follow-through, but their pricing is off the mark. If Checkvist were not so ugly - and were less clunky - I might consider using it for a year.
Posted by Luhmann
Oct 29, 2018 at 08:40 AM
Worth pointing out that a pro plan with Dynalist (as expensive as it is - I signed up when it was cheaper than it is now) gives you daily backups on Dropbox in a standard format, so you always have local copies of all your outlines.
I just don’t understand how they can justify charging so much when their iOS app has been broken for over a year… I guess most users don’t use the app enough to have problems. (It is only broken if you have large outlines or many outlines, or something like that which causes the app to freeze up for several minutes on launch.)