Luhmann wrote:

Neither OmniOutliner nor Tinderbox are particularly similar to the raft
of outliners inspired by Workflowy, of which Outlinely is one. While
they might be nice for some users, my point remains, if you want an
actively developed Workflowy-like outliner that works on MacOS and iOS
with good sync, you are stuck with electron apps.

It is indeed unfortunate. I suspect this is due to the market not being large enough to sustain even a small team doing an iOS+macOS only outliner. As evidence, I'd take that even the multi-platform options (WorkFlowy, Dynalist) only seem to be able to support very small teams, and it looks as if OmniGroup determined that their energy was better spent on OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan rather than OmniOutliner.

Of course, a great app can make a small market grow. But this seems like a risky bet.

-Alex

Maybe, but I also think that Apple deserves some of the blame. The 30% cut, the lack of discoverability in the App store, the drive towards cheap apps, as well as other problems developers complain about seem to have hurt apps like this which used to survive in the old days of Apple shareware. Remember MORE?

I hauled out my old 2011 MacBook Pro (it works with Webinex when Chromebook and Linux don't), and saw the Outlinely update. So I installed, and put it through its paces again. It's quite a nice outliner, very much a Workflowy/Dynalist for the desktop, modern and local.

Except it's buggy as hell and some features were never properly implemented. I don't have a list anymore (I once sent a long list to the developer), but there is a reason I stopped using it. Yes, it seems great at first - which is why I paid for a lifetime account, but I soon regretted it and eventually stopped using it altogether. I wouldn't be bothered about the lack of development if it really was the polished app it seems at first...

Luhmann wrote:

Except it's buggy as hell and some features were never properly
implemented. I don't have a list anymore (I once sent a long list to the
developer), but there is a reason I stopped using it. Yes, it seems
great at first - which is why I paid for a lifetime account, but I soon
regretted it and eventually stopped using it altogether. I wouldn't be
bothered about the lack of development if it really was the polished app
it seems at first...

Same experience here. I thought Outlinely was awesome (and subscribed for a year) until I moved my active projects into it and started to really work with it. Within a day or two I came to the realization that the software is actually very buggy and crashed more frequently than I was comfortable with. I would never trust Outlinely with important data or an important writing project.

Interesting. I’ve got a fair amount of info in Outlinely, and it’s been pretty rock-solid. But experience can vary (really quite a lot).

Has anybody taken a look at the intriguing new Craft (craft.do), a kind of embedded super-outliner/document manager? It’s not cheap, but it is pretty cool.

Cheers,
Bill

UK-based writer/director Julian Simpson wrote about it in a recent personal newsletter:

"And so to Craft. Oh my God, Craft. Michael Marshall Smith recommended it to me a week or so ago, and I tried it out in an idle moment, which turned into an intensive several hours of transferring literally all the notes on my computer into it. Obsidian, Notion, Zettlr, Bear, Roam Research, Drafts and Ulysses have all been mothballed in favour of Craft. I’m so enthusiastic about it, I actually find it hard to articulate just why it is so good. Yes, there are backlinks, yes it works across all devices seamlessly, yes it allows for collaboration (SO easily!), yes it’s minimalist, yes the design is almost flawless... And there are pages within pages, and the ability to seamless include images and sketches, and the phone app scans documents, and the export is as fast and amazing as the import... I love everything about this app, and one of the things I love the most is the sparsity of instructions; when you download, they pretty much just give you a few pointers and tell you to go play. And that process of discovery is really rewarding as you go “I wonder if...” and a moment later, you’ve discovered that feature you always wish you had. I mean, I understand that this is just a notes app. It’s not a time machine or a Covid vaccine, but it has made this writer very happy. You can be happy to at Craft.do"

Although I really like Craft, a few things stop me from using it:

1. £45 per year
2. Accessibility is very limited. You cannot change the font size in app. You can per block, but you cannot change the default size of all docs. For some reason developers think smaller is better.
3. OS support. Only Catalina+ is supported and even then only for a possible 6-12 months. This also seems a current trend, forcing users to upgrade to continue using their app. Catalina has been the worst upgrade in my mac experience, on par with Microsoft ME. Big Sur will not see my machine for at least another 12 months.



satis wrote:

UK-based writer/director Julian Simpson wrote about it in a recent
personal newsletter:

"And so to Craft. Oh my God, Craft. Michael Marshall Smith recommended
it to me a week or so ago, and I tried it out in an idle moment, which
turned into an intensive several hours of transferring literally all the
notes on my computer into it. Obsidian, Notion, Zettlr, Bear, Roam
Research, Drafts and Ulysses have all been mothballed in favour of
Craft. I’m so enthusiastic about it, I actually find it hard to
articulate just why it is so good. Yes, there are backlinks, yes it
works across all devices seamlessly, yes it allows for collaboration (SO
easily!), yes it’s minimalist, yes the design is almost
flawless... And there are pages within pages, and the ability to
seamless include images and sketches, and the phone app scans documents,
and the export is as fast and amazing as the import... I love everything
about this app, and one of the things I love the most is the sparsity of
instructions; when you download, they pretty much just give you a few
pointers and tell you to go play. And that process of discovery is
really rewarding as you go “I wonder if...” and a moment
later, you’ve discovered that feature you always wish you had. I
mean, I understand that this is just a notes app. It’s not a time
machine or a Covid vaccine, but it has made this writer very happy. You
can be happy to at Craft.do"

I tend to agree with you, Simon. I had a bit of a play with Craft, and while I loved some of the ideas, found that some of them come across as gimmicky rather than value-adding.

But it’s a lovely piece of software, which does cause the CRIMPing instinct to leap to the fore! The embedding/nesting concept is especially well done.

The latest episode of AppStories details the switch to Craft from Notion by the two hosts of the show.

https://appstories.net/episodes/197/

It was particularly difficult for them to pull data out of Notion, and they disliked the iOS app. Given that one of the hosts works primarily on iPads, that skews their review a bit for me, but they're pretty taken with it, and discuss that the app improved considerably from its original beta at WWDC.

Yes, I was fascinated to discover that the MacStories crew (of whom Federico and John are two) have moved over to Craft so rapidly.

satis wrote:

The latest episode of AppStories details the switch to Craft from Notion
by the two hosts of the show.

https://appstories.net/episodes/197/

It was particularly difficult for them to pull data out of Notion, and
they disliked the iOS app. Given that one of the hosts works primarily
on iPads, that skews their review a bit for me, but they're pretty taken
with it, and discuss that the app improved considerably from its
original beta at WWDC.

I wouldn't rush to follow them because they have a long history of jumping from app to app on a yearly basis for both notes and reminders. And their priorities tend towards robustness in the iOS space and collaboration, neither of which is a typical user's prime concern. The podcast was useful in putting into context both the way the app works and how quickly it's scaled with its relatively recent introduction of backlinks.

If one were interested solely in an alternative to Curio I'd recommend taking a look at the app, but the addition of backlinks could make it compelling for a lot of people.

I still have qualms about writing in a text box so I'm not sure the app is right for me.

Craft do, however, have one of the most elegant product demonstrations I’ve ever seen, that’s also a useful guide to the art of programming in Apple’s Catalyst:
https://www.craft.do/maccatalyst-guide

It’s enough to make you subscribe straight away! ;-)

satis wrote:

I wouldn't rush to follow them because they have a long history of
jumping from app to app on a yearly basis for both notes and reminders.
And their priorities tend towards robustness in the iOS space and
collaboration, neither of which is a typical user's prime concern. The
podcast was useful in putting into context both the way the app works
and how quickly it's scaled with its relatively recent introduction of
backlinks.

If one were interested solely in an alternative to Curio I'd recommend
taking a look at the app, but the addition of backlinks could make it
compelling for a lot of people.

I still have qualms about writing in a text box so I'm not sure the app
is right for me.

As I investigate Craft a bit more closely, I’m also impressed at the pace of development. All sorts of nice things introduced in the latest update.

And already you can open documents in multiple windows (on macOS). Take that, Agenda!

I’ve taken out a temporary (monthly) subscription. I know, I know, CRIMPing…

;-)

"Using Craft Notes for Study and Preserving Long-Term Knowledge"

https://thesweetsetup.com/using-craft-notes-for-study-and-preserving-long-term-knowledge/

(Mostly focuses on iOS implementation.)