Looks like the beta is only open to current users.

Thanks for the alert. I am eager to see what Aquaminds has done to improve Notetaker.

I am eager to try the beta as soon as possible. I worked on OmniOutline's beta for their current version, and I definitely found some issues (keystrokes that would decimate the notes fields), but I didn't suffer as I kept frequent copies of the data file (as in every minute or so).

Jeffery

So far, the beta seems stable. There was a glitch in getting my Mac configured for it (permissions), but that was corrected immediately, and I've had no crashes so far. It's looking good.

Good to hear. I remember the split between NoteTaker and NoteBook.

http://www.atpm.com/10.05/atpo.shtml

And IIRC the two apps had a coding (or at least UI) history going back to the NeXT machines. Hopefully something solid will come out later this year.

I have never found a suitable replacement for Notetaker. I had read that many attorneys liked Circus Ponies Notebook for keeping legal notes, and they were looking for a replacement when Circus Ponies closed shop. I found Notetaker more to my liking.

I always thought that Notebook was more Mac-like in its operation, but I didn't like the idea of putting *everything* into any one single app, so I never used either app. Also, they both seemed a bit clunky to me, with neither outlining that matches the ease of Acta/DynoNotepad/Opal (same app, different name in 3 decades), which I used starting in the late 80s, nor the speed and power of BBEdit. And I was distrustful with inserting and attaching images to files - and wary of what that would mean for the stability of the apps if I started taxing the files with them. (I feel much less wary about that today with my iPad!)

Now, especially with mobile use/access/sync being such a (surprisingly) large part of my work, my longtime (and somewhat creaky) outline/textfile workflow has been exploded.

FYI I was curious about what happened in recent days with Notebook's Jayson Adams (answer: we still don't know) and Notetaker's Scott Love, but I found this interesting 15-year-old Joi Ito blog post and subsequent comment-thread, with Jayson Adams as one of the commenters. Turns out my remembrance was right about those DNA of the apps coming from NeXTSTEP; someone noted that Adams wrote "the original NoteBook app for the NEXTSTEP platform.... He and Scott Love cofounded Millennium Software Labs in the 80s and when the company dissolved, they went their own paths.Love founded Aquaminds in 2003 and Adams founded Circus Ponies."

https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2003/03/07/scott-love-the.html

Circus Ponies closed with some barbs thrown at Microsoft and, perhaps, Google. I don't like Microsoft's predatory behavior (which caused the collapse of Netmanage Ecco). I tried to use OmniOutliner as a replacement for Notetaker when the latter seemed to be abandoned, and I am thrilled to see that it has a new life.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

Circus Ponies closed with some barbs thrown at Microsoft and, perhaps,
Google.

I remember Jayson Adams posting his closing notice with a quasi-maybe joke linking to http://www.circusponies.xyz -- and the .xyz domain is owned by Google: "After 13 years in business, Circus Ponies has gone to that great Alphabet company in the sky."

Most people thought it was a sly reference to Jayson's new employment at Google; after all, spendy acqui-hires are not unknown for Google, which bought then closed Bebop and hired VMware co-founder Diane Greene to run Google Cloud.

Adams later told TheMacObserver: "neither www.circusponies.com nor www.circusponies.xyz says anything about Alphabet owning us. I mostly just thought it would be funny for Circus Ponies to be the “C” in Alphabet. I am flattered that people would think that Circus Ponies was on par with Google and all the other multibillion sub-corporations Alphabet owns."

... but if you check LinkedIn today you'll see that he *is* employed by Google, as a software engineer:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaysonadams/

So perhaps it wasn't an acqui-hire but Adams's closing shop to take a regular (large) paycheck. And the Notebook code is mouldering.

In his goodbye note Adams did take a shot at OneNote for being what he considered a poor clone of Notebook, but honestly how much and for how long can one own or take responsibility for a notebook/tabs app metaphor?

From the Aquaminds blog it looks like v4 will be released any time now.

In December, they had started working on the documentation and help menus. The beta versions in the past 3 months have been pretty much bug-free from my end. These sorts of programs are prone to crashing while pasting a chunk of data from another app, or trying to import it. The look and feel are very much the same as in the previous versions, and I'm looking forward to what version 4 has to offer.