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Which "favorite" outliner app would you give up if something better came along
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Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 7, 2018 at 03:09 PM
Sorry, long topic title. I was thinking about which of my “favorite” outliner apps I would give up if something better came along. Unfortunately “favorite” doesn’t necessarily mean good or great, it just means the app fills a niche and so I use it.
Among these, I count OmniOutliner, Outlinely, DynaList, iThoughts (sort of an outliner), and Tinderbox. I keep all five in play because of one or two key features the others do not have.
I think the first three are in the category of “dump it if something better appears”, and it is more likely that something better than any of the three *will* appear. The last two, I probably wouldn’t dump. I’m sure I’ll never get rid of Tinderbox—because I’ve used it for a long time, know how to wrassle it pretty well, and enjoy working with it.
Anyway, interesting mental exercise. What about you?
Posted by Luhmann
Jul 7, 2018 at 03:27 PM
Well my big issue is the lack of a strong iOS client paired with an equally strong desktop app. I currently use Dynalist, but for some reason they’ve struggled for a long time to make an iOS app which doesn’t regularly freeze. And even if it didn’t freeze regularly, they still have a long way to go to match a native experience on iOS. Mubu does well, but it stores its data on servers in China, which I don’t feel comfortable with. Outlinely has a nice iOS experience, but the development is uneven and the desktop experience still buggy. Workflowy is nice, but has fallen behind Dynalist in features and the iOS experience is still not great (although better than Dyanlist). So if anyone can make something that works good on iOS and comes close on the desktop, I’d gladly switch. I joined this forum looking for such an app, and still haven’t found what I’m looking for…
PS: I’m aware of the other options, like OO, but am not interested in them. I really want a workflowy-like outliner.
Posted by JakeBernsteinWA
Jul 7, 2018 at 04:47 PM
Luhmann wrote:
Well my big issue is the lack of a strong iOS client paired with an
>equally strong desktop app. I currently use Dynalist, but for some
>reason they’ve struggled for a long time to make an iOS app which
>doesn’t regularly freeze. And even if it didn’t freeze regularly, they
>still have a long way to go to match a native experience on iOS. Mubu
>does well, but it stores its data on servers in China, which I don’t
>feel comfortable with. Outlinely has a nice iOS experience, but the
>development is uneven and the desktop experience still buggy. Workflowy
>is nice, but has fallen behind Dynalist in features and the iOS
>experience is still not great (although better than Dyanlist). So if
>anyone can make something that works good on iOS and comes close on the
>desktop, I’d gladly switch. I joined this forum looking for such an app,
>and still haven’t found what I’m looking for…
>
>PS: I’m aware of the other options, like OO, but am not interested in
>them. I really want a workflowy-like outliner.
I’ve only ever really used OO and I love it. But I’m intrigued by this concept of outliner-as-more-than-an-outline, which OO doesn’t focus on.
I’ve downloaded Dynalist and Outlinely to try them out. Tried Workflowy but too minimalist for me.
Posted by Dellu
Jul 7, 2018 at 10:01 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
>I think the first three are in the category of “dump it if something
>better appears”, and it is more likely that something better than any of
>the three *will* appear. The last two, I probably wouldn’t dump. I’m
>sure I’ll never get rid of Tinderbox—because I’ve used it for a long
>time, know how to wrassle it pretty well, and enjoy working with it.
>
>Anyway, interesting mental exercise. What about you?
I am actually very inclined to dump Tinderbox.
Thinking hard about TB, the time I spent tinkering with it greatly exceeds the time I spend using it. It is a huge time sink. The tinkering is killing my productivity. I cannot remember the time I said: “wow, I would have never discovered this if not for TB”.
Searching the forums to find a script(OnADD) to accomplish a task bored me to death. And, also have to export the notes to make them available to Spotlight (Foxtrot) is a hectic process.
I am also learning that the whole mentality of “managing information” is misguided. Considering myself primarily as a writer (in the way argued by Patricia Goodson) is much helpful mentality for productivity. We can collect and organize information all our lives without making relevant progress.
I am moving to Scrivener and Scapple combo.
Posted by Luhmann
Jul 8, 2018 at 03:45 AM
JakeBernsteinWA wrote:
>I’ve only ever really used OO and I love it. But I’m intrigued by this
>concept of outliner-as-more-than-an-outline, which OO doesn’t focus on.
For me OO just doesn’t work right as an outliner. I’ve tried it many times, but I can never get used to it. I don’t need any of the fancy spreadsheet or styling features it offers. I’ve tried OO Essentials, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I really, really, wish I could use it, because it does seem to be one of the only options with a decent iOS app that works similarly to the desktop - but after using Workflowy/Dynalist/Outlinely/Mubu, it just drives me up the wall… Not because the others do anything “more than an outline” but because they do outlining well. The entire user interface gets out of my way, but with OO I feel like nearly every UX decision they made was wrong. (And I felt this way before Workflowy came along, when I used to use OO as my main outliner.)