The last discussion here about Craft was in June of 2021. It’s hard to know where to begin with so many new and exciting things happening since then.

- Craft Web App is now at near parity with the Mac app. Full parity this quarter.
- Craft 2.0 was released - a Christmas present indeed.
- Apple named Craft the Mac App of the Year 2021.
- Craft rolled out version 2.02 - tons of updates.
- MacStories runner-up App and Design of the year.
- MacStories readers voted Craft ‘Readers Choice for 2021’
- iOS App Store ratings for Craft is a staggering 4.9 out of 2,100+ ratings

All since June!

Wayyy too many things to list here if you haven’t seen Craft since June of last year.
Here’s a good rundown:

Craft in 2022
https://www.craft.do/whats-new

Craft 2.0
https://www.craft.do/whats-new/b/623ABE95-9BB9-4005-9829-7330752CCC16/v2.0_-_Craft_update

Craft 2.2
https://www.craft.do/whats-new/b/B00618FB-2FFF-455B-8AF5-B9B41B91512F/v2.0.2_-_Craft_update_-_All_the_smal

This app has truly come the closest to ending my never ending CRIMP search!

Thoughts on Craft for 2022?

- MD

Craft is an incredibly well written application. I can only assume that the Craft team is super talented.

When Craft came out I was in the middle of developing version 1.0 of outliner, Zavala. I almost stropped working on it because I was so intimidated by Craft. I had some friends tell me that they still wanted a dedicated outliner, so I kept going.

I still can’t believe that MacStories picked Obsidian over Craft. I realize those guys are really into Obsidian, but the out-of-the-box experience between the two is incomparable. Craft wins hands down.

I’m excited to check out Craft extensions. That should put it feature wise, on par with the more extensible web-based knowledge databases.

Maurice Parker wrote:

I almost stropped working on it because I was so
intimidated by Craft.

Well, I’m sure glad you continued!
Putting things in perspective, Craft is fine-tuned by a large staff with $8 Million in funding last year. As beautiful as it is, and yes it’s also extremely well executed, it really *should be* if you think about it. That’s some serious cash behind a product. It’s also a lot of daily expectations to live up to. There is definitely room for Zavala, Maurice. I think it’s one of those iOS apps that, “just works.” I really mean that, too - SO glad you continued.

Donovan wrote:

Craft is fine-tuned by a large staff with
$8 Million in funding last year. As beautiful as it is, and yes
it’s also extremely well executed, it really *should be* if you
think about it. That’s some serious cash behind a product.

Yes, they got $8m in Series A funding (plus an unknown seed amount from InReach Ventures), but techdom is filled with products funded by many times that amount which then failed. Not saying that's in any way happening to Craft, just that it's a poor metric to use because there's a fine line between 'serious cash' and 'dumb money'.

As an aside, that funding is a drop in the bucket for a company like that and its burn rate, and not too 'serious' when compared to other apps. For example Notion has received nearly $400m in multiple seed rounds (with a multibillion dollar valuation), ClickUp has raised more than $400m, Roam Research has drawn over $9m, and RemNote raised $3m in September. With the pandemic VCs have thrown money at all sorts of notetaking products as workers have had to be productive and share from home.

What’s impressive about Craft is the steady pace of development – it’s a rapidly evolving product.

That’s always the most encouraging sign that (a) the underlying platform is well-programmed and solid, and (b) the team get on well together!

JF Martin is creating short how-to videos for Craft that are pretty useful

https://www.youtube.com/c/NumericCitizenVideos/videos

Am I the only person who can't figure out what Craft does from their "revised" website? I spent about 20 minutes looking through the website this morning and it seems like it's a web page editor that focuses on having fancy templates.

I seem to remember checking it out a year or so ago and it seemed like it was a more interesting app, but I can't remember the details.

Chris, l ooked at the website just now, and I am not sure what Craft does either, or how to describe it. Best I could come up with is page design and layout - with elements of presentation (PowerPoint, etc., and desktop publishing.

Daly

Chris Thompson wrote:

Am I the only person who can't figure out what Craft does from their
"revised" website? I spent about 20 minutes looking through the website
this morning and it seems like it's a web page editor that focuses on
having fancy templates.

I seem to remember checking it out a year or so ago and it seemed like
it was a more interesting app, but I can't remember the details.

The problem with the website is that they are emphasizing the presentation of pages created in Craft, rather than focusing on what I see as Craft's main advantage: It is like a word processor with Roam-like powers to link material, although the web version is not quite as sophisticated in this regard as the MacOS app. So, it is a good information management suite if you want to write more complete paragraphs, rather than parsing your information into individual nodes, as Roam or Obsidian prompt you to do.

But like those two apps, Craft has a nice daily note feature.

It does NOT have the graphing function of Roam or Obsidian, but I have never found that a useful feature.

It is being continually updated, so I do not see it as a mature app just yet.

Steve


Daly de Gagne wrote:

Chris, l ooked at the website just now, and I am not sure what Craft
does either, or how to describe it. Best I could come up with is page
design and layout - with elements of presentation (PowerPoint, etc., and
desktop publishing.

Daly

Chris Thompson wrote:
Am I the only person who can't figure out what Craft does from their
>"revised" website? I spent about 20 minutes looking through the website
>this morning and it seems like it's a web page editor that focuses on
>having fancy templates.
>
>I seem to remember checking it out a year or so ago and it seemed like
>it was a more interesting app, but I can't remember the details.
>

The landing page is a fair overview, and you can learn more in-depth for Individual and Enterprise users on separate pages.

https://www.craft.do/solutions/individuals

I know one person who was very confused by what they thought was Craft's website, but it turned out they'd gone to craft.io which is a different product, with a more muddled website.

Is Craft any good for academic work? I'm looking for a solution for an MA I'm starting.

Would Craft be a good fit?

That's a question, Simon, which only you can answer. Would Craft be a good fit for your way of working, is the nub of it. And since none of us knows how you work or what processes you use, it's impossible to answer this question.

I can imagine using Craft to put together an MA, yes – it's got the necessary breadth, flexibility and search capabilities. But I can think of many other tools that would do just as well if not better. Speaking personally, I wouldn't try and stuff all my MA work into a single app, even though that's the ultimate dream (having said that, Scrivener would be an obvious choice if that's your preferred approach). Instead, I'd be looking at ways to structure my reference information so I could rapidly access it regardless of its format.

There are several repository-style apps (all for macOS, I should emphasise) you could look at here: Personally, I'm fond of Notebooks (also does Windows), but there are other equally/more powerful tools like DEVONthink or Keep It. All three are capable of searching across multiple file types; all three are good places to keep notes linked to files and other notes. Craft can do this, too, at least with PDF files, but it's also worth examining apps' ability to capture web pages easily – for this, my current favourites are Bear and UpNote, although a recent recommendation in this forum has proved unbelievably capable, and you don't even have to "explicitly" save the page: History Book, which captures your browsing history in background and keeps copies of all the text (amazing app! And takes up much less space than you might think).

The first thing to do, perhaps, is decide how you're going to approach your MA (this will depend on your particular mentality), then check out apps that will support you in that process; you may, of course, find that Craft fits you perfectly, in which case – bingo!

Cheers,
Bill

Simon wrote:

Is Craft any good for academic work? I'm looking for a solution for an
MA I'm starting.

Would Craft be a good fit?

I would concur with everything Bill wrote.

If you've already paid for Craft, give it a go. You can get your information out of it if you decide you don't find it as useful in your MA as you hoped.

If you haven't already committed financially to Craft, then you might find other opitions better (as Bill said). If you're strictly in a Mac/Apple universe, then Ulysses might be a good bet.

But the truth is anything will do. Really. As long as it is stable and you're able to export your work into a useable format for writing the final drafts.

I am thinking back to the stone age when I was finishing college. That would have been 1978. I wrote my papers using hand-taken notes on index cards and then typing them out on a manual typewriter. Even the most basic of computer writing apps would have made that process 1000 times more efficient. The difference between Craft and any other app is miniscule compared to the difference between that analog process and today's digital options. I write this only to make you realize there really is no wrong solution. Just ones that are slightly better or slightly worse. But most will be entirely workable.

Steve

Simon wrote:

Is Craft any good for academic work? I'm looking for a solution for an
MA I'm starting. Would Craft be a good fit?

Depends on what your needs are. If you're in the Apple ecosystem you could find that Apple Notes would be fine, as it syncs text, images and drawings (which you can make in-app on iOS). Even if you use Craft or something else, don't ignore the usefulness of Notes, which some people have taken as a replacement for Evernote.

Craft makes for beautifully formatted notes with useful backlinks, real-time collaboration, output to public webpages, and 30-day versioning history, and it's a beautiful, easy to use app. It's great for organizing notes and lists, less so for me for long(er)-form writing. (Although Craft streamlines long documents by enabling you to organize material within attractive sub-pages and thumbnail cards, so it's usable for longer works... but for me it doesn't work as well as an app like Ulysses, which also breaks up long-form into 'sheets'.)

It's block-based text metaphor is like Notion's but I think it's much easier to grasp and use out of the box than Notion, and it has better text formatting and seems to be faster than Notion when you have a lot of notes.

Interesting point about Apple Notes, @satis – especially since the beta version in the impending OS upgrade will add some powerful new features, including substantially improved support for "smart folders" (built on multiple search criteria). An app it's very easy to underestimate.


satis wrote:

Simon wrote:
>Is Craft any good for academic work? I'm looking for a solution for an
>MA I'm starting. Would Craft be a good fit?

Depends on what your needs are. If you're in the Apple ecosystem you
could find that Apple Notes would be fine, as it syncs text, images and
drawings (which you can make in-app on iOS). Even if you use Craft or
something else, don't ignore the usefulness of Notes, which some people
have taken as a replacement for Evernote.

Craft makes for beautifully formatted notes with useful backlinks,
real-time collaboration, output to public webpages, and 30-day
versioning history, and it's a beautiful, easy to use app. It's great
for organizing notes and lists, less so for me for long(er)-form
writing. (Although Craft streamlines long documents by enabling you to
organize material within attractive sub-pages and thumbnail cards, so
it's usable for longer works... but for me it doesn't work as well as an
app like Ulysses, which also breaks up long-form into 'sheets'.)

It's block-based text metaphor is like Notion's but I think it's much
easier to grasp and use out of the box than Notion, and it has better
text formatting and seems to be faster than Notion when you have a lot
of notes.

Nothing to argue about here. Bill's words were wise, and it is practical to use just about anything. In fact, consider more than one tool.

That said, there are things about Devonthink that keep me captured.

Files are just files. They are in a database package, but that's not a requirement. If you put your files in regular folders in Finder, you can index those locations. As you move files around in Devonthink, they will move in the indexed file structure. In that regard, Devonthink is Finder on steroids.

Devonthink shows incoming and outgoing links for each document, and it does an AI search for related documents.

A feature I'd really hate to do without is DT's tagging.

First, they are hierarchical. That means you can have your documents categorized by whatever criteria you first think of, and then by tagging them in tag trees you can have alternate taxonomies.

A document can appear in as many tags as appropriate. For your main group/directory hierarchy, you can have replicants. When you create a replicant, it appears in two (or more) places in your groups. Edits and changes apply to all instances, and you don't have to keep track of which one is the master. A file only disappears after its last replicant is deleted. There is no master/alias relationship between replicants.

I'm curious about Obsidian because of its node map feature. I wish Devonthink had that as an alternate front end.

Which reminds me. I think it should be easy enough to build an OPML file from a DT metadata export, producing a MindNode mind map with links back into DT. I'll have to give that a little time this week.


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I would concur with everything Bill wrote.

snip...

But the truth is anything will do. Really. As long as it is stable and
you're able to export your work into a useable format for writing the
final drafts.

FYI, Numeric Citizen just launched the Craft Bible web resource (built with Craft):

https://www.craft.do/s/vgvQKijqkbyo6q

It is filled with information about Craft as well as being a good use case.

Steve

Craft is certainly easy on the eyes. That's more than fluff, in my opinion.

A tool that builds attractive presentations helps tickle enthusiasm receptors in the brain.

I have no idea if enthusiasm receptors exist. Go with me, this is the Internet.

If I build my notes as a handsome presentation I'm more enthusiastic about the project. That much is certain.

I have been using Craft as my main information manager for awhile and have really been enjoying it. My main limitation is that the toggle/outline only allows five levels deep, and I have run into this on multiple occasions. If they could change this one limitation it would really help me.

I have not really utilized nested pages much but probably need to test those more to get more levels of outlining.

Otherwise I have been mostly happy with what they provide and am looking forward to the upcoming updates.

MadaboutDana wrote:

…although a
recent recommendation in this forum has proved unbelievably capable, and
you don't even have to "explicitly" save the page: History Book, which
captures your browsing history in background and keeps copies of all the
text (amazing app! And takes up much less space than you might think).

The first thing to do, perhaps, is decide how you're going to approach
your MA (this will depend on your particular mentality), then check out
apps that will support you in that process; you may, of course, find
that Craft fits you perfectly, in which case – bingo!

Cheers,
Bill

Hi Bill:
I have not been able to find anything here about the application you name as "History Book", neither on the web: could you give some link to expand the information you provide?

tberni wrote:

Hi Bill:
I have not been able to find anything here about the application you
name as "History Book", neither on the web: could you give some link to
expand the information you provide?

Hm, googling '"History Book" app' returns this:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/history-book-browse-search/id1619241039

Franz Grieser wrote:

Hm, googling '"History Book" app' returns this:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/history-book-browse-search/id1619241039

Thanks, Franz!!

Google 1 - DuckduckGo 0

tberni wrote:

Google 1 - DuckduckGo 0

Oh. I thought DuckDuckGo used Google's search results.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Oh. I thought DuckDuckGo used Google's search results.

No, not at all. It has its advantages and disadvantages. This time I didn't think about what is obvious: google is more "a la page" than DuckDuckGo in news, etc. For other issues DuckDuckGo is more interesting to use.

Sorry, @tberni – History Book's available via the Mac App Store, in fact, and is also available for iOS/iPadOS (I use iCloud to synchronise between my MacBooks and my iPad).

tberni wrote:

Franz Grieser wrote:

>Hm, googling '"History Book" app' returns this:
>https://apps.apple.com/de/app/history-book-browse-search/id1619241039

Thanks, Franz!!

Google 1 - DuckduckGo 0