Programs you said goodbye to

[AmberV]

SplashID is one of the applications I did say goodbye to. Even though it was nice having passwords and other personal information on my PDA, I like SecretBook's interface better. It has better encryption, and I don't really miss passwords on the PDA that much. I only ever really used it as a transport device between computers. Nowadays, I just copy the SecretBook file between computers using FTP. 1Passwd is pretty nice too. One thing I do miss from SplashID is the ability to copy a password or other information to the clipboard using command keys.

[Lauram]

I'm phasing out SoHo Notes, which I first bought when it was Sticky Brain. It has many fine qualities as a collection pot for miscellaneous information, and the one thing I still use it for is its keyboard shortcuts (which will paste bits of text like my address into any program whether or not SoHo Notes is open at the time). But it's always seemed strangely unstable and slow to me, plus, it backs up its data *when you launch the program*, not when you quit. So, depending on how much you've got in there, you wind up waiting 3 minutes to get into it after you launch. Since the only times I ever launched were when I suddenly realized I needed a piece of information right away, this was maddening. Plus, there's a new update every year that costs an outrageous $25 or so every time, and there's no forum. You have to email in any questions or problems, then wait 5 days for them to get back to you.

[werebear]

I've said a final goodbye to Z-Write (exiled from Dock.) It was my first Mac writing program and I adored it at the time, but it has problems in its OSX version and Scrivener simply blows it away.

If I had found Ulysses sooner I would have switched over to that, since it had the same plain text limitations as Z-Write and it has more functionality, but the rich text in Scrivener is the best of both worlds, and when I compared them head to head that was one of the deciding points for me.

Word, of course, is always with us. With OSX I broke down and got the Office for Mac Suite, and thus eclipsed AppleWorks, which I liked, but constantly using Word & Excel during the work day meant I could keep my reflexes if I'm doing the same sort of thing at home.

My intent is to print manuscripts with Scrivener (not at that point yet) and avoid Microsoft entirely, but I've been impressed with the ease stuff imports into Word when I have Word formatted properly, so either way I'm sure I will be happy.

[tim]

Word, of course, is always with us... My intent is to print manuscripts with Scrivener
and avoid Microsoft entirely, but I've been impressed with the ease stuff imports into
Word when I have Word formatted properly, so either way I'm sure I will be happy.

Although I have grown to loathe Word over the years, I found that in the editing stages
of preparing Think Better for publication, Word's version tracker was very useful. By no
means perfect, but useful. It saved a lot of time, made edits easy to find, accept, reject,
or alter. And as long as I kept saving every few minutes, I felt reasonably secure. Of
course, it still wanked out on some weird formatting it insisted on imposing, but aside
from being irksome, that didn't have a substantive impact on my workflow.

I've also found, to my surprise, that the commenting and editing tools in Adobe Acrobat
are very useful and friendly. Those people who don't want to use the track changes
features in Word might be interested in experimenting with Adoobie-Doo.

Tim

[kened]

Here's my list for what it's worth:
CircusPonies Notebook - not sure really - it's very pretty, powerful, and completely functional, and they are responsive, and active developers - or were the last time i looked, but i found the constant jumping back and forth between content page, tabs, dividers, sections, and pages annoying. but what killed it for me i think was the way it handled clippings - you have to set up a clipping service for individual pages which then get listed as seperate services in the services menus, which is not really in the spirit of clipping services.
Jotz NotePad
good search facilities - very good clipping service. it's inexpensive - i dropped it because it didn't have an outliner facility - which is what sent me to CircusPonies Notebook - eventually i dropped both for OmniOutliner, and I started using VoodooPad. That's a strange thing. It's a fantastically powerful and elegant application which holds so much promise, but it justnever really took off with me - not sure why, i don't know - all those hyperlinks and new pages all over the place - it felt (for me) too nebulous and haphazard. I may go back to it. I had vague thoughts of using it to experiment with hypertext fiction for the web. On reflection, most of my thoughts are vague.

Inspiration - mind-mapping and outlining software. back when i was doing my master's, (around Mac OS 8.5 as I recall)i used this a lot - it was the best thing available at the time. i was big on mind-mapping at the time - still am actually, although I think it works better on a big sheet of paper, with a clutch of coloured marker pens, or a whiteboard. inspiration allows you to make a mind-map / spider diagram, and instantly converts it to a very good outline - not disimilar to(although not as elegant as) OmniOutliner. I would have a window with the Insiration outline open and then copy paste it into Word for refining layout, final revisions. It was a really good setup and helped me get a distinction in one of my essays.

I ditched Inspiration for NovaMind, which is prettier, but i don't do so much mind-mapping these days - i tend to just start writing. My outlining, I still use OmniOutliner - this is a key part of my creative process. I download ideas randomly into an outline and organise them, adjust them, revise them later. Then they go into Scrivener, for what we all know Scrivener does. Personally I could never replace OmniOutliner with Scrivener's outliner functions. It's just too rudimentary.

For general research / clippings storage, I'm now (despite it's weirdness) a big fan of DEVONthink. I think it has some gaping deficits - boring unfriendly interface, lack of keywords, tags, and saved searches - but its AI sorting of information is gob-droppingly powerful and makes it indispensible for research.

I just don't want to talk about SOHO products, which is a shame - SOHO notes could be serious competition for DEVONthink - but the bugs, and the company's attitude... I start frothing at the mouth and muttering incoherent obscenities, like those people you see wandering around city centres muttering incomprehensibly at the ground, and find yourself crossing the street to avoid.

[Prion]

Here's my list for what it's worth:
For general research / clippings storage, I'm now (despite it's weirdness) a big fan of DEVONthink. I think it has some gaping deficits - boring unfriendly interface, lack of keywords, tags, and saved searches - but its AI sorting of information is gob-droppingly powerful and makes it indispensible for research.

I, too, depend in much of my research on Devonthink and its AI. The user interface is a bit, well, very awkward and effectively hides much of the apps power from even the more seasoned users. Take the saved searches for example. They are there, have been for a long time in fact and still you stumble across this capability only if you happen to open the service menu (the stylish S in the Devonthink part of the menu bar) and you'll find an entry saying "smart group". Whatever you type in there will get established as a saved search or smart folder or whatever you prefer to call it, visible in the explorer view and recognisable by the S-like symbol.

Prion

[Studio717]

Prion, I think you mean Scripts not Services in the Devonthink menu. The 'stylized s' is for Applescripts.

That is one of the more powerful aspects of DT, imo, because it can be so customized. Some of the provided ones are very handy.

kened, I still use Circus Ponies' Notebook for the very reason you gave it up: separate notebooks for separate clipping services. I really like being able to snip something directly to a Notebook on, say, "Scrivener Tips."

I also still - occasionally - use Inspiration to work something out. I find it easy and straightforward, which is all I need. Never moved to Novamind, but I've never delved into the depths of mind-mapping other than as a quick way to work through an idea.

(Which, of course, doesn't explain my acquisition of Tinderbox. Still haven't figured that one out. )

[Prion]

Prion, I think you mean Scripts not Services in the Devonthink menu. The 'stylized s' is for Applescripts.
That is one of the more powerful aspects of DT, imo, because it can be so customized. Some of the provided ones are very handy.

Quite right, I meant Scripts, of course.

That said I think it was the very point of kened and other people, too, that DT sometimes takes unnecessarily unorthodox approaches to solve common problems. Why hide smart folders in the scripts menu when you can call them and put them what and where people expect them to find?
Behind the scenes all the Script wizardry may still take place nonetheless for all I care. At the very least it should be given a prominent place in the manual.
No need to defend DT, it is dear to my heart and very powerful but some especially GUI and database-related design decisions need an overhaul.

(Which, of course, doesn't explain my acquisition of Tinderbox. Still haven't figured that one out. )

Always interested in learning how people use that particular program. Must rate very high on the list of the most mysterious *things* in the Mac software industry. Is it a tool? Is it the tool you use to build you that tool?

Prion

[Juddbert]

I find I’m using Notebook far less these days. Devonthink is an excellent catch-all for project research, while for the personal info I’d be foolish to forget, I’ve settled on Yojimbo. If I’m honest, I’ve always found the CPN notebook metaphor a little irritating - but it’s still sitting in Applications should I have a change of heart. IGTD is on the way out too. It’s without doubt very powerful, but seems somehow too complete and visually intimidating. OmniFocus, even in it’s alpha state, feels more intuitive and flexible. Not all Omnigroup products hit the spot though. I’ve tried to develop an appreciation of OmniWeb, but the magic escapes me. It matters not; Safari and Camino cover the bases.

[ptram]

The major victim of Scrivener, in my house, is Power Structure. I've written a couple movies with that program, and started several projects with it. But - despite the high price - it was eventually never updated, and some UI oddities (like the too large text editing window) have never been solved.

PS has a single thing I really miss in Scrivener, and it is the conflict/tension diagram. I do manage to replace it by drafting by hand next to the outline. All other features are replaced in a brilliant way by equivalent features in Scrivener.

A minor victim is Mellel, that I discover myself using much less than before. It is still my word processor of choice, but I do most of my writing in Scrivener these days, so I hardly need a word processor.

Paolo

[Diane]

Re: Password keepers: I'm quite fond of Password Wallet (and the developer is a friend of my hubby's), which does sync to my Palm, so I have access to my passwords everywhere. As soon as PW can get a client on the iPhone, I will no longer need my Palm. Well, okay, my Palm has lots of games too. So strike that.

Apps I've given up on: MarsEdit, which went into limbo there for awhile -- it's being worked on again, but I'm out of the habit. Ulysses, which I wanted to love but it never loved me back. And I haven't opened Jer's Novel Writer for a while now, which makes me feel very guilty (because I think it's a great app and Jer is a great guy with awesome response time), but Scrivener seems to be working for me much better at the moment.

[Gordon]

I'm still using Group Organizer, from the SOHO Notes folks, but I'm gritting my teeth and cursing every time I have to launch it. It's painful that the company didn't provide a suitable upgrade path for customers.

I'm slowly weaning myself from Webstractor, too, which seems to have been abandoned. Yojimbo and Scriv. are helping to ease the pain on this one.

[Timotheus]

Yesterday I finally said goodbye to Word. For my own work, I haven't used it anymore since the spring of 2004, when I started working with Mellel. But I still needed it in order to be able to read and correct all the stuff my students and colleagues sent me. But since I own the latest version of Pages, which opens perfectly Word-documents, and which has a track-changes feature with which I can correct them, Word has become absolutely superfluous. So I trashed it.

From now on, I'll do all my wordprocessing in Mellel, Scrivener and Pages. And I hope to keep it that way.

[Lauram]

Hey Timotheus,

So have you had success in translating tracked changes from Pages to Word? Could you say, edit a Word document in Pages, save it, and then have the changes you made saved as tracked changes in the resulting Word doc?

[Timotheus]

Yes; or so it seems. My students send me their Word documents, I open them in Pages, correct them with Pages' track changes, then export them as Word documents and send them back to my students. And they never complained that they couldn't read my corrections. So I must conclude that the track changes corrections made in Pages are perfectly readable as track changes corrections in Word.