Actually, Ecco had pretty good synchronization in the 90s (both network-based in real time and for a single user via file export/import), although its approach to it seems a little dated now and cumbersome in comparison to the seamless, quick, online synching a la Workflowy.

However, I think it's the proliferation of mobile devices and multiple operating systems that has really brought sync to the foreground - if I only needed to work on a bunch of different Windows machines, I could just copy my entire Ecco file (or any other "legacy"/desktop info manager/outline) of only a few megabytes around between each machine very easily - which is exactly what I did do for many years.

I think the current tradeoff is between power (desktop software) and ubiquitous access (cloud services). However, I assume (hope may be more accurate) that eventually these things will converge - either desktop software will become much more cloud friendly with multiple native clients (along the lines of Evernote) or cloud services will become more powerful.


22111 wrote:

But the mention of WorkFlowy is of interest here, and it seems to be
obvious that with the advent of cloud-based services and their
integration with pc software, there will be more and more of such real
synching being introduced, which is a very good thing. But in fact, all
those "powerhouses", of those traditional, powerful, feature-rich
outliners, none of them ever tried to program such functionality, or at
least did not tell users they failed with its implementation