Beck wrote:

satis wrote:
>At this point in time I think developers who don't develop apps that
can
>be easily accessed on mobile are going to find their numbers of
>customers continue to shrink. In 2019 I simply would never consider an
>app like Curio or Tinderbox, no matter how good. I'd take a less
>full-featured app whose data I can access and edit from a tablet or
>phone any day.

I'm moving in the opposite direction, lately.

I can email, grade, and in some cases edit on the go, but to do most of
my work, I'm finding that I need (1) to be in a physical environment
that supports my directed attention; and (2) with specific tools nearby,
one of which is my computer (others are my iPad, paper notebook, at
certain times a whiteboard, etc.). I've begun to let go of the
requirement that an app needs to work any device and am instead making
peace with seeking exemplar apps that work exceptionally well on the
device in which they're intended.

Me too - I was pretty excited a couple of years ago when I got an iPad Pro and (and binge-read MacStories articles) and started to think it could be a main machine. But then I didn't get on as well as I thought I would with Scrivener on iOS, I began to find that my research/writing project planning was easier with SheetPlanner than on Aeon (which I tried to use because of the iOS link-up), and because of the complexity of the historical research for my projects, I have been happily tethered to Tinderbox for nearly a decade and *that* is never going to get to iOS. And so the horses for courses protocol kicked in, for platforms as well as apps. So I use the iPad Pro a lot as a 'think-pad', with Ulysses and Bear for exploratory prose and notes; it also has my calendars and Things - for things I can, or prefer to, do away from the main office, but I still think of the office as the place where the heavy-duty research gets done. And, like Beck, I have an extensive analogue support structure than in my case is too messy or large or simply too expansively visual ever to be portable. I also have a dreadful butterfly mind, and being in a specific physical 'workspace' helps the focus.

But I realise that this is probably becoming a minority position overall. My daughter - a student - and my own students wouldn't dream of being office-bound (although graduates seem to be happier with this than undergrads - maybe because they get dedicated, although shared, workspaces). Their reading and their writing and research and communications are all mobile - and most seem to prefer the big iPad to laptops. I couldn't imagine how to work without Tinderbox (and I can't really imagine what a less fully featured derivative of it could be) but my daughter doesn't really see the point of it. And Satis is right: their preferences and needs and not my case seem to be the focus of most app development - for good or ill (I was an early-adopter of Day One - now I can't bear to look at it's bloated narrow spaces and so use the elegant Diarly; my daughter loves DO).

I think the physical really does interact heavily with the mental in a number of ways here. Vive la difference.