Critical View of Devon Think - or the Emperor Is Missing Some Clothes

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Sep 2, 2010 at 04:19 AM

My recent - and temporary - foray into the Mac world has left me convinced the Mac coasts on its laurels and is oversold, at least in terms of its information/outliner programs. Whatever complaints I have had about PC software paled in comparison to how I could kvetch about Mac software with grandiose claims.

My return to the PC world, on a fairly good mid-range ASUS laptop, has not disappointed me. I like Windows 7 - it is not perfect, but it has some neat features.

During my 10 days in Jobs Land, DevonThink was one of the few, if not the only, programs I would have wanted to keep. Yet aspects of it seem rough around the edges. In fact, given the edge Mac with GUI, it seems ironic that some of the programs are so crudely rendered and executed. But DT was a program I might have been interested in playing around with some more.

Anyhow, by following some links on a post of Manfred’s on another thread, I was taken to his blog - http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/search/label/Outliner - and then a critical review of DevonThink on another blog.

I recommend the article - and think it gets at some of the issues both with DT and other Mac software.

Here’s the url: http://dougist.com/2009/02/dating-devonthink/

Daly