After years of using DevonThink on MacOS, iOS and iPadOS I’m done. DevonTech failed to create a reliable mobile app including a stable web clipper.
Before you show your loyal fan colors, let me explain.
There’s a lot of value the desktop app has to offer on MacOS, but for non-technical users it’s way to complicated to setup and maintain a modern hybrid solution. And, as a tech savvy user I don’t want to study, understand and review the overly complicated syncing solution(s) over and over again.
A working setup can become corrupted way to easy and way to often. At this point DevonTech repeatedly point at shortcomings of Apple iCloud, but they refuse to implement other cloud options besides Dropbox.
Offering reindexing, resetting favorites, and other workarounds to jumpstart a corrupted index isn’t much more than a ducktape solution. Simply a signal that these get corrupted to often, resulting in support requests.
Yes, your private data should be kept for your eyes only, and therefore needs to be encrypted client side and kept encrypted at rest on the server. But this should work with all big tech offerings, too.
At this point I’ve started looking for alternative solutions, because over the years DevonThink 3 became a bloated and overly complicated system.
I’m done, no more DTTG for me. It’s a pain maintaining a reliable repository and personal knowledge base.
So what would be a better alternative on mobile, capturing and storing data encrypted on iCloud? It’s okay to process thus further on desktop.
Not in my experience. I’m syncing DTTG with DT over WebDAV on my own NAS, and that works flawlessly. Set up once, never touched again. No data loss, ever.
Who/what exactly is “all big tech offerings”?
Not in my experience.
If you are interested in solving your problems, you might want to provide more detail. Otherwise – what is it that you want to achieve with your post?
I’m using the Devonthink To Go (DTTG) app
Seems reliable; I wish there was closer features alignment with the Mac app
Bonjour also seems reliable for syncing my data
The feasibility of adding and supporting more and more cloud services has been discussed at length. Short answer: It is infeasible, non-trivial, and would an undue burden on development and support. This is why WebDAV was added, as a way for so-inclined people to expand the possibilities on their own.
Again, we can’t control the quality or behavior of any remote servers, including Apple’s and their CloudKit framework, and the intervening networks. Some people have no issues; some do. That is beyond our ability to resolve conclusively.
It’s funny: I was just reading a thread elsewhere yesterday where several people were talking about how our clipping extension is best of breed on Mac and mobile.
even-though it has a steep learning curve.
People often say this without ever citing specifics. Care to clarify?
I don’t doubt that. But insisting on using iCloud and then complaining that it’s not reliable is not getting you anywhere – everybody knows that it’s unreliable for some people sometimes. So, another sync method might help. People using Bonjour and WebDAV seem to have fewer problems (if any).
It does. But that is to be expected – complex software tends to have that.
Well more than a decade syncing four devices with mixture of Bonjour, Dropbox, and Webdav. Never lost a thing and all methods work all the time.
If you are referring to using Apple’s CloudKit … well known here as reported by some people for a long time Apple hasn’t provided something that works reliably (or seemingly with no controls to fix or debugging methods) with DEVONthink and from other forums seems unreliable for other apps.
Focus on what works to get best value out of DEVONthink.
The unreliability of iCloud is well-documented, and affects many many applications from many many companies, including Apple’s own. I’m not sure exactly what DevonTech can (or should) do about a problem involving software they didn’t write, running on servers they don’t control.
I used iCloud sync for some time and it was frustrating. I now use Bonjour and it works great when the devices are on the same wifi network. When I’m at the University I connect Mac and mobile devices by wire (the network is divided into subnetworks so Bonjour doesn’t work reliably). This setup works fine for me.
I´m using the WebDAV sync without any Problems for years. No corrupt files or Databases. Everything works fine.
The service on my server is open to the internet (secured) so I can sync everywhere in the world.
So I have no need for supporting any external Cloud Service.
But I understand, that not all users have a server and want a “smaller” working solution for sync.
Anecdote is not data, but … I use Apple Reminders for my grocery list, synced via iCloud between my desktop and my phone, and also shared with my husband. It’s not unusual for the phone to be missing items that I know I added on the desktop, and for it to stubbornly refuse to update itself unless I restart the Reminders app. Just happened yesterday, which is why it’s on my mind.
Exclusively Apple, both hardware and software. A truly tiny amount of data: less than a dozen characters. And yet.
I had issues with Dropbox when I very first started using it. If I recall correctly, I was told it’s not officially supported, which sent me to iCloud next IIRC. Is Dropbox an officially supported sync solution these days?
Dropbox was the very first service we supported, so the longest running and statistically most reliable over time (logically affected by the longer time it has been supported).
I guess my memory is wrong. Maybe I should try Dropbox again. I love how well WebDAV works, but boy if it doesn’t just hammer my NAS non-stop while DEVONthink is open.
Why would Dropbox be sending back and forth a different quantity of data? Would not be the only difference that unlike the nearby NAS you do not hear all the data machinations on all the servers between your device, across the internet, landing at Dropbox servers somewhere in the world?
Do you have a lot of devices for which you need sync?
