I have found this upgrade cycle a bit confusing. I’m a fairly casual DT3 user. I generally have a desire to be on the latest version of things, but DT4 leaves me scratching my head.
My “free” updates end tomorrow and DT4 seems to have exited beta, so I feel like I need to make a choice.
I want nothing to do with generative AI, I don’t really see any value in versioning (I don’t really edit anything in DT, I just store stuff and search), and nobody has any interest in auditing my database of electric bills and car maintenance records.
So what’s in it for me?
I don’t really mind spending a few bucks extending my license. But somehow it seems like in this case, I don’t get anything for my money.
If nothing else, you get fixes and improvements. But, @rkaplan is correct. You haven’t provided enough information to provide anything specifically helpful to you.
I’m not a particularly casual DT user: I use it intensively for my diary entries imported from Day One as well as for programming and personal databases. However, I, too, currently avoid generative AI and am uninterested in audit-proof databases. I do much appreciate versioning.
When I purchased the upgrade to DT4 I did it because I’ve really appreciated not only the superb support provided on this forum but also the manner in which DT has been crafted and developed over the years (even though I’ve been a user only since DT3 was released). I have complete trust in the developers and I felt it appropriate to buy-in to whatever the future might hold with DT.
I do appreciate that will sound terribly wishy-washy to some—but sometimes there are reasons for supporting a team which can’t always be reduced to a stark balance sheet of pros and cons. It’s only my view and I understand others may feel differently.
I like this question, because I’d lost site of one of my primary reasons for switching from Evernote - the licensing changed.
It went from something similar to DT3 - buy a version once get all the updates to that version included for the price of the initial license. Then when the next version comes out either buy it or don’t buy it and keep on using the version you have.
They switched to a subscription. In order to keep using it, you had to keep paying.
DT3 was the obvious alternative, and I’m happy with it.
My use case is mainly a document repository. I scan and OCR all the documents I would otherwise put in a filing cabinet or (more likely) allow to pile up around my desk. Then I can shred everything and feel reasonably confident I can find them if needed.
I look for other ways of taking advantage of some of the features I’m not using; I archive some emails, clip a news or science article to read later (maybe). But mainly scanning and shredding.
I’m happy with DT3, but there’s always room for improvement.
Even with the change in licensing, I’ll likely upgrade eventually. But I haven’t seen much discussion about new features beyond “the big 3”, generative AI, versioning, and whatever “audit proof databases” is. None of which interest me.
I know there are other enhancements, but there’s not much info about what they are, and what info I’ve found is not compelling.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy. I’m just looking for a reason to upgrade today. Right now the best reason seems to be a 10% discount, the value of which I can also receive by waiting a few months.
While I totally agree to what @Stephen_C said in regards of the software, the developers, and their support, there is nothing wrong with basing your purchase decision solely on the features you get for your money.
The new business model—which is not that different to the old one, it only comes with a clearly defined (and shorter) update period—allows to do exactly that. Unlike a subscription based software, DEVONthink 3 will work just like before. (And so will DEVONthink 4 for users with a DT 4 licence, if they decide not to go for another year of updates at some point.) It won’t get any feature updates anymore, maybe bugfixes, and it might look less glassy than the rest of your software once macOS Tahoe is out…
And of course, the day will come when it is in someway not compatible anymore with the latest version of macOS.
So there is nothing confusing. The DT 4 Beta will expire, because DT 4 is out of beta now. You either go back to DT 3 or you decide to upgrade, that’s up to you. Since you have tested DT 4, when going back to version 3 maybe you’ll miss some of the new features which are not as prominent as AI.
In short: When you are in doubt whether to upgrade today—don’t. There is no pressure whatsoever. (Okay: One day there will be no upgrade discount for users with a DT 3 licence. But look at the upgrade page—right now even a DT 2 licence is eligible for an upgrade discount, and DT 2 was released about 16 ago! So I think it’s a fair guess that this won’t matter.)
To be clear, I’m not confused or particularly bothered about the new licensing.
It’s the new features. Almost all the talk is about those 3 new features I mentioned.
Is the UI substantially updated? Is syncing to DTTG improved? Is it more reliable?
I looks like I can download DT 4.0.1 today. Because it released within a year of my initial license. Will I still be able to download that version tomorrow (today’s the last day of free updates for my current license).
I’m guessing 4.0.1 will need a few update cycles before it is as reliable as 3.9.13. Thoughts?
Here are a few non-external AI additions, speaking to the general audience:
PDFs added to your database can be made searchable without explicitly using OCR (though OCR is still a powerful and useful feature) .
The Table of Contents inspector now lets you edit the table of contents for PDFs, including adding your own bookmarks to it.
If you’re using tags, the new Tags inspector can help choose, apply, and visualize connections between tags.
The Graph inspector displays a network graph of relationships between a selected document and others.
Text editing has new controls for controlling margins and line widths/heights to make things a bit more comfortable to look at while writing. It also has features some other new display features like WYSIWYG images and links when editing Markdown.
Built-in versioning lets you save and restore previous edits of a document, accessible in the Versions inspector.
An audit-proof database can be used to house or archive documents whose contents must not be modified in any way, generally used in financial or legal situations.
Automation is modernized and improved with a new AppleScript suite, a dedicated Batch Processing window with reusable configurations, some new smart actions for smart rules and batch processing, and new placeholders.
Specifically to you…
Is the UI substantially updated?
No and in what way? You haven’t provided any information and to what would be updated and what “substantially” is.
Is syncing to DTTG improved? Is it more reliable?
While there have been some improvements, sync works just as well as it always has. Reliability in sync generally doesn’t come down to being a sync issue at all. Please clarify what is unreliable.
I didn’t mean to imply that syncing is not currently reliable. I’m just trying to think of areas I may be overlooking in comparing DT4 to DT3. You’ve provided a helpful list here.
Maybe “noticeably” would have been a better word than “substantially”. Frequently when an application receives a version update the most noticeable new feature(s) are changes to the UI. It looks to me that this is not the case in DT4 (which is fine, probably best to leave well enough alone).
No worries!
The subtle UI differences between 3 and 4 certainly hide the massive number of changes development went through.
Here’s the funny thing (more odd than ‘haha’): Over the years, we have read complaints or people talking smack about the interface (most often on a site that rhymes with “said it” ). But when asked for clarification of what to update, we have never gotten any useful replies. We’ve had occasional requests in here for things like making the interface font user-definable. But in 13 years, I’ve never seen someone provide a mock-up of a major overhaul of the interface that would satisfy them.
That’s a riot, when I read your reply I immediately went to settings to see what UI tweaks were already available. I increased the font from 11 to 12 and I can’t think of another thing I’d change.
I used to work at a company that rhymes with “Microsoft” and I remember when we replaced the old Toolbar with the Ribbon in the Office apps, I found it utterly jarring and it seemed to take forever to find features that were previously familiar.
I’m sure there’s room for improvement but it’s fine the way it is.
If the PDF already contains a sufficiently accurate text layer, there’s no need for OCR.
If you don’t need for the contents of the PDF to be searchable, there’s no need for OCR.
If your database is mostly published sources – books, technical papers, web pages – you are less likely to need it than if you have a lot of images, scanned documents, and so on.
Jim, on the topic of worthwhile upgrades - I just started using the tag graph in the context of my extensively tagged set of almost 10k items (my upcoming stamp blog) - and I am SHOCKED at how useful it is!! Hats off to you guys!!
Now, you realize you will make me buy a BIG monitor - I want all panels all visible. Bloomberg would be jealous.
A Vision-processed PDF does not have a text layer added to it. It is searchable because the text is indexed in DEVONthink. So if the document needs to be searchable outside DEVONthink, e.g., shared with someone else, you’d want to do OCR on it.
And @kewms is correct, many PDFs won’t have a need to be OCR’d.
My pleasure! - I have been tagging items extensively - one level only, to simplify things. The actual hierarchy is pretty intuitive though - stamp country, decade, designer, plus some visual analysis tags, subject tags, etc. I am able to see the correlations to items in terms of stamps designed by the same designer, with similar visual analysis tags, and so on. I don’t think I need anything else now! - and the fact I can select a tag in the graph and quickly see related stamps in that tag is fantastic. Many years ago I worked on starfield searches, etc - and finally I found a great use case.
Hello,
Personally, I only use DT to store and organize all my data, whatever it may be. I use it alternately with Evernote to capture web pages. The only direct editing I use is in the form of notes.
). But when asked for clarification of what to update, we have never gotten any useful replies. We’ve had occasional requests in here for things like making the interface font user-definable. But in 13 years, I’ve never seen someone provide a mock-up of a major overhaul of the interface that would satisfy them. 
