I’ve been going back and forth between DevonThink and Evernote for many years now … never being able to decide on one platform. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, Evernotes biggest strength is the syncing - DevonThinks search, customizability and privacy.
I’ve been trying to set up a system where I can easily sync DT databases and what I got seem to work pretty well:
Work machine has a local database which I then sync to a dedicated Dropbox account. At home I’ve got the same setup and this works just fine. For files that I prefer to keep off the Internet and my work machine I use an encrypted USB stick which have a database on it + the sync store, at home I have a database that syncs with the USB stick.
Sometimes the syncing is a bit slow but it works.
But now I want to complicate things: I want to add my iOS devices to the mix. Unfortunately they have locked down the wireless network at work so that my iOS devices can’t find the Mac.
While I could sync at home it gets very impractical since I might add some notes to a database while in my office and then have a meeting somewhere where I would like to access that note … but I can’t sync so no note.
Using Evernote this is a non-issue since I use two accounts (private, work) with shared notebooks and all notes are always synced to their servers.
Am I missing something with how I can sync iOS devices? Or am I out of luck using DTTG?
You can sync via wifi and bluetooth. Bluetooth, in my experience, is a little slower, but it does the job just fine without the need to access wifi. If you have a smartphone (iPhone) and use it as a portable hotspot, you should be able to get your work computer and the phone onto the same network so that you can sync with it that way.
You can create an ad-hoc network on the Mac and sync to a mobile device. Granted, you interrupt Internet access on both devices for the duration, but it’s an easy way to do a sync on-the-run. (I had to do this in a corporate environment until I befriended some higher-ups in the IT department. )
I’ll try the bluetooth solution (the hotspot solution wouldn’t work … they are really cracking down on any local networks, as soon as someone opens a non-official wireless network someone from the network group will knock on your door looking a bit upset )
Does Airdrop work on your business network? Sometimes it does. It’s very easy to Airdrop a note from DEVONthink to iOS.
You can also share a note from DEVONthink to Evernote and then after it syncs to your iOS device, read the note(s) in Evernote. With DEVONthink 2.x the share sheet is in a non-obvious location using a non-standard icon:
The iPhone hotspot method is only partially working for me. In places without wifi (or trustable wifi), I used to use the bluetooth sync method. Works very well for my iPad. However, my iPhone 6 has never, ever been able to connect to my Mac. I looked into it extensively, but no luck. So I figured the hotspot method would do the trick, but:
If the iPhone is the hotspot, and I connect the Mac and the iPad to it, I can certainly sync between iPad and Mac, but NOT between the iPhone and the Mac. If I use the iPad has the hotspot, I can sync the iPhone but not the iPad (note: last time I tried this was under iOS 8 and Yosemite, I should check this again).
This seems to imply that only devices that connect to the hotspot can do this local syncing, but not the hotspot device itself, almost as if it was not considered to be on the local wifi network itself.
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