These are not really apps for me which imports text. The text ist not stored “inside” the app.
Thats cool, but for me an “archiving” app should be as simple possible to not interfere with its content. Therefore DT would be way to expensive for me if I only use it for archiving.
I’m with you. And if I follow this rule I would not use DT at all, because there are apps which are way better for a specific feature:
Sync over several-devices via Dropbox, iCloud, Nextcloud
Annotations via Highlights or PDF-Expert
Markdown via Bear, iaWriter
“Archiving” via simple folder structure or DMS
Note-Taking via Notes or even Bear
But for now I like the fact to use one app for all of it. But as I said earlier especially on mobile devices I miss some improvements.
And posts like this helps me to believe in DTTG 3.0 to be an app with the power I need. As I said, I would wait for months for additional or improved features, but as a roadmap or even a list of upcoming features without any due dates is missing I’m not sure what I should expect from DTTG 3.0. And I don’t want to wait several additional months without knowing what for. The price - to return to this threads topic - would be my smallest problem. If it helps me I will pay for it.
Maybe the main problem ist that there are hundreds of ways to use DT/DTTG (archiving, notetaking, maybe book writing, learning/studying, etc…) that it will be hard to get all requests done. And this leads me to my spring cleaning statement.
Unfortunately, roadmaps lead to high pressure and disappointment when external factors cause delays. And no, roadmaps don’t have to contain dates which unavoidably leads to the question: “Do you have dates for each step?”. It’s a conundrum and we’re trying our best. Which is all we can do.
Now, what kind of answer do you expect? Hey, yes, DDTG is our only product (a very “alternative fact”)? It’s apparently a small company. And they offer very good support here, even explaining the same things over and over. They offer several products. So they have to prioritize development. Even big companies do that.
And they’re responsive. Just try asking for help from Apple developers or from Adobe developers in one of their forums.
We’re talking about apps on Mac OS, iOS and iPadOS – three operating systems whose developer are notorious for not fixing bugs, being secretive about security problems, introducing unnecessary “shiny” things like new emojis instead of needed new features (like macros and functions for Numbers) and drop support for their own products without any warning. You hold them to the same standards? And no, their software is not free (not even as in free beer), you pay for it with every machine you buy.
If you asked me three years ago I would say “Subscription and you loose me as a customer” but things are changing. I just signed up for AppleONE for $30/month. I think in the long run, to be able to keep up the quality we need to pay for it. Developers are no longer happy teens just wanting to have their apps spread for fun, but serious people trying to make their bread and butter for themselves and families every month.
My thinking on the future is that the gap between great and useful apps compared to free or cheap apps will grow. I have used the DT-eco system for almost five years and are extremely happy with its possibilities. And on top, the great support. I bought another system for food recipes, Paprika, and I am still awaiting answer for two support tickets in October. (Maybe use DT for recipes!).
So things are not as they use to be, you get a Kingdom but someone else is paying for it. However, I like subscriptions to offer a discount if paid annually like Mailbutler. Apple does not offer that yet though but if DT decides to change pricing to subscriptions I hope that possibility will be there.
I think I pay about $25 for every update of PDFpen PRO and that is about one per year, so kind of a subscription as well.
Let me know if that works out for you. I’m still with Paprika, but as you said: they ignore customer questions, and their software is very anglo-centric – not easy to use in a German environment.
DT provides great support to everyone - even if you are Swedish
Thanks Chrillek but I rather just delete the app, give appropriate feedback and never use Paprika again!
I just wanted to illustrate that you get what you pay for. DevonTHINK made mad the first 3 months because it had FAR more options than I could dream of - but now I can just say you grow with the app. If I were to put a price on the Mac version today it would be far beyond $1,000 given what I get out of it compared to the alternative.
Jim is doing a FANTASTIC job helping out when it comes to support, AND to download the Help-file together with the Take Control Book gives not only help but inspiration of how to even use more functions.
Few apps grows on you like DT. And no - I am not paid to say this I paid for my apps.
I use DevonAgent for deep searching the net as well and again, more functions and options than you thought you needed.
Water is a product, I use x amount each month and the water company sends me a bill for what I used.
That may be what you see, but in fact your water bill includes a fixed monthly “meter fee” that covers your share of the cost of providing sufficient capacity to meet your potential water demands. On top of that you pay an additional gallonage fee for the water you actually use. Traditionally the cost per gallon was lower the more water you used, but modern billing practices reverse this and increase the cost per gallon increase the more water you use. The same model is used for all public utilities.
Software developers have a similar situation, they are faced with a relatively fixed base cost to pay for their staff, equipment, office rental, utilities, etc. When the market for software was growing dramatically, those fixed costs could be easily absorbed by sales to a continual growing market. But that market is no longer growing, in fact, it is slowly shrinking while the base cost of operations is, if anything, growing. The only logical outcome in this scenario is for developers to drop any support of older product versions, increase the price of their product dramatically, take a day job so they can eat, go out of business, or come up with a means of providing a steady income stream to cover the base cost of operations.
I may not like the subscription model, but it is a reasonable way to cover base cost of operations in today’s market reality.
Well no, that’s not how my water company bills at all, nor do I understand why you would presume to know how my, much less all, public utilities operate? I don’t have a meter fee and my cost per 100 cubic feet decreases as the usage increases. I do have a minimum usage charged, but I’d have to be gone for most of the month to be under than minimum.
This is one of the challenges of trying to equate software subscriptions with the cost of a latte, or a meal at a restaurant, or water fees. Until software developers are willing to come to my house once a month for a meal, or a latte, or 100 cubic feet of water in exchange for their software subscription, making actual cost comparisons of software and other goods is folly.
I’ve got 5.86GB of data in 6,333 items spread across 6 databases, and I find sync to be totally robust. My secret? I use my own WebDAV server with space and bandwidth to spare.
It must be very frustrating for the developers — no matter how good their code is, if it relies on a flaky service, the end user experience is going to be unreliable.
Synology WebDAV Server, with a separate account just for DEVONthink. From poking around the system config, apparently it’s Apache mod_dav under the hood.
I also use the Synology WebDAV server package with a dedicated “devonthink” user account (so you can setup the permissions very easily) - setup to use HTTPS and externally visible on the Internet (just 1 port to forward). Synology also has built in free dynamic DNS so I CNAME my personal domain to the Synology name. If I could just get the Letsencrypt free TLS certificates going on the Synology I wouldn’t have to click through a cert error.
Ditto. I hate subscription-based models. Absolutely hate them. I don’t mind purchasing upgrades, but not subscriptions for apps.
I’m a 1Password user and they have both standalone and subscription-based apps. I use the stand-alone one which I’ve purchased upgrades for. Hate the model of frequent renewing in subscription model.
