I’ve always appreciated the friendly and intelligent discussions in this forum, so I’d like to bring out a question that’s been on my mind and maybe others.
As I was reading about Tiger yesterday, I heard about lightning fast searches across both content and metadata, and smart folders.
I thought “that’s great !” But then I thought “Why does this sound so familiar ?”
What does this mean for the future of DT ? Not to put too fine a point on it, has DT been "Konfabulated" ? If you keep your stuff as Appleworks docs, you can even do internal links and web links.
Or does Tiger have technologies that DEVON will be able use to become even better ?
And to end with an aside: will the searching in Tiger also replace utilities like Quicksilver and Launchbar ?
That was my first thought after Steve’s keynote too But after having a closer look at this, I don’t think that any Tiger technology threatens DT.
First, the content search of Tiger doesn’t seem to be improved and Spotlight is more like Launchbar and other utilities indexing file names etc. Second, if the ability to read meta data will be available for developers (and hopefully won’t be a private API like Panther’s Preview application), DT could benefit a lot from this by importing this data.
Furthermore, the advantage of DT is that it’s not just an indexing application. You can edit and view contents, browse the web, capture contents, write new stuff, search for contents, file/classify/compare contents etc. without switching between multiple applications. And all of these areas will be improved…
And finally, DT PE 1.9 will be a major revision (introducing im/export plugins, major user interface revisions, full screen viewing/browsing/editing, improved support for movies/sounds/images, improved WebKit integration and lots of other things) and DT Pro 1.9 will offer additional features. And there’s even more in the pipeline, e.g. integration of RSS feeds, additional views, extended plugin architecture in V2.0, outlining of text documents etc.
Maybe some day DT will be able to completely replace things like Safari, TextEdit, Preview/iPhoto, QuickTime player, Stickies, RSS news readers, site suckers/offline archives or the Finder? ;D
I’m with Christian on this. The DEVONthink applications have developed way, way beyond mere (!) fast searching of file contents. Their continuing evolution is towards a very powerful unitary knowledge management/research/writing environment (which is what I use DT for), as well as other work/play environments noted by Christian.
Spotlight sounds neat, smart folders sound neat, but AppleWorks and Spotlight don’t even begin to approximate DEVONthink.
In another recent posting, Christian was wishing for the day when we all use G5 or G6 computers with a true 64-bit OS, so that he could make DEVONthink really fly, with added AI powers . I think Tiger will be a step in that direction. (If I can just get my hands on that G5 PowerBook.)
Talking of speed - the G4 is just such an awful processor…
Spent one day profiling several routines, optimizing memory usage and code (even writing some lines of assembler) but in the end no improvement. The overall performance of some functions is slowed down by a factor of ca. 5 by the poor floating point unit and memory interface of the G3/G4 processors. The G5 on the other hand is built for Devon - 64 bit, powerful FPU, very fast memory access
And using Tigers 64 bit support, the size of DT databases will be (more or less) unlimited - the file format uses already 64 bit since v1.2.
The relevant APIs are (or rather, will be) public. To quote from Apple’s website:
"Extensions and APIs"
"The metadata engine is available for developers to enhance their applications with additional searching and organizing capabilities. Developers can build importers, so the metadata engine can understand their custom file formats and include those files in searches."
I also agree with Christian: I think there’s a lot of technology in Tiger that could influence the future direction of DT, offering assistance for some existing features while expanding the possibilities for new features.
But after having a closer look at this, I don’t think that any Tiger technology threatens DT.