There are two features that I want so badly that I would pay for another license to DT Pro to get.
- The ability to purchase DT Pro (not Personal) from the Mac App Store. My work laptop’s hard disk failed on Friday. It was a mid-2010 MacBook Pro, so I was able to remove the 11 screws on the bottom, replace the drive with one that I had overnighted from Amazon yesterday, screw the bottom cover back on and power-on while holding CMD-R, and begin the recovery process. In 30-35 minutes I had an OS again. Before the hour was up, I had a big smile on my face, thanks to all of my apps (except DT Pro, my Omni apps and MS Office) being on the Mac App Store. All my credentials restored seamlessly. My Exchange account, SSL/TLS certificates, Twitter and Vimeo credentials sync’ed as soon as I attached my account to iCloud. It was beautiful!
My lone problem is that I need a T6 Torx screwdriver to move the 4 little drive mounting screws from the original drive to the new one; meanwhile, the drive rattles around a little bit in there.
I’ve decided to use Pages/Numbers/Keynote from now on and abandon Microsoft Office; I’m most likely going to repurchase my Omni apps from the App Store; that leaves DT Pro.
I purchased DevonThink from the MAS, in hopes that it would at least be upgradable to the Pro Office version. No joy. It’s just the personal version, which is inadequate for my needs. I purchased my copy as part of a bundle with my ScanSnap scanner. I can’t even imagine where I would find my proof of purchase or license key.
I’m okay with purchasing another license; I use DT Pro Office a LOT! But I don’t want applications that can’t be re-downloaded from the Mac App Store anymore. It seems barbaric to find a license key, compared to how quickly everything else was instantly up and running again. I hope DevonTech will release a Mac App Store version of DT Pro Office soon; otherwise, I’m likely to start the new year looking for a replacement.
- I’m so impressed with iCloud, and the fact that the bulk of my data was immediately available that I plan to jettison and find replacements for my applications that don’t allow saving to iCloud.
I work for a Fortune 500 company. They backup our laptops to headquarters weekly, but to get my hard disk restored, I must FedEx the machine to corporate and use a Windows “loaner” until the end of next week, by which the machine will be sent back to my office.
Yes, this is a problem with how long it takes my company’s IT, but instead of being up and running in a half day, these few apps from the dark ages are making me limp along for a week.
For security reasons, we’re not allowed to keep private copies of corporate data. IT only reluctantly allows us to use iCloud, and then, only with certain types of information. I’m definitely not the only person with this type of restriction. Note that I may not be able to use the Omni products’ cloud sync because they don’t meet our IT’s requirements for security policy. though I’m trying to convince IT to set up a compatible WebDAV server for my fellow Mac users and I. DT Pro Office has no serious sync story at all.
If these two things were in place, I would have been able to fully recover, all by myself, in under 4 hours, without even driving to the office! Instead, I’m losing just over a week of productivity. For those who use DT Pro Office in a corporate/professional environment, these two features are deal breakers if there’s any reasonable alternative.
I hope DevonTech is addressing this, rather than sending me searching for new tools for the new year.