I’ve passively used DEVONThink ToGo on my iPad for the last several years, primarily as a storage vault.
I’ve finally picked up a Mac Mini and am looking to get serious about DEVONThink usage.
Here is my use case :
I am a high school soccer coach.
I’d like to store and cross reference ideas, drills, web pages, book snippets.
From that, develop practice plans, game plans.
Ideally I could export (share sheet) to Pages and print out for that day’s practice.
So the editing, creating would be done on Mac or iPad or iPhone. But the ability to share (including diagrams) to Pages or some editor where I can do a final format and print is vital.
My current workflow uses IA Writer (awesome, because it will include other files into the main file with a reference!) and shares to Pages beautifully.
I’m ready to move up to the next level but am in the dark as far as what packages here will answer my needs and allow me to be better and more efficient. Any thoughts?
I appreciate the follow up.
Yes, I’ve looked at the package comparisons, but was looking for recommendations on package based on my use case.
Although I’m fairly computer literate, definitely a noob with DevonThink.
Completely subjective view: Server is only for those who specifically intend to use the server functionality; if you don’t know whether you are going to do so or not, then not Anyway, you can always upgrade later. The standard edition always strikes me as existing only so that entry into the DEVONthink world is less costly. The Pro edition is the way to go. Having said that, none of the things you listed explicitly requires Pro. If you don’t think you are going to require OCR (think again, but if you’re sure…) and are not going to import e-mails you’ll probably find the Standard edition suffices. Anyhow, DEVONtech offer a pretty generous trial period and you can upgrade from one edition to a higher edition at no extra cost (so initial purchase + upgrade fee is equivalent to purchasing the edition outright).
You can use external apps to open records stored in DT (using the Open with… entry in the context menu).
So, why not simply download DEVONthink and use the trial period to find out which features you need and use?
This is extremely good advice with which I strongly concur. Just try it and see how your use develops. I did originally buy the Pro edition and am now very pleased that I did so. My use of DT has expanded well beyond anything I envisaged when I originally bought it—and that seems to be quite a general experience.
In a few words, again, make use of the generous trial and discover how you use it.
Somehow, I don’t think using homebrew to install DEVONAGENT is going to help someone who wants DEVONTHINK – and I don’t think that spelling would even get you DEVONagent!
What’s the difference between manually install and using Homebrew ?
I think it’s just like driving a stick shift or driving an automatic choice: download from same source, follow same action workflow.
What exactly is the point of using Homebrew for a commercial package? DT updates itself when necessary (as opposed to having to run brew update). You pull the software from its dmg to “Applications”, that’s all. Being a Unix person, I’m all for command lines – if they make life easier (or make something possible which wouldn’t be possible otherwise).
Homebrew is probably fine for OSS missing from MacOS. In that case, it installs the packages in their own tree (under /usr/local, I assume). But for a commercial program, the DMG image and the install scripts already take care of all that.
Also, Homebrew introduces another level of complexity that is not at all needed in this case. And on top of that, you have to install cask. Which offers far too many options to shoot yourself in the foot (like --appdir) for my taste.
If I were a commercial software company, I’d refuse to support an installation of my product(s) via Homebrew.
It can be convenient to have all your apps installed via Homebrew via a Brewfile if you have to spin up new computers a lot. This could be because you have a team of people that all need the same thing or because you work for a company with terrible Mac support that won’t let you do backups and reimages the machine if there are problems.
Basically, you can do one command line action and all the tools you need are downloaded and installed.
Install 40 aps and report back how quick that was compared to running a single Brewfile and having a sip of tea. the only real issue with commercial packages isn’t brew or cask or the install directory but entering the licenses.
just try it for devonthink. first i need to google devonthink. then i click on editions to make sure i download the right edition. well, fun fact, there is no download link on the editions page. so now i am getting confused. time is ticking, 2 minutes in, still no dmg
now i am clicking on the top left icon, so i can maybe get a download link. guess what, i get to a page that i have not seen (turns out it is the frontpage for devontechnologies) but it looks like a random confusing subpage and not a landing page. but it asks me where i put my evil genius master plan. what? all i want is a download link to devonthink, the only real app devontechnologies offers. why is this so hard? but i am not giving up,the page has no download link though.
so, now in desperation i hit google again with “devonthink download”, i get presented with a link to DEVONtechnologies | Download. a zip file, so i now need to unzip it and drag it manually to applications.
and i am not even trying to be an idiot, the devonthink website really makes it this hard.
Granted, if you’re administrator of a bigger Mac shop, that is helpful. Which was not apparent from the OP‘s post. Also, in that case a DT server would probably be the way to go.
Anyway, you can always upgrade later. The standard edition always strikes me as existing only so that entry into the DEVONthink world is less costly. The Pro edition is the way to go. Having said that, none of the things you listed explicitly requires Pro. If you don’t think you are going to require OCR (think again, but if you’re sure…) and are not going to import e-mails you’ll probably find the Standard edition suffices. Anyhow, DEVONtech offer a pretty generous trial period and you can upgrade from one edition to a higher edition at no extra cost (so initial purchase + upgrade fee is equivalent to purchasing the edition outright).
