I have to say it, and I apologize if it sounds impolite: I am flabbergasted that when 2.0 FINALLY comes out, it’s NOT compatible with Tiger. Unbelievable. You guys can’t be for real. Leopard was a non-essential, unnecessary upgrade designed for irrelevant software snobs. Didn’t you recognize that? Who cooks up your business models? No need to reply. (Sorry, Bill. You know I respect you.)
Jeff
Jeff, Apple not only introduced new features such as Quick Look in Leopard, but also provided a much-improved development environment.
Take Quick Look, for example. For a long time, DEVONthink users have requested that the database be able to display documents created by their favorite applications, such as Mellel, OmniPage, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and more. It simply wasn’t feasible, within the development environment offered by Tiger, to do that.
Now, in Leopard, all of those document types mentioned above can be indexed and displayed in a DEVONthink database. If the developer of an application has provided suitable Quick Look and Spotlight plugins, that application becomes available to DEVONthink for searching, See Also, and display. Quick Look is still in its infancy, and not all developers are providing good plugins yet. But Quick Look represents enormous potentials for DEVONthink database users, that were not available under Tiger.
That carries over even into browsing and searching DTPO2 databases using Safari. A remote user can, in public beta 2, read the contents of documents within Safari, such as Pages documents, that were not previously viewable in the browser.
Quick Look is only one of many significant Leopard features. But it allows users to incorporate information from many more sources than could have been done in the past. Many previously “unknown” file types now can merge their information content into DEVONthink databases. The “Tower of Babel” problem has been greatly diminished.
DEVONtechnologies could not retain its position as the leading document management/information management developer for Mac without taking advantage of such substantive improvements under Leopard.
Uhhh… you’re just wrong. Sure, they could add 10.4 support, but having equivalent functionality that worked on both platforms may well be 5 TIMES the amount of code for some functionality (e.g. quicklooks)… to duplicate what Leopard has already.
Leopard has been shipping for almost 1 1/2 years now. These things happen in the Mac world.
Maybe I’ll change my mind in a year or two. Right now, I’m fine not making a new purchase from Devon. That’s my business plan.
Jeff, your DEVONthink 1.x application should work well for years.
BTW, let us know when your current book project, the biography of the WW II American/British spy, is available for sale!
Thank you for asking about the book, Bill. It’s actually morphed into a project for the History News Network, a spinoff of the Center for History and the New Media at George Mason University. As a history and as a digital biography it’s not quite working correctly. I can’t figure how to make the references work, so that readers are able to understand my sourcing. You’ll see the problem if you take a look at the site: hnn.us/blogs/74.html. At this point, I’m on hold, waiting to put together a companion web page; I need to create a repository to hold citations, notes, bibliography, references, photos… everything that’s contained in my 2.6 gig DTPRO file!
Wow! What a fascinating character, in such a complex historical setting.
IMO, Leopard is the most significant 10.x upgrade since Jaguar. And as has been mentioned, there are a slew of built in development aids that make coding cool stuff a lot easier.
On the other hand, all along I’ve found it to be less stable than Tiger or Panther, and that’s significant.
Yes, when I was reading the Tiger reviews I gathered that the consensus was that Leopard was a boon to developers, and offered 300 largely invisible and unnecessary changes for slugs like me (okay, Time Machine was/is cool), which was why I didn’t migrate, and explains why Devon would choose 2.0 for its new “spots.” I just hope Devon won’t forget us regular folks who stuck to our stripes with Tiger. All we ever actually wanted from DTP was to be able to open two databases at once. Really, Devon, is that asking so much: 1.5.5?
I am fairly new to the Apple world and just migrated within the last year. From what I’ve seen, OSX seems to be pretty backwards compatible and I’m wondering why someone wouldn’t just go ahead and install it if it meant being able to run the latest applications? I’m running it on an older PPC machine and it runs exactly the same as it does on my new MacBookPro.
I am fairly new to the Apple world and just migrated within the last year. From what I’ve seen, OSX seems to be pretty backwards compatible and I’m wondering why someone wouldn’t just go ahead and install it if it meant being able to run the latest applications? I’m running it on an older PPC machine and it runs exactly the same as it does on my new MacBookPro.
I disagree.
I would rather see pb2 take advantage of ALL the features of Leopard rather than limit itself to Tiger.
I have been using Leopard since the day it came out and have been nothing but impressed with it.
Time for you to upgrade…
I received a Tip newsletter today, which said, “Note: On Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, scan support for third-party applications is broken.”
Is this true in 2.0 pb2?
This http://www.devon-technologies.com/scripts/userforum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6777&p=30883&hilit=leopard+scan&sid=414630738c781b23d3309b67ede32e33#p30883 post from Nov 2008 indicates an issue, but doesn’t say if it was resolved…
I just ordered a Fujitsu SnapScan, which is an expensive purchase if the integration isn’t there. Can you confirm the status?
Thank you.
This has long been solved — and ScanSnap scanning had never had any problems at all.
That’s just it, though… what you’re missing is the context that if “You want all these great new applications” then you should upgrade to Leopard. Maybe there aren’t a whole lot of “whiz-bang” features in Leopard that you, in particular want, but what you WILL want is to run all the awesome applications that are made possible by Leopard. Yes, they could make DTP 2.0 run on Tiger and Leopard, but at maybe 2x the engineering effort, or else if they were to have 15-20 features that were Leopard-only. Take a hypothetical “You can get QL on DTP 2 on Leopard but not on Tiger.” Or “Anything besides RTF and PDF doesn’t work in Leopard.” Then people would crab about this as well 
As far as a 1.5.5 release that supports only dual databases… I doubt that’s easy. How much of the code was to completely change the database architecture, which may have made dual databases possible, and how much work would be required to do this special version for the 1-50 DTP users who want this functionality but don’t want to spend the $129 to upgrade to Leopard? Heck… take advantage of the opportunity to get the Box Set which has Leopard+iWork 09+iLife 09 for like $169 or whatever. Get iLife+iWork and Leopard is free
Thanks for the Leopard/scanning update! Now, go edit the Tips newsletter! 
I wish I could say that you had me at “heck,” but I’m kinda with David Pogue when he wonders when they’re going to stop making everything go obsolete so fast. Ah, capitalism. I love it. Let’s see, 2.5 years between Tiger and Leopard. So, roughly, if I wait another year, I could jump the Leopard and buy the new version of “Lion.” And by then DTP will be outta beta! 
Kidding aside, the price package you suggest is tempting. Unfortunately, George Bush left the White House with my life savings (at least from 1986). Not kidding! 
I surrender, both gladly and gracefully. Members of the board were both forceful and polite and … I saw the light! I upgraded to Leopard. Love it. Thank you. Working on Devon Beta 2.0. Nice. As ever, I can’t keep up with the learning cover… But that’s my thing. I just wanted to concede to y’all about how right you were, Leopard and D2.0 is the way to go.
Jeff