Why I Upgraded to UR 5.0

[schferk]

(Editing timeframe closed.)

In order to clarify:

tjfern is certainly not one of those who pretend to be happy with the product as it is; on the contrary, in that other thread, "Just purchased 5.0"

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?t=5027&page=2

he complained about UR not being in real development since 2008. But have a look at that thread's end: Last post:

09-04-2012, 04:38 PM dasymington Registered User Join Date: 06-16-2005 Posts: 280
Disappointed too - Yes, I too am regretting paying for the upgrade as a gesture of loyalty to the product and to support future development.

And then, the button

"Closed"

- People regretting their positive gesture, and then nothing, and that's all. The psychology of closing a thread on such a bottom line is devastating.

The irony is blatant here. I openly described which way I LEFT UR - and hadn't got censored, though, which gave me the chance to see more and more clearly the strengths of UR, and so, it's me, the NON-UR user, who's relentlessly advocating two things here:

- kinook, get back to work, do your homework, and such

- kinook, you've got such a fine product that further investment in man time into your product would be well worth it, AND here's what you can do on top of that, in order to become decently paid for your efforts

Whilst paying users of today - speaking of "updaters to v. 5" here - are angry, but do NOT make these efforts (anymore) to MOTIVATE kinook to resume real programming on UR, other than, in part, paying 50 bucks.

At the same time, I try to CONVINCE kinook that there's a SENSE in developing the applic further, and I try to convey the possible advantages of doing so, for kinook AS for its user base.

Thus, it's not constructive at all to try to denigrate lengthy posts of mine that try to be detailed instructions of how to do things the best I'm able to imagine, by single lines that pretend what I write was rubbish, since even silence at my descriptions couldn't possibly highly motivate kinook to trust my assertions that it'd be beneficial for them to trust what I'm advocating, and then just negative reactions could only fortify their possible impression that at the end of the day, they better stand upon their current minimization of investment in time and efforts re UR.

I mean, never ever would I expect fellow posters to just follow what I suggest and recommend, but then, bring arguments, bring your own experience diverging from mine, get some LIFE into this forum, in order to bring some life into the product itself. Some posters here will remember the askSam forum: In the early years, there was development of the product, AND rather elaborate discussion of features, possible features, uses and possible uses (among more basic ones), mostly due to one single person that held the level as high-brow as it got; then these discussions faded out, together with slowing of development (to not say, it getting to a halt), and one day, the forum was gone.

Compare with UR. If you search for high-brow postings, and discussions with several such postings of such quality, there are all here - but they are many years old. So you might say, that's in synch with lack of development, but there's a major difference between UR and AS in this respect: AS' development came to a halt because the original developer got in high age, and the man who had his saying there - and who ended up buying the business - was / is a marketing guy, not a programmer if I'm not totally mistaken.

Here, it's the other way round: kinook are programmers, they're not in their old age, they're just fed up with the very limited commercial possibilities of outliner sw. So, when for AS any try to instigate a good discussion about improved value and bigger possibilities was devoid of sense, at least from the point in time the marketing guy had dismissed any developer left there, here, with kinook, any discussion would be heard by the developers themselves, and my wish (= illusion?) is that driven by good arguments, they would resume their duty.

Hence my quest to approve my ideas, or to oppose them, but with arguments. If your ideas are better than mine, I'd be glad to support them, but as far as somebody doesn't produce any better idea than are presented by others, it'd be constructive to not simply declare they are of no value.

Since what'd be left, then - and I'm describing the state of the forum as it has been for some years now - would be a synchronicity between sw that is dormant, and a forum that is dying, in that sense that it has been almost exclusively comprised of complaints, with nothing new. Remember, with AS, the next step was the disappearance of the forum. You all ask for commitment from kinook - what irony that instead of approval and encouragement, the one poster who shows engagement these times, from the user side of the "table", gets silence or "zzz" of "pfff" and such gestures meaning "of no interest" - that's the stance kinook displays vÃ*v their product for the time being, and which makes you so angry.

The MI forum is a very dormant thing and always has been, except for the months I participated in it; AS' had its prime, long ago; UR had its prime, long ago - the indifference (for not saying, apathy) of today's UR forum contributors vÃ*v possible enhancements not via "function", but via functionality (which is something completely different), not speaking of business developments, risks to make UR dormant forever, and sheer complaining will not change anything.

And, off-topic here, you see, hoisting, asked for by so many users at the time, and rightly so, is about "focus ON detail": bravo, absolutely necessary. What I have been asking for, and have been explaining, from an organizational level, is FOCUS ON CONTEXT. It seems I'm the only one to have become aware of the absolute necessity of such a "counterbalance" to hoisting, but then, that would be the "fault" of people not being willing to delve into my details (another blatant irony, yeah), it's not because what I'm speaking of was not of utmost importance.

And then, I speak of little enterprise features (ok, I buried these a little bit), which would indeed put UR into a new, and a hundredfold bigger, market. That's for you, folks, that I'm thinking about such things, so don't let me alone asking for them. A commercially viable UR would make your day, but your current complains-only position will not get you there.

This post is not intended as a charge but as an encouragement. Don't go the AS way, folks.

[wordmuse]

I purchased 5 and have no regrets other than that Kinook has not commented on the negativity with a real explanation.

Kinook has no obligation to comment; and we have our choices to make.

There are a few performance enhancements that came with 5 and they solved some of my 4x difficulties. Among them, I can finally view and edit Office docs directly within the 5 interface. That enables me to share Office docs with URP and TheBrain. They get created in TheBrain, I open the thought folder and drag it into URP.

The docs are searchable from both programs and I use the same docs in different ways depending on the app context.

I couldn't do this in 4x.

I am not happy that the road map has been ignored. There was lots of promise there. But I tend to be a take what you can get and consider if the dissatisfaction is a "first world problem" kind of guy.

On a scale of 1 - 10, I am at a 6 in terms of my pleasure with 5. Mileage obviously varies.

[schferk]

wordmuse, your "and we have our choices to make": Two things: First, I'm writing here in order to PREVENT people from making negative choices, by disappointment, but then, when almost "nothing" comes their way..., AND I'm writing in order to trigger something that would be come around, but this making totally unnessary any "choice" = to leave. (And I forgot: Another hing I want to express, there is NO such "choice" in the end, not a single offering within this tiny market is really better, whilst rew come close, so my point is, we must accept that the market itself is the problem, and that we must accept the fact that our wishes cannot be realized but in a different kind of market, where there's much more money for the respective developers to gain from - within the traditional outliner paradigm, there's nothing really spectacular to come from kinook, nor from any of the other offerings, since the developers "ain't paid" in this tiny fraction of a market, fractionized into many competing products on top of that - cf. the citation manager market, only two main offerings, and it's a specialized market that's many times bigger, so there's plenty of revenue for the main contenders.)

A "first-world problem"? I know what you mean, but then "software IS first-world" (incl. China), and what has been done, in this particular field of outliners, etc., the last ten years? Don't we have the right to ask for further development, from people who would perfectly be able to give us very sophisticated things? As I explained today in the other thread again, it's ALL ABOUT BUCKS, it's all about finding your market niche, AND SERVING THAT MARKET WELL, and then there's enough revenue in order for the developer to deliver.

Have a look at bits: Any day (or week or so), an outliner comes there, for 20, 30, sometimes 40 bucks, incl. UR (which is there for 20 / 40, which means not even 10 / 20 bucks go to kinook when bits and the payment processor have taken their respective share) - so do you really think that normal business for outliner developers is great, these days when people don't even pay anymore tose 100 / 50 bucks originally asked for, and developers get paid 19 dollars for their best version? (And there are so many competing offerings at 20, 30 bucks that the minority paying 100 bucks for UR, MI or whatever is slimming down from day to day, as more people get aware of bits, with its tremendous success?)

Hence, the developers' unwillingness to do their work: We get what we pay - and even better: what THEY are paid (9.50 for UR) - for: almost nothing.

As for MS Office docs in PB and UR, concurrently (?), never tried this, but where would be the problem, then, to do it, with 5, 4 or 3? What you describe whould be a task you should be able to do with every third party program, not only UR and PB, as long as it's able to do this, by its individual feature set? I mean, not one of these programs do anything WITH / TO those external files, they just open the respective MS applic (Word, Excel, etc.), and offer a frame to it, Word, Excel, from within to work on their original files? Or do you mean, UR 5 and PB are able to both "open" the same file, concurrently, meaning at the SAME time, within respective frames, and there would by ONE file concurrently being edited from within the two applics, and when you save the file, any editing from "both sides" will be correctly processed? That would be a very elegant thing indeed - how many screens do you use, concurrently? Three or more? Elegant set-up, indeed. Technically, it would mean, the same Word / Excel file is concurrently processed by two instances of Word / Excel, right? Didn't know this was possible - or did I misunderstand you?

Which reminds me of a problem mentioned in the other, the "mind-map", thread: Using two instances or multiple maps, for deep-linking / launching OR for "thinking", i.e. separating those functions from each other, even using the same graphic program, should be perfectly possible, without the mental interference problems described there.

Again, 9.50 for UR - this is outrageous. Hence my not sharing with complaining, but my saying, without a paradigm shift for UR, what do you expect, AND, why NOT a paradigm shift for UR: Wouldn't many of us be willing to follow? And even if not, a whole new market for UR would open, where they could do that development work we expect them to do. (I'd be happy to pay, and for students, student's prices - where's the prob?)

[wordmuse]

schferk - I understand, I think....

And yes - software overall is a first world problem. I guess I was coming at the difficulty here after watching a bit of American politics in the news and realizing for the umpteenth time that we've got weasels who seem bent on turning America into a cesspool. In that emotional context what happens with this or that program just didn't seem that important to me. Add to that the fact that I still don't regret my decision to purchase UPR5 - well that's the explanation for what I wrote...

Now where I truly went wrong was posting in this thread. The long posts you made made my eyes gloss over (my problem, not yours). I can see now (I think) that you are trying to show a commercial context in which UR could succeed and you seem to be expressing details of what that could look like. Kudos to you for that. Much more than I would do - especially without payment and double-especially the way Kinook doesn't say a word in response to the UR user-community's justifiably bitter disappointment (still a first world problem) with URP5 - though I still have no regrets about upgrading. And triple-especially since Kinook has not seen fit to respond to you (unless you've gotten responses privately, which is your business).

So given this, I'm butting out...

Do carry on.

- Bal

[schferk]

Thank you very much for this kind post, Bal.

You entirely got it: Devising a broader commer context where this prog's problems could be handled with revenue "justifying" this, from kinook's pov, AND trying to push the "science of information" just a little bit, from from a rather practical pov, meaning I would like to desive something really useful, be it hybrid or not.

And no, no mail from kinook.

There ain't that many developers (of existing pim sw I mean) who could do something better, from limitations of their expertise; kinook certainly would be able, and the people behind PB, too, with some others, but all those like to do their thing, their way,

whilst I'm not more than an amateur programmer who once did a very elaborate thing but within an unsuited programming language and with going stuck on my various programming deficiencies, e.g. it was a sophisticated but self-contained system, just with export to Word, for better printing, but no mail, no web page, no pdf processing or such, let alone "cloud" integration or integration of "portable devices", and I was too much aware that such integration would be mandatory in order to get prime time (as said, all in all I sold 5 times the light version), but me without basic programming knowledge like API's, .net and all this - so I archived the source code...

but since, I've been living in extreme frustration, since my amateur sw then had all those little things that all these professional programmers could do, but just don't do.

Hence my musing, lately - and since it seems there will never be something really better - to put, some day, money from another business into paying coders.

But I better had made my mind up, up to then, as for the program to deliver; dead-ends are "free" (except for my time's worth) before doing the coding whilst afterwards, I'd pay thrice (and as said, the existing sw's are lacking also the intermediate functionality, for most of the latter, so that my imagination, or my abstraction capability, sometimes is stretched to its limits - hence my musing about intermediate steps, and my scripting to "simulate" intermediate steps, more or less : even with awkward work-around, you often can "see" if the "optimized, slick version" of what you're doing would be convenient, or if it's the whole (micro-) concepts that's not worth much).

And to be honest, lately, my discovery how much benefit mm sw can bring into your workflow, hasn't helped with my eventual getting to almost-definite specifications, since it's now

how to integrate optimized mm with optimized "bulk" data processing...

But as said in the mm thread, there should be some perviousness between the mm and the IMS sw; if there cannot be, shuffling around data with external macros (which also would be possible between mm and IM, not only between different mm maps) is simply too awkward as to be a viable solution.

And this would mean that I (or whomever it might concern) must first solve that mm-IMS interaction problem

("solving" meaning here, knowing how and at what cost such a solution is possible, and with what mm sw or component that isn't too bad or will soon be further enhanced, and being sure the functionality that in such a hybrid system will be expected to be executed by the mm part, is possible with that mm part (sw or component) that's available to you for such a venture).

Anyway. I thank you very warmly for this encouragement, and as long as I'm not being thrown out here, I'll continue to post intermediate results of my "conceptual work", or of just trying out new ways and new things.

[wordmuse]

Glad to see we're in sync a bit.

I think that over time, software *will* emerge from somewhere to give us what we are looking for. It probably won't be URP. I find TheBrain to be very useful in complementing what I can do with mindmap software and URP. But it probably won't be that either.

I find many overlaps in the functioning of UPR and TB - especially in the areas of searching external documents and connecting from one point in a database to another. I also find both programs wanting in many significant areas. Not being a techie, I can only make requests and leave it to the business decisions of the developers as to whether they can accommodate me.

When I compare UPR to the old DOS programs Tornado, IZE, MaxThink, and MemoryMate (I do miss MaxThink and its sibling Houdini), I think we've come a long way. And no one told Kinook to do anything. The free market inspired the development, and as long as the current idiots in the political class don't muck things up too terribly in the free market, I fully expect new software wonders in this area going forward.

What you write here might well give someone somewhere inspiration to take the torch, even if that turns out to be someone currently unknown to anyone.

- Bal

[schferk]

"especially in the areas of searching external documents and connecting from one point in a database to another"

On the spot !

"I also find both programs wanting in many significant areas."

Very unfortunately, on the spot again !

( "the current idiots in the political class"

Very unfortunately, you are wrong here, being governed by i*** would be serious enough, the ugly truth being, though, that they very simply have other masters they are accountable to, and that's not their respective country, let alone population. Excursion into politics closed. (We don't wanna be ostracized, nay?) )

"might well give someone somewhere inspiration to take the torch"

Spot-on ! It's not that I don't see this, and indeed, if somewhere (meaning: not on a Mac, please! I couldn't follow, I know some programming and lots of scripting in the Win world, not on Mac!) a top-notch prog arised, pillaging my ideas, I'd more than happy. The only thing that might some day really worry me, is when I will have come to the conclusion that I must realize it myself, go into investing, needing a year, and in month 8 of that same year something really good will come out! That risk is always there, considering that there are some rather good progs there that have done all the basics yet, meaning it'd be easy for them to pass a development-from-scratch. But certainly, UR has done so much, in the past, that their needed effort to make this prog outstanding, would not be that extremely demanding.

"think we've come a long way"

Yes and no. The first about 10 years of Windows were prolific, but not as prolific as they should have been. And since, we've got almost a standstill in concepts, for most sw kinds.

Have a look at Freehand 4 (1993 if I remember well, or was it 1992?) - look at its replacement, Illustrator today: 20 years of conceptional standstill, except for minor details, whilst the technical possibilities would have skyrocked).

Have a look at Word 2010, and at Word 5 (or at WordPerfect in that era) - even today, Word needs one of two different add-ins in order to do "proper outliner", sort of, or compare with XyWrite (from 1982 on - incredibly powerful and thus the standard in press rooms all over the world then (I used it for years then, would never have touched on Word: was about 200 times quicker than Word was on my slow and overpriced notebooks then, and was scriptable - in fact, scripting XyWrite macros was the very first scripting I did in my life!).

Have a look at Excel today (good ecosystem around btw, but that's not their fault): Compare with Lotus 1-2-3 then (yeah, there is Resolver One, today, but you better be a programmer in order to use it, let alone take advantage of its special capabilities), compare with Lotus Improv, a sensational concept being buried then for "external" reasons.

The same for DTP sw. (Corel Ventura for the poor, Framemaker for the rich, and then even PageMaker got a mark-up language, only its very first (Mac) didn't have one and was sub-par because of that!)

The same for PIM's - mine (and yes, it was object-oriented) had clones, tags and all (whilst most of today's don't), 15 years ago (and some other also had then).

So, what we see, is a near-standstill in sw "architecture" or "engineering" (both not meaning the development here, but APPLIED expertise, i.e. NEW RESULTS, new intelligence coming from the pc, and then, re "internal excellence", since memory chips ain't 2,000 bucks for 10 mega anymore and there being multiplied processing power, there's been total sloppiness with memory, processing power or any other resources, within programming), except on the integrational level (thanks to the web), but re integration, have a look back at that favorite of mine when it comes to defunct sw: Framework, pure genius (from 1983 (that makes it THIRTY YEARS NOW, kudos going to Robert Carr especially) - so don't prematurely assume MS had invented the Office Suite! ...

[schferk]

... And it goes worse.

Have a look here, "Are you going to wait for Windows 9?":

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/i...?topic=32935.0

Interesting reads there, among others not so smart. One thing seems to be evident: MS is trying, by all means, to copy Apple's "Closed Circuit" concepts, and some fear that this might bring the de-professionalisation of the Windows system as a whole, most people needing pc's - or not, when there will be enough slates one day - for the web (incl. mails and films), and - Apple has proven this - are willing to get into closed systems, with DRM, applics only when approved by the hardware vendor, etc.

So people say, prices for professional equipment will skyrock. Well, I remember those times in which I paid a fortune for my rather weak notebooks. Then, "everybody" got a notebook, and that meant that even for prof. users (= people who need a notebooks, instead of just wanting to see films, etc. at home with them), notebook prices went down in a spectacular way.

And so, when the "everybody" and the prof. markets will again split up, it's perfectly possible that these augurs will be right, and slates and such, and the respective sw, will be accessible for anybody, whilst "real pc's", with "real sw", will again become a thing for few people willing to pay the price.

Example: Micrografx Flowcharter 3 cost me 1,000 bucks then, and was totally bug-ridden, incl. loss of data. Then, some day, that same FlCh3 got into the bargain counters, for some 15 bucks.

But back to near-standstill: The real problem with FlCh3 was that there wasn't any shortcuts for adding another specific symbol (meaning, you would have needed about 10 or 12 (min.) shortcuts in order to insert them into your map, instead of having to change, with the mouse, the needed symbol first, within a palette, and then inserting with the mouse, then again going to the palette, select another symbol there, put it into your map.... The same with connector lines: Everything was purly "manual", no shortcut for, e.g., connecting the current symbol you were inserting, with the symbol you had insert previously.

So, FlCh 2000, the last I got, nothing new here, re smooth working. And the current FlCh (yes, there is one, I'm not exclusively mentioning defunct sw here) doesn't seem to have such shortcuts either. They bloat their sw with any remote functionality, but that functionality that you need 3 times the min., isn't there, and will probably never get there - the same with competitors:

I know of NO such flowchart sw that facilitates this (neither does Visio), and in fact, one of the premier "advantages" of mm sw, whenever you can manage to do an mm map instead of a flowchart, is, that mm sw allows for very quick working, whilst doing similar maps with flowchart sw is extremely strenous, for its lack of easing your burden of multiple, endless repetition of meanial tasks.

Technically, there is no problem whatsoever: As well as MM allows for assigning 9 different, often-needed symbols (of your choice) to 9 different key combinations, any flowchart sw could allow for assigning symbols / stencils to key combinations - they simply don't do it, and then, you have the great "please" to try to write mouse (!!!) macros in order to automate this by having macroed mouse clicks in fly-up palettes and such - in a word, terrible.

And to say the truth, I've been wandering for some time now that kinook's persistent silence could be explained by the possible above-described future environment in which future sw will have to exist:

Mr. Everybody will get almost nothing since the prices will not allow for thorough development, hence "portability" from pc to Android or RT or even future slate "pc" 's, but strictly on that amateur level that will certainly not stress the basic user.

And as for "prof" sw, well, developers think that given the (low) numbers, people will have to buy anyway, so no real effort needed, and given again the low numbers, they presume that competing sw will not be developed, their possible developers deciding that given that the narrow market is taken, another such sw will not be able to succeed.

Adobe with its Photoshop- and Lightroom-type programs (but certainly not with Illustrator and such) are in-between: Not slate-fare, and not profs-only: Will be interesting how they will position these progs when there will be less and less desktops out there, in the housings of the general public.

In other words, an era is possibly nearing to come to its end: That era where the limits between everyman's sw and prof.'s sw have been largely blurred (i.e. by taking everyman in the (formerly, prof-only) boat. And now it's possibly an era where everyman's sw gets really dumb (Evercrap, anyone? It's been deliberately dismantled, deconstructed!), whilst prof sw is low numbers, expensive and another market (cf. crm or laywers' sw that both were never popular with your neighbour).

And now let's come back to UR. They regularly go to bits (as said, 19.50 for them for prof., 9.50 for them for standard): That clearly indicates they go "consumer market", or more precisely, they continuously try to get out of the consumer market the max that it'll bear for them, and on the other hand, they make NO effort whatsoever to make a break into any possible large prof. market (except for having made UR network-compliant (but without access rights, i.e. half-heartedly): no doc M, no crm made easy, let alone lawyer functionality or such. (And I don't see any advertizing directed to such prof. markets.)

This all means, UR HAS MADE A CHOICE: Offering some good functionality to everyman, and that's it, since everyman's market will be brought down, functionality-wise, no more sophistication needed - which was there as a product of that simili-parallelism between prof and everyman markets -

and which era seems to come to an end now (with rare exceptions (Adobe)).

And possible UR (and others) will have mused around such considerations - when the inherent "tragedy" here is that in the past, UR has realized so much of what'd be needed in order to make it a prof. program within a future dual market, that the additional effort in order to succeed there, instead of just getting some crumbs out of everyman's market where there's lots of progs much easier accessible to that everyman.

In other words, kinook seems to be lacking the guts to see that they could make UR prime time-ready for that secondary, the prof., market, with applying rather restricted effort and means to do so, and would not have to look out anymore for bitsdujour crumbs in the 10 to 20 dollar range, only attaining a remote position in that everyman market since it's not slick enough in order to spontaneously please.

About 12 years ago, Adobe bought Macromedia and buried FreeHand. I was outraged then, as were thousand of loyal FH customers. Looking at it from today (i.e. from Win8 desaster point in time), I brood if back then, there might not perhaps been at Adobe very smart people who foresaw that the seemingly so democratic, in very large portions "common market" for profs and everyman that existed in 2000, wasn't just a transitional period that would soon come to an end.

We seem to be leaving that passage soon (the first big step out being made by the iPad 3 years ago), and UR is stuck, by its lack of courage, within the consumer market where it could claim a very remote, minute position at best: from a consumer perspective, there are lots of "better" progs.

And that's the explanation for what we see.

kinook don't have a communication problem, as some disappointed ex-user stated in another forum this year, kinook have a perception problem: They rightly see the consumer market and know there's nothing to gain from that, for them, hence their unwillingness to further invest within their program.

But they don't see their possibilities within the prof. market: They only see UR isn't ready for that market, but this undenial fact seems to blur their perception that it would not take so much of an effort in order to get it ready for professional prime time - and that their position there could become a rather comfortable one.

This analysis could refocus kinook's percption, though, and that would mean very good stuff to come from them.

Or, when they don't consider it "the new element" that changes the lot, then some of us had better leave. (And yes, normally you'd had to pay for marketing consulting.)


EDIT:

Just for the joy of it:

"And again. And again. And again. And even after that the freshly marked up document will remain the same unstructured presentation soup bulk

as one finds in any braindead blonde's Word file."

from once-and-only poster "Brains" (not me) in the MI forum, a highly instructive post anyway, deserves to be read: Both parts are current probs for UR, too, so the link is not just for fun. He's bold as brass: "Data taxonomy and research capabilities: Mesozoic fossils" - but he delivers his points! 265 visits to this date, let's see if we cannot get them some more page clicks here:

http://forums.milenix.com/viewtopic....9f4dc756dfd1e9

[wordmuse]

So - I don't disagree with much of what you wrote. I write per what my relatively modest needs are and believe that things are better now than they were.

For instance, For most of just over 25 years I've been keeping a hand-printed journal since 1986. About two years ago, my hand began fatiguing faster, and I could not find pens with a wide enough barrel to help. (And at some point a too-wide barrel would prove equally problematic, yes?) I'd been reluctant to go to a keyboard since I connected with pen and paper much more intensely than with keyboard and screen.

But, alas, my hand just couldn't keep up with my mind. Not that I had anything profound to say - just that what I did have to say needed written expression.

A few years ago, Word would not have supported what I want to do. Now it does so easily. And there are third party programs that make transfer of images to and from Word child's play, e.g., Snagit. So my Word document can be almost (not quite) as visually rich as a hand-printed page with doodles, drawings, things overlapping, crossouts, etc.) It's not as much fun as it used to be, but it's sufficient and getting better as third party software makes some things that were difficult easy. Example: I just found a music keyboard for my Galaxy Tab. It records music ideas I have and I can then send them via Dropbox to my PC where I can then import the music into Harmony Assistant which will score what I played. I can then take a screenshot of the score and paste it into my journal. And I can annotate it such that Ultra Recall can find the relevant document when I need it.

All that would have been darned near impossible for me (not a techie) just a few short years ago.

Given the synergies that are out there, and again, assuming the free market doesn't get mucked up (I'll accept that we need not identify "by whom"), the incentive to keep on moving things toward richer digital environments will continue, and people like me will benefit from this.

Here's a digital environment that I would love to see come down to level where someone like me could afford it both in terms of price and ease of use.
http://fooyoh.com/nowwatch/watch/8Ez6UQ69iQ0

And I believe one day, environments like this will emerge for the everyone.

Hopefully, I'm not too optimistic.

- Bal

[schferk]

"I connected with pen and paper much more intensely"

Oh, I loved handwriting in my day - beautiful pen, blue ink! My minor prob was fatigue, as in your case, but the real prob was, I got more and more difficulty to read my own handwriting, and for editing purposes, constant deciphering needs considerably slows down the process! (Oh, and I loved these IBM Selectrics (even when my handwriting was very ok yet), with their balls and their possibility to print "print-like", I mean not mmm like it was standard then, but one m taking the place of perhaps 4 i's - that was spectacular in that time! And their cases were really beautiful - well, with IBM pc's, nobody would call them pieces of art, really ugly stuff (even Macs were ugly then). And I remember those grandiose keyboards then, expensive, but with about 40 or more special keys... (News agencies even had their special keyboards, even more sophisticated...) - Yeah, the old times!

Images in Word?

I'm not sure here, but think.... Don't know Word 2010, but in 2003 at least, a picture of 10 kb blew up the Word file by several mb's - it's the same phenomenon in AO and in other minor sw, whilst both MI and UR are top-notch here: 10 kb stay 10 kb. (Couldn't take an oath on it, there is a chance that behavior was in the Works text processor but not in Word. But I remember I wasn't happy with this.)

Word as DTP for the masses?

Word has perhaps become better in that, but for DTP, there are progs, and I know legions of horribly-dtp'ed printed books that would have been much more pleasant to read had they been typeset by mark-up-processing by a DTP prog (don't be afraid of mark-up, it doesn't have to be CT-style: You can perfectly bold, italicise, underline your text as before, in Word e.g., but just for the special things, you'd use the codes the dtp prog "understands. Blah blah<F:This becomes a footnote.> blah. Much better results than with traditional Word; as said, don't know the last versions and their possible better output. (Not speaking of crashing Word files here, especially when containing pictures, tables, and several hundred pages.) - The beauty of dtp is, you can do your writing within any acceptable editor field of any sw out there - even within UR (if they get to the prob of the edit wait when switching between items).

Galaxy Tab?

As said, connectivity is the big "progress" the computer "science" for everyman has made - and it's the only such progress. So I'm searching for answers, and indeed, it's the money, as it's the money in all cases.

"assuming the free market doesn't get mucked up "

It's evident Apple does everything for doing just that. And I tend to be convinced by people (hence the link to DC) claiming that MS will do anything in their reach to do the same - for the years to come, we speak of RT probs here, Win8 being an "open" system as former Win versions were. But as said, the market will split, and time will probably come where on a pc you can do lots of things with very few and very expensive sw, whilst on your tablet, you can shift things around and around... but you won't be able to do much with them. It's a theory, it's not yet reality. But then, today you can photocopy a chapter from a book; some people say most books will not even be published in paper form anymore, 5 years from now (let it be 10, and they might be right). So, with all that DRM there, what about taking a chapter you need, out of a book?

Right, you buy the whole book, for let's say 149 euro, in order to get electronic access to some 23 pages - or you do screenshots: It'll be the same with Apple (who invented all this "closed system" s***), the same with amazon, and the same with your MS tablet - and in the street, we're followed by cameras identifying us (the technology is all there, and indeed I forgot, here, real progress has been made), every 20 m.

fooyoh?

It has been quant who recently posted a similar link here, in the mm thread, and I answered there. In short: Yes, this looks so "promising", and for a long time I thought an optimization of such a paradigm would be the solution to IT. And now I know better: Our brains need some 2D-simplifications, multiple ones, yes, in order to get the whole picture, step by step, and with all the interactionism in there - but 3-D representations are too much for most of us. And there is not one man in this world who regrets this more than I do.

Conclusion

Apple has started it, amazon will not change, MS even now is trying to jump on the bandwagon. In the streets, we ain't free anymore (if we let our smartphone at home or take it with us). And re the web, in China there is perhaps 10 p.c. of the web available for Chinese people, and even "democratic" countries interact this very time in order to "better regulate" the web, i.e. a) to censor it, and b) to let nothing anymore go unnoticed. In some "democratic" countries, it's become an offence to use encryption, e.g. for your mails. Then, again Apple the culprit, consumerism has overtaken pc use, i.e. these days, pc's, netbooks, slates and such are, by an overwhelming proportion, used for consuming data that others created (on quite other machines of course (past times: Silicon Graphics - splendid beauties!)), whilst 10 years ago, everyman even needed a kb! Today, many people even don't buy the additional kb for their slate since even their mails - mails are dying, too, btw, d'après what they say - are short enough in order to not making you need a kb.

Young people, 20 years ago, were living in the streets, as much as they could. Today, it's media consumption, within their parents' home (of course there are exception, we're discussing trends here). Media consumption, I say: it's not know that hunches of people create on their pc.

Anyway, these different phenomena SEEM TO CONVERGE.

And hence, it's only a question of speed: When will be have become a closed world, with regulated access if there is access, and with creation being suspect? When? But that day will come. Have a look at Egypt. Arab spring has become Arab winter, as they call it now.

But the point here is, smart people and even I, WE KNEW BEFORE. It's the same with our data processing. And they promote data consumption (cf. television):

It's bread and circuses, and it's all about maximizing our circus time, whilst minimizing any other move we might be inclined to make.

It's a question of how long it will take, but the direction things will take, is clear as day.

And as for Adobe, well, that might be transitional, too: Working on your photos? Even simili-creational activities? Automatisms will do that for you.

As said, sw developers look out and observe that two very different camps are building, and they try to chose their camp, and their feet follow their eye.

And that's why in a closed system for iPhone, iPad and iCrap, there's 200,000 (or is it 300,000 now?) applications of which 99,99 p.c. are pure rubbish.

But some developers might be mistaken in chosing their camp, and to prevent such a potential mistake here my above post was meant for.