Now we’ve had services in Tinderbox for some time, so that anxiety is, I suppose, relaxed. You could always have different services, or more services, I guess.

The whole upgrade question should be clear now. You can buy Tinderbox without worrying that an upgrade is coming in a few days. You’ll be able to upgrade later, whenever you like, for a modest fee. It’s a great deal.

Using services a lot? I’d like to hear more….

Ecco is still enthusiastically used by many people, and continues to pick up new users. The Ecco group at Yahoo has several members who are committed to developing the product. In fact, they went to NetManage, and were told the company would release the code. Then came the excuses — lots of excuses, but no code.

So if Microsoft killed off Ecco, it could only have been by making it worth NetManage’s while not to support Ecco in the first place, and to not release code in the second place. However, that is speaking hypothetically, and there is no evidence that I know of that Microsoft engaged in such business practices.

However, by their stance, there’s lots of evidence that NetManage is doing all it can to let Ecco die.

But Ecco refuses to die, and one of the long time users is now trying to recreate Ecco from scratch.

Ecco continues to have capabilities that are otherwise absent in the Windows world and, with Zoot, is in a class all of its own.

Daly

I entirely agree with you. I use Wintel boxes at work and have a number of useful ’small house’ apps on them (e.g. ECCO, as I mentioned in the original post), but I do think it fair to say that the range and quality of such apps on the Windows platform is less polished and useful than on the Mac. I would prefer that that weren’t so – I am not into religious wars at all – but I think as a broad statement it is not without truth.

What I was trying to get at was to suggest that Windows users tend inherently to be a little less geeky than Mac/Unix/Linux users and that Tinderbox is, of its nature, rather a geeky tool.

BTW, I don’t suppose you have a “cool list” of your little Windows apps, do you? Always nice to know what others find useful.

Thanks.

Are Windows Users Stupid?

Without wanting to start a religious war (god forbid), I don’t think that you can say that windows users will not ‘get’ Tinderbox.

I have got dozens of apps from very small software houses on my Windows PC.

I think that the port to windows will just mean that the party gets bigger.

I’ve long been interested in TB, but have yet to take the leap, partly due to the apparent learning curve, the price (will I end up making the most of the app?), but also the oft-mentioned interface issues, not working with Services (that’s a big one), and generally feeling ’sterile’, dare I say it. Frankly, the UI is just not appealing to me as a potential user, IMHO, but I don’t mean to be harsh, it’s just a fact that it doesn’t excite me, as one potential user.

Now, maybe I should persevere with the demo, and hope that the penny drops soon, but I don’t think it’s entirely unwarranted to desire certain qualities in the tools you use… and hey, there’s got to be the ‘fun’ factor, and some satisfaction! It’s not e bad thing to like a sexy UI, as long as there’s substance behind it. : )

…and it’s relevant because there are ’sorta’ competing apps out there, that may not hold a candle to TB’s powerful features, but they may push other buttons for their users.

For one, my background is in design, and I guess I’d like to see more graphical aspects to the app, both in presentation and in handling media, using meta-data, notes etc., for the organising properties, and helping me to visualise the material.

It would be interesting to use visual properties (e.g. colour, opacity and esp. scale) to denote properties of the info contained therein; e.g. # unread articles, priority, categories (tags!), etc.

What about working with Quartz Composer? How interesting would it be to use TB to generate Quartz visualisers say as a screen saver, or embedded in TB via QT (which can play them.)

…and all the Quartz Extreme/OpenGL goodness; maybe it seems flippant to some, but there could be some real value to these sorts of things being added.

Anyway, this is far too long now, sorry for the long comment! : )

Title: If it ain’t broke…One man’s opinion on the one-man software: I bought Tinderbox about fourteen months ago. I know that because I recently purchased my annual $70 upgrade gladly, feeling that I would get much more than my money’s worth. Tinderbox (I’m actually embarrassed to be writing this, but it’s true) has literally changed my life.
I first downloaded a demo because of a review in MacWorld. I had been an outlining freak since Kamas (does anyone remember that?), OutThink, and MindWrite, all of which were swept into the dustbin of tech history. If it takes seventy bucks a year to keep Tinderbox from following them, if for no other reason than to keep Mark interested, it’s worth it. There are good outliners available now, notable Omni’s product, but it is not (sorry, Omni) a wart on a Tinderbox buttock.
Just as the ability to tweak my photos lured me into Photoshop 4.0 years ago, it was the outlining and the note archiving features that motivated my Tinderbox purchase. (I considered it an extravagance at the time, because I already had Sticky Notes.) The learning curve, as with Photoshop, for the coolest features was indeed steep. Tinderbox dragged me, however, (pardon another cliché) headlong into the 21st Century. I had no interest in blogging when I bought Tinderbox, but I started blogging, with a private blog for the family, because I wanted to see what Tinderbox could do. Sort of like taking the Maserati off the freeway to a back country road with little traffic and fewer cops. I also mastered elementary CSS just to make my Tinderbox output cooler. Now blogging has put the fun back in my life. That would have never happened with Blogger, LiveJournal, or even Wordpress.
Hey, if Mark wants to hang onto Tinderbox as his baby, and find soulmates in in the Windows environment, more power to him. The interface is not Frogdesign but authentic geek chic. Like the basic Moleskine, there are some things best not fucked with too much.—JDL

Afterthought: Yes. Bring in support for Services. Please. Pretty Please. Pretty please with sticky adornments on top.