This topic is invaluable! I’m in the process of moving from Windows to Mac and while I find no evidence for the “Mac just work” myth (i.e. it seems to be a myth), I’m still willing to explore the Apple world.
Anyway, this involves replacing my current reference manager (Citavi), which is Windows only and I’m stuck between Bookends and Zotero, but without really having tried either of them yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to import everything from Citavi into each of them, but it has become apparent that custom scripting/configuring will be necessary in both cases. However, I have no prior experience with neither JavaScript (the importing language for Zotero) or Applescript (for Bookends). So do I want to learn/accustomize myself with both, just to see which import works better and which ref manager works better? Not really.
So this is why I’m so happy to find this topic (previously I’d only seen the one from last year), which pushed me towards bookends). I’m fascinated by @ryanjamurphy ‘s combination of the two (plus integration with Devonthink, which is the actual reason for my transition to Mac, and Obsidian, which I already use) but I’m still not sure whether it mightn’ t be a lot easier to just use Zotero only, no bookends, keep it simple etc.
Both @ryanjamurphy and @JohnAtl have their gripes with bookends, so, obviously it’s not perfect, plus, it’s not open source, which can be an issue years ahead and I don’t really want to migrate my 7000+ references ever again. And, tbh, when I first opened bookends and imported some references, I struggled for like 15 minutes to figure out how to edit those references. Not exactly what I call good UX. So I’m afraid this sort of thing might continue with bookends. And the absence of documentation online is also frightening. At first, I dismissed Bookends because “obviously” no one was using it. I still don’t understand it, but it seems U have to adjust my expectations from the Windows world to the (smaller) Apple world.
Anyway, long story short, I wonder if you could specify some more of the downsides of both Bookends and Zotero? If you feel it’s important, I’ll also happily read the upsides, but I’m a believer in negative reviews as they tend to give you a more sober picture when trying to decide between two very good products.
Perhaps the positive comments would be most relevant in relation to MacOS integration because that is something I can’t really appreciate yet (e.g. I still need to do a tutorial on how to use tags in MacOS, and Zotero does seem to integrate with Alfred, so I seem to me missing the nuances when I don’t see how it would give bookends so much of an advantage).