Beta seems really slow…
That’s a hard one to deal with. It seems like you have no time to change or you get too far behind.
I can tell you though that the time spent learning a single good tool pays you back in time saved. This is a lesson I have to learn and re-learn very often. My latest version was with Hazel. An app that I was sure could really save me time in the mundane monthly filing of downloaded statements and misc bills. But each time I’d get a couple of hours or more into trying to learn it and get it working and give up. I finally persevered (and it took me over 10 hours of work to get the darned rules working properly, Hazel is NOT easy to program IMO) but now I save on average 2.5 hours each month in things Hazel does for me. That was about 6 months ago so I have gained an extra 2.5 hours do to more useful or interesting tings each month. Doesn’t sound like much but it really adds up.
Personally I’d go ahead and buy the lowest version of DEVONThink and start making the switch. Pick one of your other apps and move all its data to DT and then delete the app. Do that over time for all of them and if you need the power of the upgraded DT options buy them when you need them.
If you are concerned about the time it takes to switch you might try to track how long it takes you to locate something in your existing system. You might be surprised and could find out that a switch to one place will more than pay for the time spent learning it.
My rule of thumb now is that I want to see a cost of no more than 6 months before I am seeing the gains. So a task that took me 6 hours to redo into a more efficient system that saved me 1 hour a month is breakeven. Beyond that I gain that time. I am also no longer as afraid to try for tiny incremental gains, they add up over time to become serious blocks I can use for other tasks.
4 Likes
I started (a decade ago?) with DEVONnote, then upgraded to DEVONthink, then DTP. Ultimately the app seemed to offer more than I needed, combined with being saddled with a comparatively clunky interface and a dev team that was not particularly responsive on several issues for a long time. Although I have my DTP 2.x license I doubt I’ll upgrade to version 3.0. For people who don’t need the indexing (I have DEVONsphere Express, which can duplicate much of that anyway… for my entire hard drive) or the metadata sync in the iOS app (which is pretty clever), there are much more affordable cross-platform alternatives, like Reinvented’s Keep It and Schmid’s Notebooks app, among others.
1 Like
In addition to the reduction in cognitive load of scheduling the tasks, doing them, and possibly making human mistakes.
1 Like
Their upgrade guide mentions they will have an App Store version after beta ends.
If it has the same pricing, a third license without upgrade price would be the same either way. And I don’t really NEED 3, and doubt I’d need four. Maybe if it is an outright purchase and not an in-app purchase I might be able to justify it if I could convince my wife to use it, as she is going back to school this fall. But the easiest solution from my persepective would be if they had just licensed it per person, although I’m sure they’ve spent a lot of time deciding that this license structure makes the most sense for their business.
I consider myself very experienced in Devonthink 2. I have been using it for 9 years. However I can see that it might take me another 9 years to get up to speed with all the goodies in DT 3.
It is just amazing software.
3 Likes
It is confirmed directly on their website (see my original link above): “In addition, the Take Control ebook will be free for all customers.”
According to their blog post at DEVONtechnologies | DEVONthink 3.0 Public Beta, a new takecontrolbook ebook is coming and will be free for all customers. 
See below if you don’t want to read the entire post.
“Updates for the Take Control of DEVONthink and Arbeitsbuch DEVONthink ebooks are in the works and will become available in due course. In addition, the Take Control ebook will be free for all customers. The documentation for DEVONthink 3 will be downloadable as PDF and ebook with one of the next public beta updates.”
1 Like
I have never heard of DevonTHINK until I discovered MPU three months ago. What is it exactly? It sounds like an online repository (ala Dropbox) but with a local native app interface. If that is the case, then what is the difference with Finder on your local Mac (and set up Dropbox sync) if I file my stuff accordingly in their own folder and use tags?
I just downloaded 3.0 Beta and will explore, out of curiosity, but is there a good starter guide or something?
You’re probably right. I don’t actually know how to do the math to way the benefits the way you do, mostly because there’s not much of a use case for DT in my actual day job, it’s more of a “where’s the receipt for the thing that just broke that’s probably still in warranty” and stuff like that.
DT isn’t expensive, though, $99 straight out purchase actually sounds cheap in these days of subscriptions.
I would like the OCR, but since I use SetApp, I could probably find a way to make PdfPen do my bidding.
Not online at all. Instead think of it as a really good holder for just about anything, a magic filing cabinet. If you want to put the files in there it works, if you want to leave the files in their current location but just reference them it wrks, it handles huge dataset, There are folks with DT databases that have millions of items in them, and it’s fast. I don’t even use the AI stuff of seee also and classify but for those that do that is the game changer. For me I like that I can put nearly anything into it and can find it much faster than any spotlight search. I can control my own cloud sync and it can be on any of my portable devices.
If it isn’t online, then it takes up more space in our precious SSD, considering it’s duplicating what you already have in Finder. However, you also mention referencing them, so it is a link to the actual file in Finder… that make sense, although it also means that one has to save it onto Finder AND then add the link into DT. It does sound a lot of work for something I am not seeing much of a value.
Nope you still don’t have it right, you can reference stuff in finder or you can MOVE it into DT totally, in which case no copy lives outside. I do a mix of both types of databases.
2 Likes
No need to jump to conclusions based on a lack of information! You’d understand it a lot better by reading their documentation and using the demo! It’s a very generous demo and their documentation is comprehensive.
Also lots of discussion here and on the DEVONthink discourse forum if you want to actually learn what the application does.
1 Like
You can also selectively sync databases. For example: I have one database that is several GB in size that I have no need on my phone. So that database, while it syncs through an icloud technology doesn’t take up space on my iPhone.
You can also sync the same database using different technologies. For ex: I have a notes database that I sync through iCloud and Dropbox because my work iPhone has iCloud blocked.
My point is that DEVONThink takes time to understand everything. Indexing versus importing took me a while to understand. The flexible sync options were not clear initially either. I think a huge benefit is that they are going to be providing the Take Control book for DT3 for free soon. That is an excellent resource.
BTW the fairly new iCloud sync is a little confusing for some. The files are local on your HD in a DT database. Then the sync data (not files but packets of encrypted stuff ) is temporarily stored locally on the hard drive then icloud sends the data to their online database and the temporary files are removed. Dropbox doesn’t have an intermediate store. I personally use iCloud since I am already paying for a large family share 2TB of space.
DevonThink is a pro-level tool. It’s difficult to just jump in without reading any documentation and start using it right away.
2 Likes
Sharpen the saw.
Woman passes a man in the woods sawing down a tree. On her way home that evening, the same man is still sawing on the tree. She asks, “Have you tried sharpening the saw?” The man replies, “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw - I need to cut this tree down.”
8 Likes
(grin) The reality of using DT as it relates to “difficult to get into” was far different for me than what seems to be the popular thinking here. I have been using it since 2013. I have been in strategic marketing, patent research, software and hardware engineering. I have used DT in all these roles and found myself hugely enabled by it. I’d say, a product marketeer cannot do without DT (and also DevonAgent) - it is the best way to gobble up all ones internal info stream as well as keeping tabs on the competition. As a patent reviewer and innovation agent inside the company, DT allows for very quick comparison between state of the art and new ideas, patent landscape mapping, tracability on important patent dates etc. As an engineer, I have used DT to index huge code bases to search with DT’s boolean logic to find important bits quickly and easily. I can go on…
If you can bring structure to normal office paper stream, acedemia info stream, news gathering externally … you name it, you can bring structure to DT also.
2 Likes
If you can share, I’d like to know how you generally decide where to divide your databases?
By project? Research area? Etc.
1 Like