DEVONthink 4.0 Public Beta

[Bmosbacker]

I would assume that if Devonthink 4 was out of beta, current users would have received an email notification to that effect. As of this reply, I have not received such an email.

[DEVONtech_Jim]

@tomalmy

I just upgraded, but from the website it looks like 4.0 release is out…

That is incorrect. The beta was released yesterday.

And the information on the annoucement on our blog states the year of updates begins at the point the final version is releases.

[DEVONtech_Jim]

And yes, there will be a notification, an announcement, newsletter, etc. when the 4.0 final is released.

[rms]

Because they do not know the date for release yet. they say on their forum (i urge you to rely on info there, not so much here) that they will honor one year after release. no worries.

[Jeagar52]

I have something really strange going on here: When I ask ChatGPT 4.0 in DT 4 to give me the “Main Points” for a document by pushing the “Summarize via Chat” button, they are in English for markdown text, but in German for PDFs.

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

[Clarke_Ching]

Jake - you’ve articulated my situation exactly! The overwhelm of not knowing where to start …

@DEVONtech_Jim

I would love to know what your actual use case would be.

… or why I’d use it.

—

I love that so many people love DT! And I own the pro version, but it’s always overwhelmed me.

I do find this UC interesting:

@rkaplan

Its generative AI capabilities in particular have been every bit as transformative to my workflow as the day I first used a word processor or the day I switched to paperless document storage.

Lots of generative AI apps help with writing - that’s not what I am focused on. Rather DT4 has no competitor either in the cloud or on the desktop with regard to its ability to summarize, analyze, chronicle, or critique existing documents or document sets of any size

And this UC intrigues me, too:

@rkaplan

The really nice part about DT4 is how well the generative AI works without having to upload the files anywhere. Most notably - I very frequently use the AI after I create my first draft to ask question like “Is this persuasive- give me pros and cons” or “What did I miss?” or “How can I improve this?” The quality of response you get depends on which LLM you choose; Claude 3.7 is fantastic in its ability to function as an editor.

P.S. I forgot to add - If you use DT4 for writing it now has versioning! So

—

I know it’s a powerful tool, and I know it’s always best to start small when you’re a newbie, but it’s still a bit overwhelming, and I find myself wish a little paperclip would pop up and ask me how it can help me today.

Hope that’s seen as helpful.

[sangadi]

DDTG how do I say if it’s a Paid with an in app purchase.

Image

[Clarke_Ching]

I’m intrigued! What do you think, psychologically, makes a differnece?

I’ve studied a lot about the practical psychology of pricing - though I’m not expert - and so much of it is emotional, rather than logical, and we’ve all got different emotional reactions to prices. Does this model feel fairer, perhaps? Or is it safer? Do subscriptions feel overwhelming or painful - every time I get my monthly email saying I’ve just paid my iCloud one subscription, I feel a little pain, for instance. Is it to do with trust? Or value for money? Or bang for buck?

Serious question - why does this version feel better?

(BTW: I like it too)

[DEVONtech_Jim]

This is unrelated to the topic of this thread. On DEVONthink To Go’s databases screen, select ? > Contact Us to start a support ticket. Thanks!

[DEVONtech_Jim]

This is not a support channel for DEVONtech. Please join us on our forums for reports and questions on our software.

[DEVONtech_Jim]

@Clarke_Ching

The overwhelm of not knowing where to start …

Answer these two things to start:

• Why would you use the Finder?
• How do you use the Finder?

It’s literally that simple to get started with that thought.

… or why I’d use it.

There are many use cases out there so only you can answer that. The number of use cases I’ve encountered in almost 13 years is quite amazing. DEVONthink isn’t a hard, locked box that forces a particular use. It is flexible enough to be used for many things, personal to professional.

[Clarke_Ching]

To find files.
I click on the icon, I go to downloads, I find the file.

I feel like there is probably a cleverer and more helpful answer to this Jim!

[DEVONtech_Jim]

But you use the Finder to store files as well.
You’re an author, correct?
How do you organize your information for writing a book? (And we have many authors that use DEVONthink for store and organize their research.)

[Clarke_Ching]

Yes, I’m an author. My writing process doesn’t usually have much research - it’s almost exclusively based on my personal stories, and the lessons that come out of them. I used to start by writing (then repeatedly giving) keynote presentations to develop them flow, then I switch to scrivener (abandoned for the nth time, earlier this year) or Ulysses. Laterly, I’ve been using ChatGPT’s built in dictation, to (a) capture the stories then (b) clean them up a little in 5-6 minutes bursts. And then, to stitch the bursts together. I find it annoying to have to manage all those chats and keep track of them, and I also move text between ulysses, Claude, chatgpt and sometimes gemini.

BTW: I like that you’re answering this here. My query is genuine! I hate missing out.

[sangadi]

With all due respect to you @DEVONtech_Jim I was reaching out to the beloved MPU community here if anyone did know about it. I have opened two support cases over two years and received no support from DEVONthink, exactly following the instructions as you provided. I have long back given up on getting it answered by DEVONthink support.

[DEVONtech_Jim]

Well, with the huge disclaimer that DEVONthink has not become “an AI application” like Msty, AnythingLLM, etc…

DEVONthink 4 has API access to Claude, OpenAI, and Gemini and you could chat directly in DEVONthink’s interface. And you can easily save those chats or potentially directly create documents. This could be done in a database of your creation, whether a database for a book, or a specific group in a Writing database, etc.

Here is something I just drummed up: A Writing database, a query for Chat GPT-4o, and a request at the end to save it as a Markdown document I can edit or refer to later. All done right within DEVONthink inside a portable, self-contained database…

This does not mean DEVONthink is now a writing assistant. It means there’s yet another potential use case for document creation, organization, and connecting documents within or across databases). Only now, with some controlled access to external AI complementing our own AI, the possibilities have expanded.

PS: Glad to have the discussion though it’s best had on our forums or our support ticket system since that’s a primary support channel.

PPS: I’m not in Sales and it’s certainly not my job or intent to convince anyone to buy DEVONthink. My job is to examine situations and provide information about DEVONthink’s functions if they could be applicable. And in more situations than you can imagine, I can say “Yeah, DEVONthink could handle that and possibly something even more specific to your setup.”

[cornchip]

@sangadi

reaching out to the beloved MPU community here if anyone did know about it.

Sorry, what are you looking to solve/troubleshoot? My Manage Subscription view looks like yours.

[rms]

There are many already written stuff about so-called “use-cases” in the DEVONthink Manual, books (one free from DEVONtechnologies), posts on the DEVONthink Forum. And I’ve run across, but do not follow, some blogs out there. Asking this question on the DEVONthink forum will likely bring many comments from people and not depend on @DEVONtech_Jim who, at the moment, probably inundated with stuff related to DEVONthink Beta Version4.

From your description of how you do things, I suspect DEVONthink might not provide you much added value. There might be some long-term value, maybe. But if you are curious you can do a free test drive and decide for yourself.

[nfdksdfkh]

I had a good play with this last night and this morning, and I’d say… it’s a start.

The chat implementation is pretty simple and needs more features. I’d hoped you could have a persistent chat per document like other AI apps, which is useful for when you’re working on a document over time, but you can’t. So straightaway that caps its utility.

The chat window itself is basic. No snippets, tones, modifiers, etc. You can get around this using a third-party snippets app, but it would be better to have this stuff built in.

The AI tagging was fairly poor. I started with 4 public health documents & auto-tagged them. It came up with 19 different tags, 18 of which were used only once, including 4 tags named “health, Health, Healthcare, and Health Care.” Obviously, people tag things for different reasons, but if your aim is to categorize, this isn’t great.

But there are a few nice things, notably the ability to make a summary of a group of documents from a selection, which would be great for a quick synopsis of big meetings with lots of papers.

Global natural language search is a big improvement; I never got on with the search in DT.

The new AI inspector looks good, but its hard to tell til i try it longer term.

I’m encouraged by the new licensing model, which I think ups the ante in terms of expectations on the developers. Basically, they’ll have to incentivise people to upgrade every 12 months, or people will just sit on their older license. So I think we’ll see faster development.

I’ll do a deeper dive over the coming days. As a DT enthusiast, I was always going to upgrade unless it was downright unstable, but my feeling is that this is more of an incremental improvement than a step change. Hopefully, it’s just the first of many incremental improvements in the coming months and years.

[webwalrus]

@Clarke_Ching

Does this model feel fairer, perhaps? Or is it safer? Do subscriptions feel overwhelming or painful - every time I get my monthly email saying I’ve just paid my iCloud one subscription, I feel a little pain, for instance. Is it to do with trust?

This has been discussed elsewhere on these forums, but for me it’s more about “fair” and “safe.” I would probably phrase it as “controlled” or “predictable.”

I see this with things like WordPress plugins all the time. You subscribe for $99/year, and the plugin stops working at the end of the year unless you pay them again. It locks in the data, allows them to inflate the price, and generally leaves my business at their mercy. Or they go out of business, shut down the licensing server, and then I have an emergency.

Now…I’m not worried about the DT people going out of business, jacking up prices, or doing something nefarious to disable my software. But it’s appealing to be able to give them money, get the digital equivalent of “boxed” software, and thus never have to worry about it exploding because I don’t feed it money. If I really wanted to go crazy, I could spin up a VM, clone my macOS, and have a (relatively) future-proof snapshot of my current machine.

And yes, @DEVONtech_Jim, I know DT just operates on files that exist in Finder and that data is never truly “locked in” - but the database-related metadata is valuable as well. I’m counting the whole package.