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After a year in beta testing, Devon Technologies has at last released version 2.0 of its popular personal information manager for the Mac, DevonThink, and its notes manager, DevonNotes.
With the pressure these days on technology companies to move new products into the market faster than ever, a one-year beta period might be considered frustrating to some concerns, but not to Devon. "It gave us a lot of freedom," the firm's president, Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann, told MacNewsWorld.
"It gave us time to refine things we wanted to add and to polish the UI (user interface)," he said.
However, one disadvantage about drawing out the beta process is that market conditions can change in midstream, as happened when Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) launched OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard, in August of last year.
Last-Minute Bugs
As a veteran Apple developer, though, Devon was used to trimming its sails to accommodate changing winds from 1 Infinite Loop. "It was dealing with Apple system upgrades as usual," Boehnisch-Volkmann observed.
"We wait until the very end of the OS development cycle to add workarounds for possible bugs or potential problems," he explained, "because Apple fixes a lot of bugs in the last two weeks before the actual launch of the operating system."
Nevertheless, Devon encountered some problems when Snow Leopard was finalized. For one, DevonThink's scanning feature, which incorporated new technology, ABBYY's FineReader, was scotched. "Apple had changed the whole image capture architecture of the operating system," Boehnisch-Volkmann noted. "It took us a short while to adapt to those changes."
Apple also changed the code under the Finder. That disabled another new feature used by both DevonThink and DevonNote: a universal inbox integrated into the Finder's sidebar.
OS X 1.8
Unlike some of its competitors, DevonThink can store information in several databases, much as a relational database product does. That can create confusion, especially among first-time users, about where to store information. To address that problem, the universal inbox has been introduced.
Everything can be dropped into a single inbox and sorted later, either manually or with guidance from artificial intelligence built into the program. "You can file everything quickly -- simply drop it, drop it, drop it -- and then when you have time, sort it into the correct place," Boehnisch-Volkmann said.
Documents dragged into DevonThink are copied into the database, he pointed out, so if you drag them out, you'll get an exact copy of what you dragged in. "You're never locked in like some other products," he maintained.
In addition, databases can be exported in a folder structure. "So if DevonThink becomes inaccessible for whatever reason--maybe because the application doesn't run on OS X 1.8--you will still have access to your documents," Boehnisch-Volkmann observed wryly.
Better Boolean Searching
Another improvement in the latest version of DevonThink is its beefed up search function. It can perform advanced and complex Boolean searches -- including proximity searches with delimiters like NEAR, BEFORE and AFTER. What's more, searches can be saved and used as "smart groups" to dynamically organize documents that meet their search criteria.
"You could store a few hundred thousand documents in the Finder and use Spotlight," Boehnisch-Volkmann remarked, "but usually DevonThink is much faster, more exact and offers a higher complexity of search terms."
"It also uses its AI to suggest similar search terms or contextually related search terms," he added.
Better integration with Web browsers has also been introduced into DevonThink. Selected text on a Web page, or the whole page itself can be saved to any browser that supports bookmarklets, such as Safari or Firefox.
"It can be done without interruption," Boehnisch-Volkmann said. "You're not asked where to file it. It's just filed and you can continue to browse."
New Web Server Interface
In the Pro Office version of the program, a Web server function has been added. "It can be used to access a database from other workstations on a local network," Boehnisch-Volkmann explained.
"We had that in version one, but it was a simple Google-like Web interface," he continued, "where you could search for documents in the database from other work places on your network and get Google-like results."
The new Web server offering creates a DevonThink-like interface in a browser where you can search for documents, view them or download or upload them to a global inbox.
"It also has an iPhone mode," Boehnisch-Volkmann added. "So when you connect to it using an iPhone, you will get an optimized Web interface that looks like an iPhone application."
DevonThink has a Pro Office edition, which sells for US$149.95; a Pro version for $79.95; and a Personal offering for $49.95. DevonNotes, which supports a single database, sells for $24.95.
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