It's as slick as it looks in this screenshot and it's even better.  The search box works wonders to bring up anything that's been on your calendar but you don't remember when, and it's just where it's needed.  Double-clicking on something either brings up iCal or a window to edit a task's details.  In short, it rocks.

Of course, it could be even better.  I'd like to be able to specify the date format of the events view.  Repeating the year and month for each one of the three days shown looks silly to me.  I'd much rather see the name of the day completely spelled out, like "vendredi le 18", "samedi le 19", and "lundi le 21".  (Yes, French is my native language.)

MenuCalendarClock comes at the price of 20$, for either iCal or Entourage.  If you're quick enough, you could also get it like me in the great deal that is the Parallels Bundle.  Finally, if you just want the slick calendar view without the events and tasks view, the basic version of the application will come free to you.

Update (2008-04): Someone else compared many uninstallers, reaching similar conclusions.  Hinted at cleanapp possibly being the perfect solution.  Reviews on MacUpdate are fairly positive.  Cleanapp's rating would be almost perfect if it wasn't of some performance bugs that might get fixed when version 3 is released.

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In the past few months, Hazel, an application that's useful to automate your organization of files and folders, started lending a hand when you want to uninstall software from your Mac.

This move from the author is a really wise one, as it widens Hazel's target market into the uninstaller utilities category of applications.  And indeed, that's what convinced me to buy it, because first, I needed a good uninstaller, and second, I might someday want to build myself an automated workflow for my files and folders organization.

Now, the main question is:

How good is Hazel at uninstalling applications,
compared to the leader of this category, namely AppZapper?

I started my tests a month ago with the hypothesis that neither one would be really sufficient as a uninstaller, because unless I'm wrong, they both solely rely on Spotlight to find which files should be trashed when you uninstall something.

To verify this hypothesis and find an answer to the main question, each time I needed to uninstall an application, I would both use AppZapper and Hazel to see which one fares better.  It's easy to do.  First, drag your doomed application to AppZapper.  Then, drag it to the trash.  You will end up with both AppZapper's and Hazel's suggestions as to what should be deleted along the application package.

To my surprise, I found out Hazel was often times better than AppZapper at suggesting files that need to be uninstalled.  Hazel often finds more of them, so your system is left a bit cleaner after.  But often, AppZapper finds some files that Hazel didn't.  And finally, even after running both, you will sometimes step on unwanted remnants.

Let me give you two examples.

When comparing the results, please remember it's normal that Hazel doesn't suggest to delete the application package, because it brings you its suggestions as a reaction to your actual trashing of the application package.  I love this way of working better than AppZapper's ways of working.

In the first example, we see how Hazel is usually better than AppZapper:

In the second example, we see that this time, AppZapper is a bit better, but even after using both, we're left with incomplete results:

More Concerns

To be fair towards AppZapper, please remember that we sometimes need to uninstall other things than applications.  Regarding this matter, Hazel can't do anything for you, while AppZapper can uninstall Preference Panes, Dashboard Widgets, some other kinds of Plugins, and finally, custom Screen Savers.  I don't know how cleanly it performs these uninstallations, though.

Also, if you wonder why I didn't test any other uninstaller out there, it's because I believe they wouldn't perform much better.  Unless I'm wrong, they all rely on Spotlight.

My Final Word

Shame on Apple for not providing in OS X what Microsoft started providing more than 12 years ago in Windows 95: a standard (un)installation framework.  If Apple would provide the fully working equivalent of what Hazel is partly successful doing, I believe we'd be into something really great.

Update (2008-06): I now hate the Mighty Mouse.

Switching from a regular PC to a Mac also means, in most cases, switching keyboards and mice.  When I started using my brand-new iMac, I wasn't sure if I'd like the Mighty Mouse, but I wanted to give it a chance, so I decided I would use it exclusively for at least two weeks.

My first impression was that I'd miss my back and forward buttons.  And let me tell you I do.  Next, I found it's hard to use the side buttons, and up to this day, this hasn't changed.  I was also really surprised to learn that the side buttons are in fact together only one button.

After a few days, I was hooked at its scroll wheel.  Er, sorry, I meant scroll ball.  It's addictive.  It's wonderful.  It's even ergonomic.  Scroll wheels hurt.  Scroll balls don't.  Scroll wheels wouldn't if they were designed as small as this ball.  And I say that with some experience with carpal tunnel problems.

What's funny is that after two weeks, I still hadn't understood how to succeed at right-clicking every time I tried it.  Most of the time, the mouse would register a left click instead.  It would drive me nuts.  And it's even funnier that my wife picked it up fine starting on day one.  But we weren't able to find what it was I wasn't doing well.

Seeing something was (ironically) wrong with me, I decided I wouldn't revert to my Logitech mouse until I had solved this problem for myself and tried the mouse in this new glorified way for at least one more week.  And then, a few days later, I found out you have to make sure no finger remains on the left side of the mouse when you push on its right side.  That's so counter-intuitive.  I mean, why should I need to lift my left finger before right-clicking?  My wife, on the other side of the fence, always did this with any mouse.  How (un)lucky she is!

The most annoying problem of the Mighty Mouse is that its cursor sometimes jumps from one place in the screen to another one when we're moving the mouse, instead of following our movement.  At first, I thought I was facing some kind of bug in OS X.  Now, I believe it's because this mouse's optical system has some problems recognizing the surface of my desk.  When I try my Logitech mouse, I never face this problem.  Let me tell you it's a really annoying bug, and no, I don't want to use any kind of mouse pad.  That would ruin the careful looks of my workplace, wouldn't it?

So, after 4 months using the Mighty Mouse, how do I feel?  Well, I think it's time to buy a new desk.

Seriously, I hope Apple will make a better device soon.  I would gladly encourage them to continue producing half-crap devices by buying their next mouse instead of switching back to my previous mouse.  Until then, I'm going to rock (argh...) and roll (yay!) with my Mighty Mouse because I'm hooked at the Mighty Scroll Ball.

Update 2 (2008-03): Evernote is the new wolf that's coming in the pack, and it already redefines most of what's best.  Read this review to know how.

Update 1 (2008-03): EagleFiler's new version 1.3 makes it fare much better.  Read this review to know what changes regarding the following comparative review, as I haven't updated this post in any other way than this mention.
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Although computers are great to work with information, in the last 10 years using a Windows PC, I never found any software solution that would work well for my information collecting and management needs, although OneNote and EverNote came close to it.  But now that I use a Mac, I wanted to see if I'd be able to find something really great.

Our Problem

I believe what makes it hard to find the good application for our needs is that we all have our own very personal ways of dealing with the information that comes before our eyes every day; but most importantly, I believe we still haven’t seen our software in general become mature. Software still behaves like a baby who won’t share his toys. Software will grow someday, but Software just isn’t there yet. Say, Software, what will you do when you’ll have grown up?

Our Need

Until Software becomes an adult, there’s many applications available, and some of them might solve most of our information collecting needs. How would we define the best proposition?

I believe what we need in any application is that it:

• supports the features needed,
• interacts comfortably with us, and
• keeps doing the previous two criteria in a consistent manner.

This definition is most probably critical in the case of information collection software. When I speak of consistency for information collection purposes, I mean, for example, that whatever the web browser I use and the method I use to collect something, it will always produce the same kind of rich text entry, accompanied by its link.

The Contenders

Now, since this is all about reviewing different applications to see which one of them is closing the most towards maturity, here’s what I tested:

• DEVONthink Personal 1.9.12
• EagleFiler 1.2.7
• Journler 2.5.4b15
• Circus Ponies NoteBook 2.1.262
• Scrivener 1.11
• SOHO Notes 6.5.3
• Together 2.0.4.967
• Yojimbo 1.5.62

I also tried VoodooPad, but I felt it wasn’t really designed for information collection purposes.

The Tests

I wanted to do a thorough test to see how much each one of these applications has to offer on what I believe are the most important features and interactions, so I reviewed the features each one proposes and put most of them in a spreadsheet.

Then, I went through each one of these features, trying them in each application, to see how they compared to the crowd and even sometimes to what I believe might be better still.

Finally, I gave them scores based on a 5-star scale.

The Results

Here’s the summary of my tests.

The first thing you need to know is that I’m not going to draw all the conclusions that can easily be drawn when you look at this big table. We would loose time writing and reading what can be so easily be seen in the table. I’ve highlighted some results to show who leads the pack, who follows the leaders, and finally, who miserably crawls behind everyone else. Also, I would have liked the table to be better designed, but what you see is what I could do in the amount of time I had.

As you might remark:

• I didn’t test some features you might find exceedingly important, like, say, printing support, file importing support, and exporting to different file formats. I almost never print; I no more dream of the ideal application to manage all my files; and I could feel some guilt for not evaluating the rest, but I’m confident you’ll be able to find your answers by your own means while still deriving some value out of my tests.
• I tested more thoroughly the collection features than the rest. Their results are broken down under the three criteria I defined previously.
• Conversely, I evaluated the rest of the features without breaking down their scores, because I believe they didn’t need that much digging.
• Some features, which I found exceedingly useful, like, say, wiki or split editor, tend to improve the score of only one application. I hope you’re as okay with that as I am.
• You might be surprised that your favorite application performs better than you thought on some criteria. It’s probably because I dug deeper than you in its preference settings or in its interface. I wanted to evaluate it to its full potential.
• On the opposite, you might find that I overlooked some possibilities. I proof-tested almost everything, but errors happen all the time. Feel free to tell me about it.

The Details

Now, you might sometimes wonder why I rated something the way I did it. If you really want to find the answer and you don’t find it in the sections I wrote to detail each application, you will need to have a look at the following table that contains my notes along the ratings. I suggest you open it in a new window and keep switching between this page and the table to understand it, using the following key, ordered left to right then down:

• (i): Inconsistent in its behavior; will be rated down in the Consistency section, not in the current section
• WA: Web Archive
• Ways: The number of different ways you can do something
• FP: Full Page
• Running: Only while the application is already running
• (N)R: For (not) running, means that it works even when the application isn’t running
• Windw Area: A little dedicated window
• Predefined: There’s no preference setting to change it
• Indirect: You need to click somewhere before doing it
• Not 100%: Almost 100%!
• Until annotated: Works until you annotate the collected element
• Tabs as bookmarks: You create bookmarks so you can see tabs
• Suggests: Suggests completions of what you started to type
• DragFmHUD: Drag from the HUD window
• List: An alphabetically-sorted list
• Intersection: The ability to see what is tagged with all the selected tabs. If intersections aren’t supported, selecting some tags will yield you all collected elements that are tagged with at least anyone of the selected tags, which is almost useless
• Converted WA: Before you can do it, it needs to be converted to another format (usually RTF)
• WA extractions: You can’t anotate the WA or anything inside it, but you can copy/paste something out of it and into the enclosing entry, that you will then be able to annotate
• Use underline: Because there’s no standard yellow highlighter
• C WA: Converted WA
• Obtrusively: A dialog pops up and you’ll need to dismiss it soon or late
• Virtual Folders: You may file something in multiple different folders
• Folders: You may file something in one and only one folder
• Where are copies?: When something is filed in more than one virtual folder, you don’t know about it
• Tag:name1 tag:nam2: You need to type this kind of query to see tag intersections
• Create your SC: Smart Collection
• Inheritance: Well, let’s say it’s an advanced feature that you might want to read the help file about if you’re no programmer
• 2%: Constant CPU usage observed
• Database fragile?: I read that some people have lost their entire database just after a system crash, which would be really bad
• Really bad reports: I saw many people on different web sites telling how the company wasn’t taking seriously their clients by releasing broken software and taking months to fix it

My Reviews

DEVONthink Personal

DEVONthink is very capable in some areas where all the other applications would bite the dust. It features an automatic Wiki system, assists you in classifying the information you collect, and probably best of all, it allows you to browse your entire database in incredible ways by giving you an index that sums up all your collected entries and by providing you with a very potent see also feature. If you need that kind of stuff, look no further.

Otherwise, you might get put off by its dinosaur-looking interface and lack of a great system to organize your information so you can quickly dig and filter through it your own way.

Oh, and don’t forget to install its bookmarklet in all the browsers you use so you can collect those full-page web archives quickly and easily.

These remarks having been said, I believe DEVONthink might have a very bright future… starting at version 2.0. Competitors, watch and learn from DEVON now, or get buried later!

EagleFiler

EagleFiler was a bit of a good surprise to me.

Probably because of its name and its marketing, I was very reluctant to even consider testing it. But as I disciplined myself to at least read its whole web page describing it, my interest was sparked, and not for nothing.

EagleFiler is simply, out of the box with no customization, the best package if you’re constantly in need of collecting full-page web archives out of many different browsers. You can do so in much quicker ways than all the other applications (except DEVONthink, if you install its bookmarklet in all your browsers). And it features one of the best tags support.

At the same time, it’s not so great if you consider how crippled it is from sharing features and small, but useful, navigational features like, say, browser-like back and forward buttons.

Let me tell you I seriously considered making it my tool of choice.

Journler

Although targeting journaling or blogging needs, Journler is a really serious and capable contender regarding our discussed needs.

Its overal value is really great and it really outperforms most of the competition when it’s time to integrate with iLife, to search through your library, to make sure you won’t search too much in the future when you’ll need to find the same kind of information, and to share something with a friend or the community.

Some of the things that keep it from being near perfect is that it’s really not so great at the tags game and at keeping links to what you grabbed on the web. Don’t forget to experiment a lot with its preference settings, as it might dramatically change the quality of your experience with Journler.

All in all, I believe this application is the most serious contender for your hard drive space and daily use, although it’s much more of a jack-of-all-trades that lacks some essential skills that feel too important for some people to live without them. In the future, I believe Journler will learn from its errors and become incredibly hard to ignore.

NoteBook

I often wondered if I should remove NoteBook from this evaluation. I thought I would go to the end with its testing, because it’s presented as a contender to this category on its web site. Well, I now believe I shouldn’t have bothered too much with it, although I must tell you it’s not without having any value or not being interesting at all.

Let’s just say that I believe it’s not good to use for that kind of information collecting needs. I like to think it’s targeted towards some other kind of collecting needs that I haven’t evaluated at all here and that it might just be a really superior contender on that front.

Scrivener

Scrivener was a hell of a surprise.

Since there’s a writer somewhere within me, I’ve been watching this application from afar for some time now, but the thought of evaluating it here with the other applications never crossed my mind until I had narrowed my own decision to three applications and browsed their respective web sites one more time. One of them mentioned Scrivener as a competitor, so I religiously went on to read its web page again, just to eliminate it right off. And then, what happened for Scrivener is the same that happened for EagleFiler. I was impressed and decided to give it a whirl. Like EagleFiler, it seemed good at this, on top of being good at that. And man, oh man, what a whirl it was! You’ll find out why later.

For now, let me praise its ability to play well with tags, its split editor, its full screen mode and, more precisely, its feature that allows you to see and/or edit many entries at the same time, as if they were only one file (with visual indicators that let you know what you’re doing).

It’s not that great at collecting information, but if you’re willing to forgive its little lack of flexibility on that regard, it will do as great as most other contenders. Oh, and forget about 1-click access to sharing something, too.

All of this having been said, let me tell you Scrivener is definitely underpriced, if you consider how much innovation and quality it incorporates.

SOHO Notes

I really didn’t want to loose time testing SOHO Notes, but I did it for the sake of exhaustivity. I wanted to know if it innovates in some way that would benefit to the other applications.

Why am I so hard on SOHO Notes? Because I’ve read too much bad comments about it. How this company’s products in general would be released with plenty of serious bugs and wouldn’t work well until several months after that. How email enquiries wouldn’t at all trigger replies or would trigger them after unusually long delays and with unsatisfactory answers. How people decided to migrate to this or that. How people were telling everyone that this application isn’t even worth considering. So yes, I confess I’ve been influenced by all these comments. I think I have never seen that much bad comments about something I would have considered trying for my own use.

If you still want to know, it’s really flexible when time comes to collecting information, and it’s great at sharing it later on.

But, it’s not that great at organizing the information you collected.

In any case, the version I tested worked well, despite one crash. To be fair, I wouldn’t discriminate anyone who chooses it over the others.

Together

I fell in love with Together as soon as I saw it. It sports the most polished interface. Although Journler kept scoring higher for my needs than Together, I kept planning on journeying together with this lovely application.

Notwithstanding its wonderful interface, Together offers some really strong propositions. On top of all of them is its ability to collect selections of web pages as web archives, while all the other applications can only collect full-page web archives. It’s also the closest to offer consistency in the collection process, regarding the links every application should keep when it collects something out of the web. And don’t forget that it’s better than most competitors at dealing with tags.

Now, while some aspects of Together are really polished, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. For example, it lacks some browser-like back and forward buttons. Also, like most of the contenders, easy sharing isn’t part of the program.

I really wonder how much quality the developer is going to continue putting in this application. It’s gonna rock!

Yojimbo

Yojimbo looks like another jack-of-all-trades.

It’s great at collecting information in general, although it doesn’t stand out on any particular side.

Other than that, don’t forget to consider its interface’s lacks of navigational features and the fact it’s not so great at organizing, searching and sharing your information.

And that’s it. Yojimbo simply doesn’t stand out of the pack, and although it’s a great product with just a few missing features, that won’t hinder some people’s love for it because they don’t need what it lacks.

My Choice(s)

You might wonder which application I chose over all the others. I wrote all of this using Scrivener, and that’s my answer. Although my choice is made, I plan on using Scrivener’s trial period instead of rushing with my credit card as I would do in the past. I made some errors I still regret today when I think about them.

Scrivener has so much for itself and it’s a great feeling to use an application that excels at writing while it’s also really great as an information collector.

Again, I believe it’s better to use an application that excels at something useful while being great at the rest, than using another one that is great overall but doesn’t bring anything new to the crowd. And on that regard, I would also really have liked to have DEVONthink as a serious alternative because of its advanced text analysis features, but it wasn’t there for me.

Next, my choice would have been Together or Journler, although EagleFiler wasn’t far behind.

Your Mileage May Vary

In fact, your mileage will vary. I’m telling you that because even mine does!

The results I showed you are what I would call generic, although I’m far from believing they are completely exhaustive or 100% objective. So they are generic to the extent of what I wanted to test and how I evaluated it. Now, if I wanted to tailor them precisely to what’s really important to me, here’s what I’d obtain:

• Journler: 3
• Scrivener: 2.9
• Together: 2.6
• SOHO Notes: 2.6 but lacks two things essential to me
• EagleFiler: 2.4 but lacks one…
• DEVONthink: 2.4 but lacks three…
• Yojimbo: 2.2 but lacks one…
• NoteBook: 2.0 but lacks four…

The order almost doesn’t change, but Scrivener closes nearer to Journler, and Together goes ahead of SOHO Notes.

So it may mean, on one hand, that I did a really good generic evaluation or, on the other hand, that what I thought of as a generic evaluation is already so much targeted towards my own needs that it’s not worth calling generic at all. I believe the second hand is the one that’s right, since I didn’t include some features like printing support and such and such…

So if you want your own results, you will need to ponderate my evaluations according to your own needs and add your evaluation of the things that are missing. That’s a first way how your mileage will vary.

One important thing to note is that only the top three applications are viable options for me, and that’s a second way how your mileage will vary.

What Developers Need to Do

To improve the primary value of their offers, I believe developers should concentrate on:

• Making sure that under all circumstances (consistency), anything grabbed from the web comes in only one rich format and carries its link (support). If it’s not possible due to OS integration problems, try making a good set of bookmarklets or some other potent tool, and encourage your users to only use this solution because it will work the same great way for them in every possible context.
• Providing quality support of organization features like tags and annotations. I believe these features should feel in your applications like they’re first class citizens of their ecosystem. Concerning tags, my experience tells me they’re much more important than if they’d only be some temporary hype.
• Developing an exceedingly rich experience towards some precise verticals, like Scrivener does for writers.

On a more general note, keep up the good work!

What I Learned

Through doing all this testing and measuring, I grasped a better understanding of a few things:

• It’s hard to integrate software into an operating system. None of the applications managed to do it on some specific aspects.
• It’s exceedingly hard to properly ponderate the value of each thing that we test so that it yields the correct impact on the global results. Consequently, anyone writing or reading a review should give much more importance to the details than to a global score. It’s so easy to mess up a global score and so easy to overlook something important. (That’s why I gave you so much details and I didn’t even try to ponderate anything for you.)
• Software is much more personal than I thought. It’s another reason why global scores can’t mean much to somebody unless they’re precisely tailored to his needs.