Linked List: April 5, 2017

Wednesday, 5 April 2017

The 2016 Panic Report ★

Cabel Sasser’s annual report for Panic, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Mostly good news, but I’ll focus on the bad:

iOS continues to haunt us. If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!

A bummer indeed. There are Mac-quality pro apps for iOS, but nowhere near as many as there are on the Mac.

OmniOutliner 5.0 ★

Great update to one of the very best apps ever made. That sounds like hyperbole but I mean it — OmniOutliner is outstanding — a great Mac app and a great outliner. By that I mean it isn’t just a good outliner that runs on the Mac. It’s an outliner that does things the Mac way. If I were to make a list of the very best indie Mac apps, OmniOutliner would be on it.

And if you’ve never used a real outliner, you should try it. I think people get a bad taste in their mouths from the always-awkward outlining modes in word processors. A real outliner is so much better, and such a great tool.

$60 for the Pro version and a bargain at just $10 for the Essentials version.