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The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

geekwire.com

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Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#11

Post by booleandilemma »

sachin wrote: post #9
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

While we have no plans to go anywhere at Notejoy, we do acknowledge that this fear is very real. So to address it we support full bulk export of all your notes to Google Drive at any point, so you can rest assured that you'll always be able to take them with you.

The irony is that Google will probably shutter Drive before you guys go anywhere :)

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#12

Post by npunt »

Just a quibble but I see this a lot - if you're talking about strategy it's "bottom-up", not "bottoms-up".

A bottom-up strategy is something like marketing your tool to users who then bring it into their company for wider adoption.

A bottoms-up strategy is drinking until the problem goes away.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#13

Post by npunt »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

Agree, data lock-in is probably the biggest concern I have with any new productivity or note-taking tool.

It's tough because innovations in tools generally require some degree of schema or file format customization. I don't know about other tools but at least with Airtable I know I can always hit the API to get my data, though I will miss out on certain business logic around it like data validation, and probably a lot of other details.

The best proxy I have to allay some of my data portability concerns is how much funding the companies have. Funding is a double-edged sword but comparing two companies, one funded at $50m and the other at $5m, it's hard not to go with the former. I am heartened though to see that some of my favorite tools (Airtable and Coda) have gotten very large investments, which tell me they'll be around for a while. When I see similar products not getting those investments, it's a strong signal to stay away or only use them as a toy.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#14

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

npunt wrote: post #13
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

Agree, data lock-in is probably the biggest concern I have with any new productivity or note-taking tool. It's tough because innovations in tools generally require some degree of schema or file format customization. I don't know about other tools but at least with Airtable I know I can always hit the API to get my data, though I will miss out on certain business logic around it like data validation, and probably a lo…

New tools need to signal their trustworthiness by exporting to legacy formats. Even if it means losing something in the process. Give me CSV, DOCX, or an SQLite DB. Not exactly rocket science.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#17

Post by [deleted] »

omeid2 wrote: post #6
SllX wrote: post #3

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away. A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and emacs will never truly go away no matter how…

Some other important factor about the software you have listed is that they are actively maintained, either because they have a community or a profitable enterprise behind them, I don't think inertia alone is enough.

[deleted]

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#18

Post by sachin »

jacobkg wrote: post #16

Not mentioned in the article but WorkFlowy (YC ‘10) is still going strong. Minimalist web-based word processor with a flexible outline format. Can hold hundreds of thousands of items, without you getting overwhelmed.

The same author actually wrote about WorkFlowy a few months back: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/workflowly-founder-new-list-up...

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#19

Post by sachin »

npunt wrote: post #12

Just a quibble but I see this a lot - if you're talking about strategy it's "bottom-up", not "bottoms-up". A bottom-up strategy is something like marketing your tool to users who then bring it into their company for wider adoption. A bottoms-up strategy is drinking until the problem goes away.

Hah! I've def made this mistake

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#20

Post by bkanber »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #2

Notion and Coda are attractive, but I'm wondering if the learning curve is too steep. Not sure if my team would use them without me setting everything up.

I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices.

But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ticketing.

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