[FakeRemore]

I've always found it a bit odd (and a bit frustrating) that many programs around knowledge-building/note-taking are Mac-only. Anybody know why that is? Devonthink sounds like such an interesting tool that I'd love to try, but it's Mac only. This article's author relies on two tools which, at first glance, are also Mac-only.

That said, am I the only one finding it really hard to parse pages of illustrations? It feels like I'm stuck having to analyse every single illustration to figure out what the author is talking about and that a bit of supporting expository text is missing.

[lukevp]

I’ve noticed this as well (for example, with Ulysses, Bear and OmniFocus). I am building a note taking application at https://NoteBrook.app that I intend to be a simple, clean, fast app that runs on every major platform, works online and offline with apps, and syncs to all your devices. Would love to hear your thoughts. Plan on launching in the next few weeks as I complete the edit/favorite/delete, some cleanup, and publish all the apps. Early access code is ALPHA2020 if you want to sign up and try the syncing, but you can use it without signing up too, your notes will just be local.

[jamesu]

I'd attribute it mainly to the APIs available. Right out of the box you can easily loads PDFs, images, and make "Document" oriented applications. You can also do rich text editing and even embed web content to do more advanced layout of content. e.g. If I was doing some sort of "knowledgebase" app these sorts of things would be indispensable.

But also there's the market to consider. Macs users seem to like to sink their money into nice looking native apps which organize things.

[themodelplumber]

Just a guess: Apple has been selling the big picture (via gentle philosophy, top-down design planning, and ads featuring what must be meta-planning data or it's way too simple) since the very beginning. This gave Apple an early lead in the idea space. Their white-space philosophy directly enabled the blank slate or greenfield thinking we associate with this kind of software.

I would add that Steve Jobs' own psychology seemed reduction-biased, for better or worse. His thought process was aimed at achieving impact through early/first principles, but the principles were those of concept, design, sensory experience, or interpersonal dynamics rather than information or engineering.

As a result, we get Think Different, and the first step in Thinking Different is thinking; I would add that due to the reduction it's more like thinking starkly. This is quite different from processing or manipulating, which were and still are very PC concepts, compared to Apple.

Anyway. A guess. And yeah, the unfortunate part of info-illustrations is that pages of them which reward different perceptual ordering/directions in each illustration are just harder to parse.

[raindropm]

To quote John Gruber — "Mac is the platform that attracts people who care."

Honestly, Apple did a great jobs. They did care about their product(well, until recent buggy OS fiasco) and that attract people who value the same thing. Doesn't mean Windows people don't care, of course, but Windows always give the utilitarian vibes, the OS for everyone (especially in the old day)

[deltron3030]

Font rendering is worse in Windows, if you write you usually care about that, or start to care at some point.

[criddell]

If there are several Mac apps that you want to run, maybe getting a Mac wouldn't be a terrible idea.

[oonis]

I would strongly recommend you look into Obsidian (obsidian.md). You're definitely right about the GTD demographic being apple-centric, but this is a cross platform mind mapping application I've grown to love.