My Request: iDocument
Just posted this on my website and thought I'd toss it in here.
One of the things that Apple is so good at, and one of the reasons people like me keep sticking with them when it seems as if the wheels are about to come off the wagon (and I wasn't even a Mac user when things were bad), is that in addition to making gear that just plain works, they also keep coming up with ways to make life just a little easier. And what's more, they always seem to come up with ways to make our lives easier that we didn't think were all that complicated to begin with. Managing my mp3 library used to be an intricate process involving the construction of hundreds of folders and sub-folders in the Finder. Managing my digital photos used to require a similar process.
I keep thinking, though, that what's missing is a way to manage with ease those files that are most common on every single computer in the world. What's missing is a way to manage effortlessly the things that most computers in the world are used to create: documents.
Sure, I can use folders and sub-folders in the Finder to deal with them. But I could do that with photos or music before iTunes or iPhoto.
I have hundreds and hundreds of documents--my own, my students', my colleagues, random clippings from the web, you name it. We all have this. And while I have a "Documents" folder on my hard drive, finding a document means that I still have to know where it is, and that I have to place the document there in the first place. And in addition, if I move the document or copy it, its contents aren't affected in all the places where it's stored. And again, sure, I could do this with aliases or shortcuts.
What I want, then, is something that will allow me to store, catalog, search, find, view, and perhaps even manipulate and a perfunctory level, all the documents I have. I want an iPhoto or iTunes for documents. And I want all of the bells and whistles: I want to be able to set up "playlists" of documents; I want to be able to tell this application to stick all documents meeting certain criteria in a specific playlist; I want to be able to view those documents, and perhaps even make a few changes to them. Should I need to make "real" changes to them, I want to be able to send the document to a more advanced editor--Word, for instance--make the changes, and then go back to iDocument (or whatever you want to call it).
Now that TextEdit reads and writes Word documents natively, it would seem that the ground is prepared.
One of the things that Apple is so good at, and one of the reasons people like me keep sticking with them when it seems as if the wheels are about to come off the wagon (and I wasn't even a Mac user when things were bad), is that in addition to making gear that just plain works, they also keep coming up with ways to make life just a little easier. And what's more, they always seem to come up with ways to make our lives easier that we didn't think were all that complicated to begin with. Managing my mp3 library used to be an intricate process involving the construction of hundreds of folders and sub-folders in the Finder. Managing my digital photos used to require a similar process.
I keep thinking, though, that what's missing is a way to manage with ease those files that are most common on every single computer in the world. What's missing is a way to manage effortlessly the things that most computers in the world are used to create: documents.
Sure, I can use folders and sub-folders in the Finder to deal with them. But I could do that with photos or music before iTunes or iPhoto.
I have hundreds and hundreds of documents--my own, my students', my colleagues, random clippings from the web, you name it. We all have this. And while I have a "Documents" folder on my hard drive, finding a document means that I still have to know where it is, and that I have to place the document there in the first place. And in addition, if I move the document or copy it, its contents aren't affected in all the places where it's stored. And again, sure, I could do this with aliases or shortcuts.
What I want, then, is something that will allow me to store, catalog, search, find, view, and perhaps even manipulate and a perfunctory level, all the documents I have. I want an iPhoto or iTunes for documents. And I want all of the bells and whistles: I want to be able to set up "playlists" of documents; I want to be able to tell this application to stick all documents meeting certain criteria in a specific playlist; I want to be able to view those documents, and perhaps even make a few changes to them. Should I need to make "real" changes to them, I want to be able to send the document to a more advanced editor--Word, for instance--make the changes, and then go back to iDocument (or whatever you want to call it).
Now that TextEdit reads and writes Word documents natively, it would seem that the ground is prepared.