![]() What would really help is a free substrate for networked open source products. Tons of saas products, all solving the same set of problems on the network but doing it through a web interface because it allows them to write once and run everywhere. We need tools based around networks, not files, that target every form factor and every OS, but doing that costs a lot of money to rent servers and build frontends, and that means we get locked in saas products. All those apps of old, they were based around files, their business models were based around buying files, and they targeted one form factor and often only one OS. This for me is the key: we expect tools to live on the network. Onenote’s low quality outline authoring experience is trumped by its networking features. Why did I move from ecco pro to onenote? Because I want something that automatically syncs to all my devices, easily searches across a decade of notes and lets me get things done from my phone. Today I use onenote, which as an outliner sort of sucks. I loved it, it was very powerful and focused and it let me capture my ideas very effectively. I used to use ecco pro for my notetaking. And so have the apps.įor me it is a lot about changing expectations. In short, the conditions that allowed all those 1980s applications to flourish – bespoke file formats, invested users, no truly dominant players, less networked sharing - have all gone. The only way to make space for yourself then is to become a platform in your own right (see emacs/vscode etc).Īnd what prevents spreadsheets becoming a platform? The install base of Excel, for a kickoff, but also the enormous limitations of csv on the other hand. You really can't build much of a moat on "powerful UX that boils down to a sharable file format". And if you're interoperable, you end up shrinking your market even further: people your users are sharing with don't need to use you. The world simply isn't like that now, except in niches.Īnd if you're niche, you can't establish a new file format in a networked world, so you end up having to be interoperable, with markdown in text or xls for spreadsheets. This is a great insight, but there's a third angle too: a lot of these 80s tools assumed you'd invest in them, and not just in cash: you'd give them a lot of time and attention and learning and hence reap expert-user rewards. Yet that workflow persists, and small and large businesses that attempt to tackle it rise and fall by the wayside. Literally billions/trillions of dollars of assets are subjected to all kinds of spreadsheet risk. I don't have a hypothesis for the lack of innovation in the spreadsheet space. ![]() The idea of an isolated, focused, non-networked writing environment, surviving like the crocodile. The second order effect is a change in demand for personal information authoring/management/etc.Ī small number of tools, like Scrivener, that may have been competitive in the 1980s, have a market today. It used to be that everyone had to maintain their own personal "library"- now this activity is relegated to cranks and luddites. Quick hypothesis on PIMs/editors/etc, from someone who worked on a PIM in the late 1980s and who misses outliners and others- the biggest "unimagined" change is from personal information management to hive-mind information management (via search engines). ![]() Time will tell how it holds up over the years, but barring anything catastrophic, printing might now be a solved thing for me. It's also remarkably quiet compared to my ancient inkjets, which made my home sound like a machine shop when I printed out a few pages. ![]() Putting in just the black ink turned it on black ink only mode automatically, my old inkjets on the other hand would moan about missing some colors, or protest by doing strange things like printing out a black and white document using only the yellow ink on the white page. I just hit print on my device and it fires up in the next room from its sleep state. I don't have to turn it on, feed in paper, and open some flaps or anything like that before use to ensure the ink doesn't dry out when I'm not printing. It can connect to my computer or my cell phone wirelessly. I got mine for free locally because the market is so saturated (used at least), which is great for the consumer. To be fair, the crappy $99 inkjet these days is a much better machine than even 10 years ago. ![]()
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