[bnystrom]

Thought I would test out the "Polling" abilities of the new forums. We get asked on a daily basis, now that Palm OS is in (what I consider) major decline, if we are going to be making our products available for other platforms. I thought this would also make a good poll question. You are allowed to choose multiple answers, but try to be somewhat realistic in what you yourself might be using "tomorrow". B)

[bnystrom]

Wow. Kind of disappointing that this is all the interest we have. Only 4 people (one of which is myself, and I'm sure one of the others is probably Rich... so 2 users). :(

[plaid]

I think part of this is because of the forums being down for a while. It may take a bit for everyone to "come back". I still often hear Bonsai & Daynotez being talked about on other forums/blogs etc.

I just posted a link to the poll on Palm Addicts

[fencepost]

I know I'd dearly love to see Bonsai (and probably Project@Hand depending on how much code overlap there is) on the Blackberry, and I think there'd be decent demand. I'm not sure if it'd make sense to try for more portability beyond BB, but a BB port/Java rewrite would probably be close to running on MIDP devices.

Competitively I think the biggest competition to either would be the REXWireless product ToDoMatrix, but even there it's not a direct overlap. The Rex guys have indicated that they're highly aware of the absence of outlining in the BB marketplace, but they don't have any products even being scoped at the moment.

One hole for Blackberries has been the lack of touchscreen support, which would require a significant change in input. In the days of the scroller wheel a BB port wouldn't have made sense; now with the trackball it might work better. In addition, the BlackBerry Thunder due out later this year will be the first BB touchscreen device and may be the precursor to more such devices.

[slwenglish]

bnystrom, on Aug 5 2008, 05:58 PM, said:

Wow. Kind of disappointing that this is all the interest we have. Only 4 people (one of which is myself, and I'm sure one of the others is probably Rich... so 2 users). :(

If it makes you feel any better, we never get many replies to surveys posted on our company intranet site either, even though we have plenty of other activity in our discussion forums.

Stéph

[Ronin]

I would rrreeeeaaaally love it if you developed a version for Blackberry OS. Really.

After like 100 years, I am moving to another OS. Upon a lot of research and soul searching, the Blackberry Bold is the one. I am gonna miss DayNotez and have a heavy heart. Unless, you decide to develop a version for this platform.

P.S. I wouldn't be mad if you made a version of Bonsai for the Blackberry OS either. Really. :)

[fencepost]

It took a while for me to respond because since my Palm died and I switched to a Blackberry, I'm not running any Natara software. I mostly check in every once in a while to see what the future holds.

As far as BB development goes, I think it might be worth looking into whether a BB app would be close to what you'd need for other platforms as well - depending on how it was coded, I suspect that from a BB app you could do MIDP2 for other platforms supporting it since everything on the BB is Java-based these days.

Edit:

After a bit of reading elsewhere it seems to me that you might be able to come close to serving the last 3 options on your list (RIM, Symbian, Android) with a single Java codebase - RIM & Android stuff are Java, and I believe Symbian supports J2ME as well. This article (http://www.embedded....tools/202400727) from last year was interesting about porting a BB app to S60/S40.

[adrianbye]

I've switched to mac/iphone from PC/treo. I switched because I am seeing a lot of innovation happening on this platform. A lot of tech industry leaders (CEOs of companies like google/zappos, etc) are all on the mac. Given this core group of early adopters have switched to mac, it seems likely that we'll see a lot from this platform in future.

I've checked out outliners on the mac, but nothing compares with Bonsai that I had on the PC/treo.

+1 mac/iphone version of Natara Bonsai. Pretty pretty please!? :-)

[KenS]

I have switched from the Palm platform to the Iphone and there is as of yet, now outliner that compares to Bonsai. I believe the Iphone and Blackberry are the 2 platforms that need to be addressed. I am using OmniFocus on the Iphone only to organize errands. I think the context field that allows you to sort by location is really handy, especially when combined with the Iphones GPS feature. There is a button that you push that locates you and shows errands near your current location

[adrianbye]

Actually I have a better idea. Why not focus on making an awesome web based version which everyone can use. Then focus on making handheld versions for as many platforms as possible - blackberry, iphone, windows mobile. etc

This brings several advantages:
1. If its a web based model you can turn it into a subscription model. Charge us all $5/month to use it. You'll make far more money and bonsai could become your #1 performer.
2. The web based model will be less work for you, so you can drop your mac/pc/other versions
3. You can put more emphasis into supporting the handhelds which will give you wider market share

You guys have by far the best ideas for handling an outliner and I'm really struggling by not having your tools anymore. I'm forced to replace your application by about 3 other applications, segmenting my data and causing a real mess. Some people will complain and say they don't want their data on a web version - I say those are the customers you don't worry about. Its not perfect for me either, but given the choice of no bonsai or a platform which becomes a strong business model for you and will be supported across all future platforms I use at $5/month, I'll take the latter. :-)

For an example, look at how 37signals promotes basecamp and their other products.

[fencepost]

I'm not sure a web application would work so well - most browsers on portable devices don't have nearly the same capabilities as desktop browsers (for DOM, Javascript, etc.), so it'd be all based on old-style full page reloads. On a handheld with a possibly not-very-fast connection that could be painfully slow.

[adrianbye]

fencepost, on Oct 22 2008, 01:55 PM, said:

I'm not sure a web application would work so well - most browsers on portable devices don't have nearly the same capabilities as desktop browsers (for DOM, Javascript, etc.), so it'd be all based on old-style full page reloads. On a handheld with a possibly not-very-fast connection that could be painfully slow.

I misread your post originally, so I'm rewriting my response.

I'm not suggesting they use a browser on portable devices. On portable devices the implementations need to be native. But they should all sync back to a web version, which we then access via the browser on mac/pc/linux. This means Natara no longer needs to maintain separate mac/pc versions of the software and can put more resources into making better handheld versions for more platforms (iphone/blackberry/android).

This will be a platform and a business model which will last Natara for many years into the future. In their current incarnation I confess I'm skeptical as to the longterm viability of the company (I don't see windows handheld as very good, and palm is basically gone.). Which sucks, because bonsai is the greatest outliner available!

[Cindy]

I was a Palm user fromt he very beginning and loved Natara's software. Now, as a result of my job, I have migrated to Blackberry. I am really disappointed that I can't use your software on the Blackberry. I think you are missing a big group of users.

[DDM]

I have been using Palm OS devices for over 10 years and the Bonsai application hase been an important part of my "toolbox." Like so many others, I could no longer tolerate the multitude of problems associated with the Treo and I've switched to a Blackberry. The performance of the Blackberry is far superior. I hope the people at Natura recognize the trend of consumers and rush to develop a version of Bonsai for the users of Blackberrys and IPhones. Otherwise, the fate of Natura will follow that of Palm.

[adrianbye]

Its interesting to see how many single-post users have come on here to tell us of their interest. This means they were looking for bonsai, couldn't find it for their platform and went to the trouble of signing up here to make a single post just to let the developers know they want the product.

I bet each single poster represents at least 100 additional bonsai buyers once these platforms are supported

[jonathan7007]

All,
General comments:
1. The low response may be because many come to the forum and jump right into their area by device. I happened to click General Chat before logging in and this is because I am sort of new to this forum, although I used DayNotz on Palm OS a few years ago. I suggest you promote the voting way out on the web site. I think gathering the expectations/dreams of the enthusiasts is a great idea. It just has to be easy.

2. My vote is for devices with touch screens and sync'd calendar/PIM data: my current: PPC full pda phone (Samsung) or the iPhone or perhaps the Android platform. I would always pick something that moves my current data to my portable device. At this moment I am watching to decide between iPhone or Android for the "next" device. We need to see more iterations of Android hardware. I am not convinced I can work off a Google-held data rrepository. But that's not the debate here.

I haven't found anything compelling in the Blackberry model, so didn't vote for that.

My 2 cents reduced by gas (wordy) inflation.

Jonathan

[tg2k]

I cast my vote for Android. I think the quick early adoption of Android speaks well for it--and now that Motorola has announced support for it this will only grow. I think Android will take off quickly and match iPhone in 3 years, plus with Android you'll have a choice of phones.

I saw a suggestion for making a Java version that would work on Android, RIM, and Symbian, and this is a great idea. Even for Windows Mobile, you could probably run a Java version, so use Java to spread Bonsai as far as you can! I don't know how much longer my slowly-dying Palm will last, but I'll keep running the desktop version even if I give up on my Palm, and I'd really like to have it on the next phone I get (probably an Android G1). I am halfway tempted to get a G1 and write my own outliner but it would never compare with Bonsai, so I hope you'll beat me, and other developers, to it. I'd love confirmation as to whether you're working on this...Bonsai is the single biggest killer app on my Palm right now (Bonsai and the Splash ID password manager are the only things that aren't "out of the box" that I just can't live without).

Definitely consider whether you can set it up to keep continually synced through whatever mechanism Google gives you though, I think that is even better than the syncing Bonsai already does on the Palm.

As for the suggestion about making it web-based, if you use Google or whatever to store the data then great, but this may be an Android-specific mechanism to some degree. You can make the desktop version Java-based though if you want it to be cross-platform...or use another cross-platform toolkit (wxWidgets, .NET with Mono, etc.).

You're probably not seeing a lot of votes because this isn't right on the top page of the discussion forum. I actually found it by globally searching for "Android". Lastly, ignore the votes for Palm--you have a perfectly serviceable version there with little need to extend it, and a dwindling market. Look forward instead of backwards.

[slwenglish]

Just a few thoughts, fwiw...

It's interesting that the iPhone / iPod Touch got so many votes. I played around with both recently and am impressed - the UI is very pretty, whilst staying slick, quick and intuitive. All that adds up to a pretty satisfying experience. Only problem with the iPhone is being tied into a single service provider (unless you resort to hacks).

Blackberry seems to be getting more and more use in industry and commerce, and the Storm looks like it's moving towards the iPod style interface.

I'd be interested to see how Android develops. Will it be quick and intuitive, or will it develop into bloatware?

So, as someone grimly holding onto his Palm until something better than PPC comes along, those are the three I'd be watching at the moment.



I notice that DDH software have released HanDBase for iPhone. A database is my other must-have app, so that strengthens Apple's position as a possible Palm replacement.

Watch out for all those other ToDo / outliner apps currently in early stages of development for the iPhone. Divide ToDo sounds interesting, because it seems to fit with the way I divide my projects (though I'm not sure whether it has any way of archiving and exporting completed items in an open format, yet, and that's an essential feature for me).


As far as developing a mature product before release is concerned - that might put you behind some of the competition. Wouldn't it be a good idea to release something with reduced functionality, to get your name out there amongst the iPod users, and with a link to your website so people can see what the mature product will do?


Hoping for a great present next Christmas. Meanwhile, Happy Christmas to everyone at Natara.

Stéph

[bnystrom]

Quote

As far as developing a mature product before release is concerned - that might put you behind some of the competition. Wouldn't it be a good idea to release something with reduced functionality, to get your name out there amongst the iPod users, and with a link to your website so people can see what the mature product will do?

Absolutely. But don't confuse "mature" with polished. The whole mantra of iPhone is "less is more".. and a lot of that has to do with limitations the iPhone puts on developers to begin with. But putting a crappy app of any sort out is also not a good way to start either. Our first app (for whichever "other" platform") most likely won't be one of our "big 3" (DayNotez, Bonsai, or Project@Hand). Not to start with anyway.

(Don't worry, we don't plan on any "fart" type applications either :) )

[Dan E]

I've used Bonsai extensively for years. I started with a Palm PDA and kept using Bonsai on my laptop after I stopped using Palm devices.

I was given an iPod Touch for Christmas and was disappointed not to find Natara Bonsai in the App Store. I would love to use Bonsai on my iPod Touch and to sync it with my laptop.

I just started using another developer's list-making app, but it doesn't do what Bonsai does. Please develop a simple Bonsai app for the iPhone / iPod Touch!