I used a Tinderbox map when I was trying to make sense of my Markdown Shakedown thread from last summer.
A thread on the outlinersoftware.com forum started out as just an announcement that Tinderbox 8 had been released, but turned into a discussion (in part) about whether or not Tinderbox is worth the investment of money and time. Someone wrote the following:
Tinderbox is too expensive. It looks useful and complex but it is too expensive for what it is… Annual pricing of nearly £100 is ridiculous.
That commenter also compared the price of Tinderbox with that of DevonThink.
I am not going to contend that that opinion is wrong. Everyone should judge the “value” of software based upon her or his needs. But I’ll tell you why that judgment does not fit my perspective.
A simple outline helped me manage the production of a book for our local historical society.
The financial cost
Maybe it is because I started personal computing when most software cost over $200, but I am not shocked that Tinderbox costs $249. What shocks me is that any software only costs $10 or $20. That has always seemed unsustainable to me, which I think has proven true, as attested by the number of apps going to a subscription model. Still, $249 is a lot of money to spend on software that has a reputation of being very difficult to master, and even harder, perhaps, to figure out what in the world you want to use it for.
That $249 only gets you one year of updates. After that, the software keeps on working fine, but if you want updates, you’ll have to pay another $98, which buys you another year of updates.
Justifying the cost
Tinderbox is unlike any other app on the market. It does things no other app does, and it makes possible the manipulation of notes in ways no other single application does. So it is not possible to compare the price of Tinderbox with that of any other application in any way that is logical. If, as the commenter whom I quoted above, you see Tinderbox as just another DevonThink alternative, of course it would not make sense to spend the money for the more expensive app. Choosing DevonThink makes perfect sense for that person.
But that is ignoring all the other things Tinderbox can do. The map view itself could justify the cost. I have written about how I think Tinderbox is the best outliner. You can add custom fields to your notes. There are multiple other views of your information in Tinderbox.
(Yes, there are lots of things Tinderbox fails at: no iOS companion and clunky exporting to name two.)
The decision about whether the initial cost is worth the money should not be made by comparing it to other applications that do less, but whether Tinderbox can help you manage and make sense of your data in ways other applications can’t and whether that is worth it to you.
Tinderbox appears to be the main source of income for the software’s lone developer, Mark Bernstein. If it becomes financialy unfeasible for him to continue to develop the app, it will gradually whither on the vine. For those of us who get great benefit from Tinderbox, that would be a hardship, so we pay the $98 update fee, seeing it as an investment in the continued growth and availability of Tinderbox. Many users may not pay the update fee until a new feature comes a long that they want. Tinderbox keeps working just fine even if you don’t pay the update fee.
The investment in time
The one criticism of Mark Bernstein that may be valid is that he doesn’t provide enough guidance for getting started with the app. He has tried. There is a 111-page “Getting Started with Tinderbox” PDF tutorial that comes with the app. This is helpful. But a series of video tutorials would be even more help — especially since there seems to be a gap between “how Tinderbox works” and “what should I do with it?” I’ve put together my own amateurish videos, and people have commented that they have helped them get started with Tinderbox.
There are a lot of dispirate resources on the website that give informtion about using Tinderbox, but there feels no rhyme nor reason to them. And there is no real user’s manual, though there is a getting started reference on the website. But there turns out to be plenty of help figuring out new features, which is how I managed to figure out a little something about Hyperbolic View in version 8.
But the truth is that all the documentation in the world would barely reduce the amount of effort needed to master all of Tinderbox’s functions. It’s just that complex. If you approach the app at the start with the notion that you need to learn all it does before you use it, you’ll almost certainly become frustrated and give up after a while.
The key to Tinderbox happiness is understanding that you can just start slowly. Almost all my posts and video tutorials are about taking this approach with the app. If you haven’t looked them over, check them out. The short version is that you can do many remarkable things with your information just be mastering the basics of Tinderbox. As you discover the efficacy of Tinderbox, you’ll start to expand your knowledge of its functions, one step at a time.
The bottom line
I am by no means trying to convince anyone they should spend the money and time to start using Tinderbox. Every opinion on this topic, from “it’s crazy expensive and too hard to learn” to “I’d pay twice as much for Tinderbox if I had to,” is valid.
