[Dan Baril]

Goodbye Omni Outliner - Hello CarbonFin Outliner.

This thread was started by Rich Beam back in February 2012. My comments on the topic are peppered throughout as posts #7 and #9 back in February and then in a much more frustrated tone in August as post #27.

Yesterday I decided another 2 months had passed and it was time to once again touch base with Ken Case to see if we were any closer to either Dropbox and/or iCloud Sync for OmniOutliner. The OmniGroup website did after all still say they would not be offering DropBox sync, but they would be providing iCloud sync.

So in a progressively more agitated (on my part) thread of emails with Ken yesterday, I learned OmniGroup now has no intention of providing iCloud sync either. When I emailed Ken the link from their own website which stated they still planned on providing iCloud sync, he nicely enough apologized for the wrong information and moments later the page was edited/removed.

Mr. Case was also kind enough to offer me a refund which I not so respectfully declined. I explained to Ken, it's not about the money. I could care a less about the $20, or whatever the cost of the App was. What I care about is out-of-the-box functionality which in my view includes sync with one of the most widely used sync services, DropBox. Once again the BS line from Omni, is that Omni this or that WebDav server is better, open, blah, blah, blah!

I don't understand, or want to understand, redirected proprietary solutions. I want simple and vanilla industry-leading solutions like DropBox or iCloud, but preferably DropBox.

Yes I am frustrated. Yes I am pissed that I invested so much time using and being loyal to OmniOutliner which was otherwise a great application, sync limitations aside.

In a late and harshly worded email last night I told Ken I was done waiting. As soon as I could find a replacement app that sync'ed with DropBox or iCloud, I was gone.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would find the solution less than 12 hours later. A little bit of searching and I stumbled upon CarbonFin Outliner. The iPad version is $4.99 as is the iPhone version. It is fully compatible with Dropbox sync'ing, and I was effortlessly able to export my OmniOutline files in OPML format and import them in CarbonFin Outliner. It took less than 5 minutes to be up and running and from what I can see CarbonFin Outliner more than meets my needs. It also has a Web Access portal that allows you to access your outlines from a Mac or PC. How complete is that?

So, after years of using Think-Tank, the ECCO, and then OmniOutliner, as of an hour ago I have moved on to CarbonFin Outliner that lets me access my outlines via DropBox regardless of which device I am using.

/Ciao ... Dan.