Yojimbo - The App The Could Have, But Didn’t
I've been playing with Yojimbo for the past week or so and it shows a lot of promise but just doesn't quite make it across the line to something that would be useful. Essentially Yojimbo allows you to store stuff in a central location. You can add text files, web archives, PDF files, bookmarks, serial numbers and passwords. You can categorize them, label them and most importantly search them. It sounds promising and I'm sure that at some point it will be pretty awesome, but overall I found it disappointing. There were a few limitations that make it far less useful for me than it should be.
Firstly, the notes are almost plain text - it has about the level of rich text support as TextEdit - no tables, no lists and worst of all, no easy access to anything. All of my notes wound up being plain text just because it was too difficult to apply formatting. The biggest missing feature here is lists - 99% of what I want to put into Yojimbo are lists of things and it doesn't give me an easy way to do it.
The web archives were really cool, a quick AppleScript and I could create a web archive of the page I'm viewing in Camino. There are just two problems - they only display in the built-in panel or Safari and I couldn't find a way to get the original URL back out of it. It's rather difficult to blog about something interesting if you can't quickly and easily get the original URL back. Only opening in Safari isn't a major issue, but it's annoying that they didn't respect my preferred browser setting.
Bookmarks are just that, with no extra functionality over what a browser has built in. They do open in your default browser correctly but since they don't have a web archive attached they still aren't great for searching.
PDF support is similar, it works and there's nothing special about it. The major disappointing factor for general files is that there's no way to edit them in an external editor and have the changes reflected in Yojimbo. The whole application is one great big data silo. I would have liked to keep track of some play scripts I'm working on in Final Draft with Yojimbo but every time I edit it I have to delete the old version from Yojimbo and readd a new one. I have very few documents that never change so Yojimbo's file support is wasted.
The most disapointing part of Yojimbo though was it's exceptionally primitive AppleScript library. Given that it's an application that is meant to be a central hub of information, I can't believe how primitive the AppleScript API is. Essentially, you can create a new item of whatever type and in theory retrieve them again, though I just got an internal script error whenever I tried that. My AppleScript is pretty primitive so I've probably just messed up the script. Even so, where is the API to set which collections an item is in? How about searching through the database quickly and easily?
Finally, the syncing requires .Mac. Now, I know that's because it uses SyncServices and Apple in their infinite wisdom have decided that should only work with .Mac accounts, but it's lousy none the less and it's BareBone's decision to use a crippled Sync foundation, so it's them that gets the blame for the lack of openness. Even if the non .Mac syncing was more primitive, some attempt should at least be made to avoid the need for an expensive .Mac account.
Overall, Yojimbo is the app that should have revolutionized the way I manage my digital odds and ends, but all the features it has are just the bare minimum to tick the box without providing enough functionality to actually be useful. BareBones seem to have gone for delivering a large number of features in the shortest possible time and wound up with a product that can do lots of stuff, but is good at none of it. I'll be going back to good old file system folders and dashboard sticky notes.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:20 am
Also, what you will find is that when you remove Yojimbo, it leasves behind a bunch of code in your .Mac sync panel THAT CANNOT BE REMOVED. Very sloppy programming on BB’s part. Like most of their software, Yojimbo is poorly-thought out, and shoddily executed.
(Can you tell I’m bitter??)
September 26th, 2006 at 6:36 am
BareBones are passing the buck to Apple on that one, but again - if they can get it to show up, why can’t they provide a simple utility to make it go away? I know how frustrating it is to have to work around vendor limitations, but it’s what good software developers do to make the experience a good one for their users.
September 26th, 2006 at 6:37 am
Oh, I meant to add, the FAQ entry on that is at http://faq.barebones.com/do_getanswer.php?record_id=137
October 3rd, 2006 at 4:02 am
“BareBones are passing the buck to Apple on that one, but again - if they can get it to show up, why can’t they provide a simple utility to make it go away?”
The answer is that the OS drives the entire process, not the application. “They” didn’t take any explicit action to make the sync listing show up; the OS detected an application with synchronization support, added it to the list, and it’s the OS that’s not removing the listing when the application goes away. The FAQ will be edited to make it clearer that it’s the OS doing the work - but that won’t materially change the situation, that being that it’s for the OS to clean up the listing.
Be that as it may, the stray item in the sync listing doesn’t cause any problems, and as soon as there’s a clean way to remove it, it’ll go away.
“Like most of their software, Yojimbo is poorly-thought out, and shoddily executed.”
I don’t know that such a statement is excusable by bitterness alone. Nor is it supported by reality, but that’s just my opinion. :-)
October 4th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Rich,
As I mentioned, I absolutely understand how frustrating it is to have to work around bugs in third party code and I’m sure it is a bug in Apple’s code that causes this, but it’s up to the application developer to work around those problems or live with the user’s complaints. It’s annoying and unfair but it’s the way things are.
I was surprised to see the comment about most of BareBones’ software being poorly-thought out and shoddily executed. What Yojimbo does do, it does quite well - it just needs more depth to it’s features and possibly a custom synchronization option to avoid the couple of complaints about the sync side of things.
Finally, can you shed any light on what the future plans are for Yojimbo? I tried asking BareBones support but didn’t get a reply - it possibly got lost in the mail somewhere.
October 17th, 2006 at 12:10 am
“it’s up to the application developer to work around those problems or live with the user’s complaints”
At the moment we find ourselves with little choice but to live with the user’s complaints, and agitate with Apple to fix the problem. :-) Note, however, that I was in no way opinining about the “fairness” of the situation; merely that any complaint that this particular glitch somehow reflects on our competence as software developers does not reflect reality.
“Finally, can you shed any light on what the future plans are for Yojimbo?”
Sorry, future product plans aren’t something we discuss, except for whatever we’ve said in public already.
“I tried asking BareBones support but didn’t get a reply - it possibly got lost in the mail somewhere.”
There’s been a lot of email volume since the release of BBEdit 8.5; odds are you’ll get an answer soon, though.
October 17th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Rich,
I never intended to suggest that the BareBones developers weren’t top quality, my apologies if it came across that way. How much time and effort you spend trying to work around third party bugs is a business decision - I’m sure that if the developers were given time they’d find a way to do it. Obviously there’s also the question of how reliable that solution will be in the face of future updates from Apple which is another good reason not to release it. Given the limitations, I would have chosen a different synchronization solution but that may have impacted on time to market etc. Development is always a trade off.
That said, pathetic support response times and not discussing even general future product directions is a really awful business decision. It cost you at least the sale to me and I’m sure it’s costing you others.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:01 am
“That said, pathetic support response times and not discussing even general future product directions is a really awful business decision. It cost you at least the sale to me and I’m sure it’s costing you others.”
I’m sorry if you see it that way. Your question was:
“Finally, can you shed any light on what the future plans are for Yojimbo?”
You didn’t ask:
“Finally, can you tell me what the general future product direction of Yojimbo will be?”
Those are very different questions, with very different answers.
As to your support case: sorry if the response time wasn’t as quick as you would have liked it to be. I located your case, and it’s in the queue for response, but because you weren’t running into a specific problem, it was queued up for response on a different priority. As a software developer, I’m sure that you understand this.
As to what may or may not be “costing us sales”: I have no reasonable expectation that Yojimbo is the right product for everyone. :-) From context it sounds like your needs may be divergent from what Yojimbo currently provides, but to my sense that says nothing negative about either Yojimbo or your needs. Again, you seem to think otherwise, and I absolutely respect your right to state that opinion. :-)
January 25th, 2008 at 7:41 am
BareBones makes great software. I have used BBEdit and Yojimbo for years and I admire and depend on both of them. My 2 cents.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Yojimbo is actually verybadly put together. After the trial period if you do not want to buy it, it is very difficult to remove it and quite a nuisance. This is the first application for the mac that i have tried which has behaved like a windows application. On top of that i actually downloaded it from the apple os x site.
Stay away from Yojimbo..it is toxic to a clean mac installation. Maybe everyone is right and Barebones makes great software.. so what …yojimbo is a piece of crap.