Downsizing My Mac Software To Work Better For Me

I’m on record as already pointing out the obvious. Synchronization between Mac and anything else is a good thing. Look what instant synchronization did for the iPod.

Look what it’s doing for the iPhone. Not only is it important for many Mac software developers to have iPhone apps, they need to make sure their software can synchronize with iPhone versions. Here’s my personal example.

We’ve long been supporters and users of Reinvented Software’s attractive and useful utility, Together. This is one finely crafted utility.

Together is like Yojimbo for the rest of us. It’s a single place to store notes, text clips, documents, images, web site pages, bookmarks, email messages, movies, sounds with drag and drop simplicity and easy organization.

The utility is powerful but easy to use. The shelf implementation is similar to Yojimbo, and yet easier to manage back ups of all your data. What is not to like? I use it, Alex uses it, even Ron uses it.

The trend today is toward data portability, which means it’s my data and I should be able to use it anywhere.

Historically, that meant, say, Mac to Mac, or Mac to Mac notebook, and not much else. Mac to PC was painful.

With the advent of the iPhone and iPod touch as devices which also connect to Macs and PCs, data portability has expanded. Apple’s MobileMe is an excellent example of how to do it right. Finally.

My MacBook, my iMac, my iPhone all have the same critical data. Contacts, calendar, bookmarks, even email. Apple isn’t the only software developer to get the sync idea.

On my iPhone I have Wallet, which syncs to the Mac version, keeping all my serial numbers and important data fully synchronized between devices. 1Password does the same with login IDs and passwords.

I’ve begun using Cha-Ching for the same reason. It’s a simple, straightforward financial management app that runs well on my Mac and my iPhone and data gets synchronized between the two.

What about Together? It’s my favorite catch-all utility but there’s no iPhone version and apparently making one is complicated, sufficiently so that the software maker told Ron it’s not likely to happen.

That’s too bad because the trend toward data portability and syncability (I made that up) is unmistakable. So, I looked around and guess what? Finding a Together-like utility that syncs to Mac and iPhone wasn’t difficult.

ShoveBox for the Mac is a handy utility for storing pieces of information, similar in vein to Together.

Grab and drop and store text, documents images, bookmarks, web site archive pages and more.

There’s no shelf like Yojimbo or Together, but there is a Menu Bar drop point so it’s almost as handy. ShoveBox doesn’t store as many file formats as Together or have as many features as Yojimbo, but it has more than enough of the basics.

Besides ShoveBox does one very important thing that was not important two years ago but is vitally important today. It synchronizes seamlessly between my Mac and my iPhone.

ShoveBox on the iPhone works quite similar to ShoveBox on the Mac. What you add or change or delete on one gets similar treatment on the other. Syncing is easy.

In essence, I traded more features and more power for less features and less power—downsizing, except for what is becoming a most important feature for me. The ability to keep what’s on my Mac on my iPhone, and what changes my iPhone makes then get transferred to my Mac.

These days, when I’m looking at Mac software, I give stronger consideration to an app or utility that has a synchronizing capability with an iPhone version. It’s the latest trend.