Are all the good productivity apps on Mac OS X?

I didn't want to make a broad generalization like that title but sometimes it seems like that to me. I don't know how many researchers / academics are on this forum but it really galls me how many great apps are available for Mac OS X and iOS that developers have no intention of porting over to Windows. I mean, there are a whole lot of Windows users out there, don't developers want to tap that extra cash? Some examples:

DevonThink Pro Office
Omni group software
Zengobi Curio
Lecture notes
Goodnotes
Milanote (no Windows app)
Things
Scrivener (outdated Windows port)

There are more but memory fails me. Onenote is alright I guess, and I never really liked Evernote. I don't like Notion either. I ran DevonThink in an OS X VM which is a bit of a pain.

Anyway, my rant for the month. If you folks have some nice note-taking / productivity software (especially visual note-taking / file / pdf management software) for Windows feel free to share.

I suppose buying a Mac would be an easy solution, but then that would mean giving up my Windows hardware (I can't afford two systems) and giving up gaming (goodness gracious!)

 

Buy a 2012 macbook pro on the cheap, update to Mojave and use that for note taking?

 

It strictly depends on what your definition of 'productivity' is. Much of your list appears to be aimed at note-taking and document management.

Many of my fellow students, grad and post-grad seniors use—wait for it—Linux, and rely on a variety of typically free and open-source command-line tools for note-taking, from writing Markdown in Vim or Emacs, or even using full-fledged LaTeX (and related TeXes), rather than proprietary solutions. I've not heard of many of the solutions you've proposed.

Even Microsoft Office is rather rare. For what it's worth, I jump regularly between physics, computer science and mathematics. These three fields intertwine so much that they're effectively grouped under one giant 'mathematical sciences' umbrella.

 

^ This

Markdown +1

Emacs +infinity

Also, Emacs runs on eMacs.

 

I don't know much about the market, but are Evernote, OneNote, SimpleNote, Poe or Google Keep any good? For the software you're describing, I'm unaware of anything the Mac offers that Windows (or Linux for that matter) wouldn't do.

One quick tangent... I second @Ionising_Radiation's post the definition of 'Productivity Apps", is based on a single point of view. I've never heard of a single one of those items you listed, and after looking them up don't have a need for a single one of them. But then again, I doubt you would have a real need for things like diff, patch, vi, emacs, cc, gcc, ld, cl, gulp, grunt, or bower. So it goes to show different folks have different needs.

Hopefully one of the solutions I mentioned above are as good compared to the ones you mentioned.

 

Yeah, I'm in psychiatry, internal medicine and the neurosciences so the artificial intelligence search function in DevonThink is really useful to me.

I have an open mind, though, and I have heard of Emacs. Upon looking at it, um, wow, that ain't exactly WYSIWYG, lol! I will download it and play with it, so thank you!

I usually hand write all of my notes to pdf files (via a pen display) which are then automatically OCR'd in DevonThink. Why hand write? Research shows we retain better by writing by hand. In any case, it's more fun than typing imo.

Like you all say, note-taking solutions seem to be really, really different for folks in different fields. At the very least you all have opened my eyes to some of those different solutions, so thanks again.

Oh yes I did think about buying a cheap Mac but thought that would complicate my life further, and since I'm on the brink of insanity most of the time, you know, I try to keep what I can as simple as possible. Thanks much folks.

 

You can hand write directly to OneNote without any OCR on one of the many Windows convertibles with active digitizer. Macs don't even have touchscreens let alone pen input, so unless you're going the Hackintosh route you'll simply cripple your workflow getting one.

 

If you learn a bit of Emacs Lisp the sky is the limit. Or... a wormhole?