First the new name addition, "Office?" Please. If this naming strategy isn't an indication of the fact that the Devon team is running out of ideas then there's plenty more. Of all the potential features that could be added to DThink Pro to advance the solid foundation of an info manager that I've been a beneficiary and solid supporter of for more than a year now, "Office" (yuck) brings us "drum roll please!"

"Image capture and OCR. (silence befalls the auditorium). "Oh yead and did we mention email archive?" (silence permeating) "Oh, and a web server!" (a few intermittent claps quickly fade followed by a few jeers)

"Lame!"
"We want client to client network sharing!"
"Yeah! Web Shmeb!"
"What idiots asked for OCR?"

Let's face it, if you're still garnering enough paper assets to warrant scan and OCR capabilities from within Devonthink pro "Office" (schlock), you should probably rethink your strategy for becoming a paperless DevonThink Pro "Office" (putrid) buff. In other words, start demanding more items in digital format, set up accounts to email you statements and so forth (they do that these days). And if you're just getting started with Devonthink Pro "Office" (detritus) and need to go through an initial period of paper digitization, please use another package for that and quit wasting our precious feature requests up for trifling features like capture and convert.

I don't know about anyone else, but I still can't open any more than one dtbase at a time. And Spotlight all but ignores my dtbase files so I can't even use mdutil to query a folder full of dtbase files, nor can I use Devonthink Pro "Office/Stooge" to query across multiple dtbase files.

How about smart folders? Anybody else tired of only analog folders when it comes to manually organizing content?

The graphical user interface could use years of updating as well, it's very tired, very old. Compared to the plethora of modern info managers arising for os x, Devonthink Pro "Office/Cheesy" offers a very 2001 look and feel. It lacks dimension, effervescence, "Mac-ness". It feels more like Windows 98 these days than anything Mac anymore. Quite honestly, the aesthetics of this application are as boring as it gets. I know it doesn't exist to entertain, but come on! I haven't noticed but does Devonthink Pro "Office/Doltish" even support growl?

Instead of OCR (whoever the hell asked for that!), we should have asked for better features, like a quick search/reference capability, so you don't have to bring up the hulking interface just do make a quick reference. And maybe fully regex ready? Multiple dtbases open at a time; sharing databases BETWEEN CLIENTS and not YAWn (Yet Another Web aNswer); spotlight integration; smart folders; search across multiple dtbases; link to files (versus index & import); I'd love iLife-ish integration (itunes, iphoto, addressbook type osx integration, like ecto, soho(don't go there), journler).

How about top-tier Blogging Features? After all, if you're going to keep all your info organized with Devonthink Pro "Office/Moronic", why not be able to drum up a weblog post using that info right there so accessible in front of you? Select some text from a webarchive or your own notes, click blog this and the blogging window pops up along with a palette that provides the ilife os x integration of displaying your organized playlists from itunes, photos in iphoto, emails addresses and otherwise from addressbook, maybe events from ical, movies (swfs, mpeg-4's, etc from itunes) and so forth, each under it's respective tab on the palette, and then media, emails, urls, etc could be drag'n dropped into the post, then click post (be it blogger, LJ, metaweblog, etc) and bing!

How about some mind mapping features? Or the ability to generate mind map views of classification structures, folder hierarchies and document paths. An ability to add tags to items and then generate mapped views of certain relationships based on certain tag strategies?

But no… instead, capture, ocr, mail, and yawn.

I feel like a dunce for expecting too much.

To tout artificial-intelligence is no small claim. I was captivated by this feature from the start, and had hoped that future advances would cunningly build on this feature and present even more powerful tools. Unfortunately it's more like the creator of the first usefully solid hydro-powered engine is trying to continue wooing it's adopters by upgrading the gas cap. (yawn) And then charge a lot extra for doing so.

By simply looking back at the beginnings that were Devonthink Pro, it's plain to see that the ladies and gents at Devon are capable of more than shiny new gas caps. Until that day comes, I foresee plenty of Think users either waiting out the drought, or keeping a keen eye on blogs like musings from mars and merlin mann's 43folders for any hints at budding alternatives.

In a nutshell, Devonthink Pro is now a has-been.