My current policy when I buy new apps is to make sure that they are Universal. Granted, my current Mac isn't Intel-based, but it will be next year, so I want to plan my Intel transition. Anyway, when I got the email from DataViz informing me that an upgrade to Documents To Go was available, I didn't think twice... and I forgot to check if it was Universal. Alas ! it isn't !!!

I was happy to see a new version of Documents To Go, because I considered the previous versions to be unstable, not very usable. And... I was hoping for an updated application for the Mac.

On the plus side, the Palm applications are much improved in version 9. One cannot use the specific (and compact) Documents To Go file format anymore, but Word and Text files are viewable directly. And the Palm apps are apparently finally stable enough not to crash in the most mission critical moments.

On the negative side, the Macintosh application is still crap. Even in version 9, it is still a PowerPlant Mac OS 9 port, and not a true Mac OS X application. 5 years ago, I could understand, but nowadays ??? Come on : Mac OS 9 was a great OS in 1999, but we are now (almost) in 2007. 8 years should certainly be enough to rewrite a 1,4 MB app !

Still on the negative side, the conduit provided for the Mac is terrible. It simply refuses to install anything on my expansion card. I deleted everything I could find that was Documents To Go related (apps, prefs, you name it) both on the Mac and the Palm, but nothing worked. I even updated to version 9 for this very reason : forget it. As a david160 wrote, I am now using Missing Sync's "Folder Sync" to keep my Mac's Word docs in sync with my Palm. It works very well, and fast, but it only offers a "version A or B" approach, while Documents To Go promised to update the file's content.

I keep Documents To Go because I need an application on the Palm that displays information in a more organized fashion than the simple Memo.app can. The files I display in Documents To Go are personal data for use on the Palm, and not files that will be edited on the Mac (except when I specifically want to update the content on the Palm). So I can happily bypass all the Documents To Go Mac apps. But for users who need the functionality promised by DataViz, Documents To Go for the Mac fails miserably, even in version 9.

Can one hope that things will work natively (both Mac OS X and Intel-wise) and flawlessly in version 10 ?