Product Reviews

Bruno Blondeau's iOrganize has long been one of our favourite notepads for Mac OS X, providing a simple interface for collecting and organising text clippings, ideas, memos and pictures. By typing, pasting or dragging and dropping items into an iOrganize NotePad, you can store them as notes that can then be collected into categories. Notes can be edited, exported into various formats or sent as emails.

The release of OS X 10.4 required an update to iOrganize, and Blondeau took the opportunity to refresh iOrganize's interface, which now matches the three-pane layout of Mail.

This apparently cosmetic change not only makes the interface easier to use - for example, the search bar is now in the main window rather than being hidden in a drawer - but it also provides added functionality. Moving categories into their own panel has enabled the developer to add sub-categories, and the more notes you accumulate the more useful this becomes. Underlying

ADVERTISEMENT

this is a new SQL file format to improve performance.

The other core Tiger feature in version 6 is Spotlight support for searching the content of notes. Spotlight identifies the NotePad that contains the search terms, and clicking on this then reveals the detailed search results in iOrganize. It's not perfect - it would be better if the relevant notes were displayed by Spotlight - but it does at least compensate for the clumsy and confusing search within the application.

In addition to its scrapbook features, iOrganize also makes a decent text editor, with system-level tools such as spell checking and the font panel.

There are also new editing tools for the automatic creation of tables and bulleted or numbered lists. Furthermore, you can now upload notes directly to an iPod and export them in various formats, including rich text, Word and HTML. However, there's no FTP or .Mac support for uploading to a website or iDisk, which is a missed opportunity.

Users of iOrganize 5 must first update to version 5.5.5 in order to export existing NotePads in a format that the new release can import. This isn't exactly a straightforward process, but it works smoothly. Veteran users will also have to turn on autosave in the Preferences as it is no longer the default setting.

iOrganize 6 is a slightly disappointing upgrade, particularly when compared with Vojou Software's cheaper iNotePad, which has more features and superior searching. However, Blondeau is a responsive developer and iOrganize may yet regain its polish.