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Comment by ilrwbwrkhv | Hacker News Reader

Workflowy and Logseq already provide these features. Am I missing something?

They both provide many great features, but Bike provides some unique features too. I think they are pretty well listed on Bike's home page (features), but I'll add some notes here:

1. "Fluid" (smoothly animated) editing. You could argue it's not important, but this is something new and unique to Bike. Bike is a "tool for thought". I think how the app feels is an important aspect.

2. macOS native app, of course this is a plus and minus. But if you are on a Mac Bike will generally us a lot less resources then those apps and integrate better with the rest of the system.

3. Local files in open formats. Logseq has this of Course, but I think there's something pretty nice about having your outline just be simple HTML. Easy to parse, easy to work with, should be able to view and make sense of as long as web's around.

4. Faster. Bike is designed to work on somewhat big outlines. Moby Dick has been my test file. It opens instantly. I've just pasted that into Logseq and my computer is working hard a few minutes later. Not sure how workflowy does because it puts me over quotas.

Bike has a pretty unique foundation compared to other outliner apps. It's also missing a lot of higher level features that I plan to build out over time.

The one user interface element I'd suggest is adding the ability to promote/demote nodes w/ the right-click menu when interacting w/ nodes (you could show the keyboard shortcut then to make it discoverable) --- also an option to delete (maybe only if empty?)

Also, when dragging-dropping, I found it way too easy to make empty nodes which was disconcerting.

I honestly don't understand comments like this, you know it's ok to competition in this space?

Counterpoint, I very much enjoy when commenters surface competitors, because it makes the creator summarize exactly what distinguishes their product.

For sure, I have nothing against competition. Usually though, there are some really unique product features which sometimes get lost in the marketing speak, so if there is a product that I am interested in, like this one, I like to verify that since I didn't quite get that from the product page.

Yeah, I read a dismissive tone in your comment but that's on me, your question prompted some good discussion.

As the post title says, it's a macOS native app, focusing on fluidity.

Mac native I get. But what is "fluidity"? The other two are just as "fluid".

"fluidity" is a made up marketing term (by me) to mean animation.

But I think this animation is important. Bike is a "tool for thought". I think the way that it "feels/animation" is important. Bike's build built from the ground up to support this. Check out the movie or better yet try the download. Typing feels a bit smoother, text slides into place.

And yes it can be turned off. And no it doesn't slow you down, animations are canceled if you type again before they finish.

> text slides into place

I don't have a Mac to try this on, but slides into place sounds like what Microsoft does in Outlook and I ended up turning it off.

Maybe it's not the same thing though. In Outlook (and some other Office programs) as you type the text seems to appear a little more slowly and the cursor glides to the right. To me, it always felt laggy and so I turned it off.

I've looked at (and discarded) Workflowy before. I hadn't heard of Logseq before, so thank you for that.

However, I am looking at it now, and while it's a nice little app, it's not an outliner and I am not sure if I am going to be able to find any use for it.

Outliners are explained here: http://outliners.scripting.com/

Why are you comparing Logseq to one?

I'm in Dynalist camp!

Does Dynalist support OPML? Nice thing about OPML is you can be in all camps at once. Or use Dynalist as iOS solution. I'm still looking for best outliner to recommend for Bike files on iOS until I get my act together and make iOS version of Bike.

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