Minimal Mac

Poor Equipment for Pro Contact Sports

Now Up–to–Date & Contact [April 1997]

It’s mind-boggling to me that both Gmail Contacts and OS X’s Address Book application lack many of the basic features that have been available in equivalent apps for 10 or more years.

Back in the day, I was a big fan of the pairing of Now Contact and Now Up-To-Date. Starting around 1993 or so (?), and as the administrator of a small Mac/LocalTalk network, I finally badgered my boss into buying copies of the Now stuff for anyone in our office who wanted it. And it worked like a charm. People loved it.

Sure, the workgroup features weren’t exactly at the level of today’s Exchange, CalDAV, or Google Calendar stuff, but man. As a basic PIM? It was bullet-proof. And really pretty, to boot — the very clear antecedent of swell old-is-new apps like today’s wonderful BusyCal.

But, wow, the functionality. These were the salad days. Brace yourself. Now Contact would let you associate “people” with a “company.” Imagine! Even semantically! Which, of course, neither Gmail Contacts nor Address Book lets you do.

For Google and Apple, contacts are a drawer with slots. Companies are a field. Names are a field. Addresses are a field. The fields are, whatever, there. You can, you know, search or whatever.

Jesus, OS X’s Address Book doesn’t even have freaking autocomplete. Autocomplete! Jiminy, a ten-year-old kid with jQuery, a Mountain Dew, and an hour to kill before school can add autocomplete to any website with ease. Me? I still have to manually find and maintain 1,400 little islands of humanity with only the flimsiest manual associations and zero in the way of semantic relationships or automatic normalization. It’s. Wow. And don’t get me started on the syncing. Last time I checked I had six seoulbrothers and twelve Jason Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Marias.¹

It’s staggering to think that either one of these Giant Companies expects their apps to be taken seriously by other Giant Companies who do business with other Giant Companies. Because in Giant Companies, it becomes really important to know exactly who the employees are in your Giant Company as well as in other Giant Companies. And that’s the kind of thing you really don’t want a lot of people having to maintain separately and by hand. It’s one of those things that a computer is just unarguably better at doing for you.

So, yeah, go ahead. Take the Now suite’s tour.

It’s April of 1997. Bill Clinton is in his second term, Jewel is meant for you, and Seinfeld is, regrettably, starting to suck. But, yes, since it’s 1997, you can do things with your address book application that simply won’t be possible twelve years hence. Enjoy it while you can.

1997: “When entering new contacts, just type a few letters and the company address will be filled in.”

1997: ‘To get Now Contact to recognize two first names—for example, John & Mary—type “John [Option-Space] & [Option-Space] Mary.”’

1997: “You can change a zip code and, with a single click, change all your other contacts at that company or at that address.”

1997: “To attach a document to a contact, drag the document from the Finder and drop it on the contact.”

Well. At least Jewell’s not around as much any more. So, 2009’s not all bad.

Yes, that’s what happens when Google and Apple contact syncing argue over what part of a name means. Semantics. Look it up. ↩

I am compelled to reblog this. Not only because it is one hundred percent true, not only because I also feel there is nothing that even holds a candle to Now Up-to-Date and Contact (which I will refer to as NUDC from here on), but also because my heartbreak runs much deeper as I have an intimate connection with the product.

You see, I worked in Quality Assurance for Power On Software, which bought and further developed NUDC from Now Software, for five years. I worked on making NUDC a better and more bug free product almost daily for that time. I got to know every inch of it, inside and out. I knew it’s power and it’s shortcomings. I still to this day could likely tell you every major bug and why they were never fixed (required a complete rewrite to do so). I also could tell you why it was so amazingly fast and small no matter how much data you threw into it (data de-duping was build in to the database from the start) and why that also made it more unstable (if data is not duped you rely on pointers to it, loose a pointer and it screws the whole pooch). It was one of the greatest working experiences of my life.

I was also the beta team coordinator and so I had the pleasure of interacting with about 200 of the most passionate fans of the product around. Many of them I still consider friends until this day. My dearest friend in the world today is the person I worked along side of during that time. She stood up for me at my wedding. I mention all of this to say that NUDC was the henge for much of where my life is today. The fact that it is gone, and along with it so many basic features that no major provider yet includes, is crushing to me. Even with a product as good as BusyCal (mentioned above, which I use, and is developed by two of the original NUDC programers), using anything else is a reminder of that pain and exercise in frustration.

Sorry, Merlin, you struck a melancholy cord with this. Excuse me while I go find the iCal team and line them up for their throat punches.

Posted October 31, 2009 at 5:11pm || home