org-mode. toodledo. aw naw.

The Healy interview I mentioned led me to Mike Hall's org-mode in your pocket is a GNU-shaped Devil. In it, Hall shares his suffering at the hands of org-mode, an emacs-based plain text approach to, well, everything. Been there Mike. I feel your pain. And yes, just because it's plain text doesn't mean you won't curse the day you began the learning curve of *'s in headers, and drawers, and properties and ... Excuse me. <sniff> No, I'm OK. I'll get through this. I'm OK.

Mike thought he was free when he met his iPhone. Hostile to emacsen, the iPhone ecosystem nevertheless offered plenty of shiny "personal information management" alternatives to org-mode. So he gradually let his emacs use atrophy, and allowed himself to be seduced by iPhone-ness. And Mac-ness. And mobility in the form of MobileMe. And iDisk. And he didn't see his peril until it was too late. org-mode found mobility in MobileOrg. And that would have been OK had Mike not realized that the only thing stopping his old ways reappearing was that MobileOrg needed a WebDAV server. But oh, horrors, what does iDisk provide? WebDav :-( As Mike says, it was as if emacs and org-mode were taunting him with:

“Sucker … walked away from Emacs and even took the extra step of slurping the MobileMe kool-aid thinking it’d harden your resolve against ever returning. Well … fine … keep your precious iDisk … it will become the tool of your re-liberation.”

Well, in my own case, my escape from org-mode came from toodledo. It too has a cute and shiny iPhone app, guarding me from the occasional madness of the form "but we like plaintext precious, yes...".

Yeah, well look what that wee emacs fiend Sacha's been up to.