One of the common misconceptions about Together (and probably many apps of its ilk) is its purpose, which in Together’s case is to collect and find information in ways that may not be impossible otherwise, but are often awkward.

The biggest misconception is that Together is some kind of replacement for the Finder. It really isn’t and to use it that way will only lead to disappointment somewhere down the line. Nor is Together intended to be a particularly strong notetaker and its editing capabilities only exist so you can pare the gathered information down to its bare essentials.

I realize I may be to blame here for using the word “everything” in the standard blurb. When I say “Together lets you keep everything in one place”, the “everything” means “any kind of file or data that can be taken from its source”, which is almost, but not quite the same as “anything”, a term that could be misleading. It continues and clarifies: “Text, documents, images, movies, sounds, web pages and bookmarks can all be dragged to Together for safe keeping, tagged, previewed, collected together in different ways and found again instantly.”

I wanted the app for myself, funnily enough, while I was learning to become a Cocoa developer and researching app ideas. I was collecting things like code snippets, tips, bookmarks, tutorial movies and screenshots, but noticed how much of a chore it was to copy and paste, choose filenames and create folders for all these things, let alone find them again. Inspiration came from Apple’s own iApps and two other apps in the Classic Mac OS. As I explained on this blog back in 2005:

I’ve always missed the Scrapbook and Note Pad apps that came with Mac OS 9 and earlier. Fast to load, always available – perfect. At the time, they did exactly what I wanted them to do. You could drag and drop (or cut and paste) text, graphics, QuickTime movies, sounds, or anything really to the Scrapbook and it would store it away for you. The Scrapbook app was always available in the stripy Apple menu and when you needed something from it, you could just drag it back out again.

It was the same with Note Pad, which actually did look like a notepad and was so cool in the way you could turn the pages. It was just so handy for jotting down those little bits of text when you don’t want to create a new document, save it and have to find it again later. I never thought Stickies would be an adequate replacement – it’s just not the same.

Together is really my take on these apps, with a modern twist. I shy away from emphasizing terms such as “research” or “organize” because that’s not exactly what the app is about. Yes, Together can be used for research and it can be used to organize information, but it’s really all about collecting that information effortlessly and finding it again, which includes both searching and previewing the files.

Of course, you could finally search and preview most kinds of files in Leopard, but that raises another important point. When Together (then called Keep It Together, or KIT) 1.0 was first released in 2004, there was no Spotlight or Quick Look, yet the app offered as-you-type content searching, smart groups for files and you didn’t need to open most files to see previews of them.

Also, because Together has always kept the original files and folders on disk there is no fear of lock-in and it works perfectly well with all the technologies Apple has introduced since its launch, such as Spotlight, Quick Look and Time Machine.

While the ability to search and preview files has improved enormously in Mac OS X over the last few years, people still have needs that exceed the capabilities of the system. In particular, the friction in collecting information remains. This is Together’s real strength and purpose today. Drag anything (that can be dragged!) to Together, and it’s saved. You don’t need to choose a file format, name files or even specify a destination; Together creates standard-format files that can be opened directly in any number of other applications. Mac OS X has clippings, but they seem to remain a hangover from the Classic Mac OS and don’t work well with apps or the system.

And that’s it, really. Together fulfills a need to effortlessly collect and find information and should be viewed as complementary to the Finder and your apps, never as a replacement.

Many Together users migrate from other apps and a popular one lately is Evernote. While Evernote allows you to export its notes in HTML or its own XML format, it’s a little more difficult to do anything with these files once they have been exported. To address this problem for Together uses, I’ve created an Evernote Importer.

The importer allows you to import notes from all or just a selection of your Evernote notebooks. Each notebook becomes a group in the current Together library and the notes will be converted into editable Together notes. The importer also preserves the tags, creation and modification dates and source URL of the originals. A link to this importer is below and can always be found on the Together downloads page.

Download: EvernoteImporter.zip

The Mac Power Users podcast recently covered information managers, including Together: MPU 016: Information Managers.

This has been one of our most requested episodes. We talk all about information managers. These are applications that handle all those random bits of information that don’t seem to fit in any other type of organizational system. We’ll give you a general overview of some of the options available on the Mac and Katie and David go more in depth on the systems we use.

Together 2.3 is available today. This version brings improvements to just about every part of the application including previews, resizable icons, search, tags and the Shelf, along with support for Snow Leopard-specific technologies such as gesture-based zooming, text replacement and automatic spelling correction. Also, Together now runs as a 64-bit application on Snow Leopard.

It might be a common theme lately, but in this release I decided to avoid major new features and concentrate on tweaking and improving the app, while updating its underpinnings to keep pace with the latest technologies from Apple, something Together has strived to achieve from the outset. Together still needs to run on Leopard, so there’s only so far this can go at the moment, but it’s a start.

The last three 2.x releases have introduced many new features and, as a result, it’s clear Together meets the needs of most people now. I have some great ideas for the future, but this felt like a great time to give everything a once-over and generally polish the app as it stands. That said, it’s often the little touches that make people the most happy, so here are some of the highlights in Together 2.3:

Any-Size Icons

You can now freely resize icons in the items list from 16px in Landscape mode, or 32px in Portrait mode, anywhere up to 128px. As the size increases, so the name will wrap so you can see more of it. This can also be achieved with multi-touch gestures, should your Mac or mouse support it.

Additional Info in Portrait Mode

In Portrait mode, prior to this version, each row would show an item’s icon, name, rating, size, label color and an appropriate date (date modified, unless sorted by another date). Now you can choose to replace the rating with something else, such as the item’s kind, a list of tags, comments, or the label name. By default, Together shows the item’s kind unless the items are sorted by something else, but you can override this in the View Options panel.

Preview Zooming

Previously, only previews for notes, text documents and PDFs could be zoomed, but now web archives, bookmark web previews and Quick Look previews can be zoomed too. When zooming web content, Together will also do a full page zoom the same as Safari 4, rather than just make the text bigger. Previews can be also zoomed with the multitouch zoom gesture, provided you have appropriate hardware.

Shelf Improvements

The appearance of the Shelf has been revamped to include a lighter outline for better contrast against darker backgrounds. Additionally, you can now choose to show all groups or just favorite groups when dragging to the Shelf from other applications, the preview window zooms faster and you can open search results by pressing Enter without leaving the search field. Finally, there’s an option not to open the Shelf automatically when the tab is hidden and the mouse is moved to the side of the screen.

Snow Leopard Improvements

Together now includes preferences to enable Snow Leopard-specific technologies such as smart dashes, data detection, text replacement and automatic spelling correction. QuickTime X is now used for movie and sound playback, when possible, making loading movies more responsive. Quick Look on Leopard didn’t generate icon previews for web archives, but Snow Leopard does, which removes the need for Together to do that. Also on Snow Leopard, the Shelf will no longer be hidden when using Exposé to show the Desktop.

And More…

You can now open items in applications other than the default, bookmarks will automatically be converted to use the new format introduced by Apple that works on non-Mac filesystems, and therefore with online services such as Dropbox. Preferences have been cleaned up, and there are improvements to Smart Groups, searches, tag bundles and even Sparkle software updates. Together also includes a new “Search in Together” system service that can be used from any application. See the release notes for a full list of changes and to download this version.

Together 2.3 costs $39 and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

One Finger Discount is a promotion inspired by the current MacHeist nanoBundle that is running for the rest of the week, offering a discount of 20%, or one fifth, the full price of the software. It is being run by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, developer of MarsEdit and more.

At the time of writing, it includes the wares of over 80 independent software developers, including Reinvented Software, but more are being added all the time. So, to get 20% off the full price of Together, Feeder or anything else you’ve been fancying on the list, then go to the One Finger Discount page to find out how.