Back Using MacJournal Again

Many, many moons ago when I got my first modern Mac (I’m not counting the Mac Plus, the IICX or the Quadra) running OS X (800Mhz G4 iMac, the lamp style), I stumbled across a great little program called MacJournal. Dan Schimpf had attended an Apple Developer conference or workshop and MacJournal was the program he wrote there.

It was a free program, basically a text editor that stored each document as an “entry” in the journal and had a drawer that slid out to show you your journals. MacJournal was almost zen-like in it’s simplicity but was very powerful for what it was intended.

I used it for creative writing, keeping a journal, as the editor for my blog, etc. and exchanged several emails with Mr. Schimpf thanking him for such a great program.

When I got my first Mac notebook (the, Titanium Powerbook G4, also known as the TiBook), I found that MacJournal was no longer a free program and was being marketed by Mariner Software. I bought a boxed copy at my local Apple Store as there were new/more features.

Jump forward several years. I lost the serial number for the purchased version and of course the original free version was nowhere to be found, neither on my computers nor on the internet.

Now Mariner Software has a registration code lookup feature on their website, but it doesn’t seem to go back to the original version I bought from them.

Jump forward again to today. Having given up all hope of ever finding my serial number, I finally got around to spending the $35 to buy another copy from Mariner Software today and I’m now running the latest version.

It has even more features but mostly seems centered on blog editing. Now since this was one of my original uses for the program, this makes sense. On the other hand, I’d already started using MarsEdit, a shareware program dedicated to blogging. MarsEdit’s blogging functions make MacJournal look like a poor contender. Then again, this should be expected when comparing a mutli-purpose program like MacJournal to a dedicated program like MarsEdit. The same thing applies to using MacJournal for creative writing when compared to a dedicated program like Z-Write.

My initial impressions are that I’ll be using MacJournal mostly for it’s original intended use. As journaling software and use MarsEdit for blogging and Z-Write for creative writing.

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Computers, OS X, Software