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Is Mariner Software (marinersoft.com), makers of Paperless dead?

Thank you for the steer to this. I was completely unaware of Alinof until you mentioned it. i will have a play with the demo version. And as I have time on my hands I will investigate migrating data in from Paperless. Though I do note immediately there is no apparent 'import' function.
 
Guess I'm late to the game. I was a big MacGourmet user. I bought it from the original developer, but can't remember his name. I may be able to look back in my notes. I have 2,002 recipes in the app. I can not longer open it on my computer or iPad, but can open it on my phone. I've tried to email them many times for the last five years, but never got a response. I use Copy Me That now, but would love to export the recipes I have in MacGourmet before that database is completely gone. Any ideas?
 
ryanhunt said:
I posted this question in another thread, but posting here because I believe Mariner Software's apps go beyond just Paperless, one of my favourite Mac apps which has great integration with my Fujutisu ScanSnap scanner. Their other apps include MacGourmet Deluxe, Persona, Contour

It seems the company has stopped trading/gone belly up/closed down etc. The website is offline, their emails are bouncing and I've seen no updates (or social posts) for a very long time. I can't find any official news online - but they're still offering their apps for sale on the App Store.

marinersoft.com: Down/Offline
https://marinersoftware.deskpro.com/ : Online
Emails: Bouncing/not working
Twitter/X: Last post was from July 17, 2020 (last replied on Oct 12, 2020)
App Store: Still selling apps.

Does anyone have any info/background on this company, or do I need to find alternative (supported) software now?

Thanks!
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Working on iMac M1 - Sequoia 15.5 -Paperless V 3.0.8 still works fine.
 
Pongajim said:
All of my Mariner software still work on the iMac M1. Scrivener and Gourmet and Paperless
Click to expand...

Mine too; I just want to switch to something else (for Paperless) because if/when it breaks, or there's some problem, I would suddenly have trouble.
 
ScottR said:
Mine too; I just want to switch to something else (for Paperless) because if/when it breaks, or there's some problem, I would suddenly have trouble.
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Check out Alinof Archives. With a little tailoring it's a good substitute and written for current Macs.
 
Pongajim said:
Check out Alinof Archives. With a little tailoring it's a good substitute and written for current Macs.
Click to expand...
I downloaded it and played around a bit. It is... weird. It's like the developer had a very specific vision for what to do with it and doesn't want the user to deviate.

I use Paperless almost exclusively to archive financial (and to a lesser extent, legal documents) for various entities, for personal use. AA gives you an extremely limited choice for column categorization, and is almost as limited in what you can do with them: "If you wish, you can change the names of columns ‘Supplier’, ‘Reference’ or ‘Category’, or hide columns ‘Category’, ‘Warranty until’ or ‘Contracts’."

That's it; you have three columns you can rename, and two more columns that... well, if they don't fit your archive (they don't mine) you have to just hide them. So just three columns to organize all my papers?
There are also two "Date" columns; you can rename either, but, weirdly, they can still only be be used to display the date. Why let us rename them if they can only ever contain date data?

As far as I can tell, you can't add additional columns.

The folder/subfolder implementation is equally weird and restrictive.
 
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ezzellk said:
Guess I'm late to the game. I was a big MacGourmet user. I bought it from the original developer, but can't remember his name. I may be able to look back in my notes. I have 2,002 recipes in the app. I can not longer open it on my computer or iPad, but can open it on my phone. I've tried to email them many times for the last five years, but never got a response. I use Copy Me That now, but would love to export the recipes I have in MacGourmet before that database is completely gone. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Can you install an old version of the Mac OS (if any Mac you have supports it) on an external drive, install MacGourmet and its data file, and open the recipe database and export it?
 
ScottR said:
I downloaded it and played around a bit. It is... weird. It's like the developer had a very specific vision for what to do with it and doesn't want the user to deviate.

I use Paperless almost exclusively to archive financial (and to a lesser extent, legal documents) for various entities, for personal use. AA gives you an extremely limited choice for column categorization, and is almost as limited in what you can do with them: "If you wish, you can change the names of columns ‘Supplier’, ‘Reference’ or ‘Category’, or hide columns ‘Category’, ‘Warranty until’ or ‘Contracts’."

That's it; you have three columns you can rename, and two more columns that... well, if they don't fit your archive (they don't mine) you have to just hide them. So just three columns to organize all my papers?
There are also two "Date" columns; you can rename either, but, weirdly, they can still only be be used to display the date. Why let us rename them if they can only ever contain date data?

As far as I can tell, you can't add additional columns.

The folder/subfolder implementation is equally weird and restrictive.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Agree but if you don't have Paperless, it may be a solution. I don't need all the columns myself. Also it won't batch scan a pile of documents, at least when I last talked with them, they were thinking of it. But it was written for M so that's good.
 
Pongajim said:
Thanks. Agree but if you don't have Paperless, it may be a solution. I don't need all the columns myself. Also it won't batch scan a pile of documents, at least when I last talked with them, they were thinking of it. But it was written for M so that's good.
Click to expand...
I didn't even progress to testing scanning... it can't directly scan at all, or just not batches? No scanning is itself a dealbreaker (I've since deleted the app so can't check).

It's not the columns themselves, but how they're used to categorize/sort the documents. Right now I'm not on the Mac I have Paperless on, but off the top of my head I have these columns: document title, category, subcategory, [document] date, account #, description. I may be forgetting one or two.

It was also frustrating that you're not allowed to delete databases in the left column; I'm never going to use the Invoices or Warranties or Contracts databases, but they're permanent, cluttering things up.

There were other issues, but I really didn't play with it enough to see if there were workarounds so I can't really comment on them.

Even if Paperless stopped working, I wouldn't use this app. Maybe I'd have to really look at Devonthink.
 
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ScottR said:
I didn't even progress to testing scanning... it can't directly scan at all, or just not batches? No scanning is itself a dealbreaker (I've since deleted the app so can't check).

It's not the columns themselves, but how they're used to categorize/sort the documents. Right now I'm not on the Mac I have Paperless on, but off the top of my head I have these columns: document title, category, subcategory, [document] date, account #, description. I may be forgetting one or two.

It was also frustrating that you're not allowed to delete databases in the left column; I'm never going to use the Invoices or Warranties or Contracts databases, but they're permanent, cluttering things up.

There were other issues, but I really didn't play with it enough to see if there were workarounds so I can't really comment on them.

Even if Paperless stopped working, I wouldn't use this app. Maybe I'd have to really look at Devonthink.
Click to expand...
Yes it's an app for a contortionist but it can be made to work.
 
With Apple announcing that Tahoe is going to be the last macOS to support Rosetta 2, I'm realizing it is finally time to convert from Paperless (as it is, unsurprisingly, Intel only).

Unfortunately it looks like Receipts has become "Receipts Space" (https://receipts-app.com/en) and is now subscription only :/ Alinof looks interesting, but only 2 reviews on the Mac App Store - on from 13 (!) years ago and one from 3y ago gives me a bit of pause.

I stumbled across this post on the DEVONtechnologies forums in regards to migrating from Paperless to DEVONthink, and I'm debating on trying that. https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/migration-from-mariner-paperless-to-devonthink/24496/26

I know DEVONthink is overkill, but DEVONtechnologies has been around a long time, and they continually update their software (and it's not subscription based!); so I may just suck it up and try migrating things and see if I can't create a workflow that'll be somewhat similar to Paperless.
 
noraa said:
With Apple announcing that Tahoe is going to be the last macOS to support Rosetta 2, I'm realizing it is finally time to convert from Paperless (as it is, unsurprisingly, Intel only).

Unfortunately it looks like Receipts has become "Receipts Space" (https://receipts-app.com/en) and is now subscription only :/ Alinof looks interesting, but only 2 reviews on the Mac App Store - on from 13 (!) years ago and one from 3y ago gives me a bit of pause.
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Rosetta 2 full support ends later and doesn't end with Tahoe from when I watched the Keynote.

Receipts was my favourite! Since it is now Receipts Space, looks like that is now a dead end, as well, for continued support. I do not support any subscription based apps if at all possible. Glad I didn't spend all that time on moving everything over.

DevonThink looks to be the last real game in town now, other than Alinof Archives.
 
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