A few years ago there was a Mac utility called KIT. Keep It Together. It was a handy utility which let Mac users store information, organize it, edit it, preview it, and, especially, find it. Today KIT is called Together, an easy-to-use, powerful organizing utility with a single, nearly fatal flaw.
The Good
Together is like a library for stuff you want to save on your Mac. Basically, you can drag and drop nearly anything into Together’s handy, pop out Shelf, and save it.
Notes, photos, images, bookmarks, web page archives, movies, documents, spreadsheets, sounds, PDF files. You name it. Drag it. Drop it. Save it. View it. Together looks and works a little like iPhoto or iTunes.
Together can also save bookmarks for web pages, file servers, etc, Web PDFs, which look identical to the original page with background images and clickable links and web archives, which save the page and all its contents. Like many files in Together, web archives are editable, so you can trim down a page to what’s important.
The left column contains customizable groups, and breaks down your saved files by type; notes, documents, movies, images, etc. So, you get to see everything in the Library selection, Recent Imports, by category, or by your own customized groups.
Easy, right? Yes, actually. Very easy. Easier still is how you get what you save. Together has a pop out Shelf so you can save whatever without clicking, clicking, clicking. Just select and drag to the Shelf, which pops out, and your file or snippet is saved.
Do Gooder
Together also makes it just as easy to view or preview what you’ve saved. The left sidebar shows you categories and groups. Click on one and the top right window displays everything you’ve saved. Click on any item and it displays in the preview section below.
Make the most of your widescreen Mac with Together’s portrait preview. Together can preview or edit lots of different file formats in the main window or in rearrangable tabs, including text documents, images, PDF files, movies, bookmarks and web pages.
There’s a lot to like with a utility like Together. Notes are instant. Together syncs with MobileMe so your files are available on all your Macs. And that begins the fatal flaw.
Fatal Flaw
Increasingly I’m using my iPhone in place of my MacBook Pro. The iPhone, and the iPod touch, are superb at quick browsing, to-do list management, and portability.
While Together syncs fine between Macs, it does not have an iPhone counterpart. That’s fatal for those of us constantly on the go with the Mac in our pocket, rather than a heavier Mac in a backpack or briefcase.
Simply put, Together, for all the wonderful things it does for Mac users in the information age, needs a corresponding utility on the iPhone.
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