I am offering my son help in buying a program. He is a Mac user and I pad user.
What are the advantages in buying Logos rather than Accordance or Olive Tree?
Which program offers the best apps for the Ipad?
I think the best thing would be to watch the videos of both and even download the demo version of each which gives you a little familiarity with it. It's hard to call one "best" as they are different and excel in different areas. In general Accordance is a little more Mac like and shines on original language research (though Logos is getting much better) while Logos offers a larger library of resources. Both iPad apps are fairly capable. Right now I'd say Accordance is slightly ahead, but I'm sure Logos will shortly release a version adding more features. They tend to go back and forth in my humble opinion.
One Logos advantage is an active Logos user forum web site, which has lots of posts and replies daily. Accordance has changed their forum setup since they now has 30,555 total posts, which is much less than 318,796 posts in the Logos user forums. Apologies: unable to find any user forums for Olive Tree.
Also, Logos has a wiki web site => http://wiki.logos.com/ with contributions primarily by many volunteer Logos users with many tips and tutorials about using Logos Bible Software. Likewise Logos has user contributed reading lists, which can be used in Logos 4 on Mac and PC.
Another advantage for Logos is many thousands of digital resources available for purchase on http://www.logos.com and http://vyrso.com web sites (Vyrso resources can be used and searched in Logos 4). Vryso mobile app is a subset of Logos mobile app, primarily for e-Book reading (missing Bible Word Study, Passage Guide, and Text Comparison).
In 2009, Logos changed their business model to charge once for resource licenses that can be used on many electronic devices. Hence, Logos software is free. Caveat: many Logos 4 features need appropriate resources in library for use (e.g. reverse interlinear Bibles). Due to publisher restrictions, a number of Logos resources are not available for mobile use; albeit number has been decreasing over time as Logos negotiates with various publishers.
Logos 4 Mac has many more features than Logos mobile app for iOS, including Personal Book tool so can expand your Logos library by building resources from docx files. Currently, a MacBook Air offers much more Logos 4 study capabilities compared to Logos app on an iPad.
Very soon Logos plans to ship a stable Logos 4.5 release and iOS 2.0 release that can sync Highlighting and Notes between Mac and iPad. Currently Logos mobile apps are sync challenged, see Bob Pritchett's (CEO) reply for insights => http://community.logos.com/forums/p/5923/321264.aspx#321264 (source for very soon, hopefully later this month).
With network access, Logos iOS app has Bible Word Study, Passage Guide, and Text Comparison, which are done on Logos cloud servers, with results sent to iOS app for display and interaction. Apologies: unable to find comparable features in iOS apps on Accordance and Olive Tree web pages.
Looking at Olive Tree's mobile platform app features, noticed couple items not in Logos iOS app: Integrated Book Store and Integrated Olive Tree University.
Comparing Olive Tree's eBooks with Vyrso, noticed Vryso has 4,096 books available for purchase while Olive Tree has 815.
Looking at Accordance's web page for iOS, noticed many capabilities present in Logos iOS app. Accordance Instant Details appears similar to Logos Look Up. For library viewing, noticed Accordance has hierarchical option to view resources within module bundles. With network access, can use Logos filtering in Library. When offline, searching Logos library for resources is limited to title and author.
Looking forward to stable Logos 4.5 and iOS 2.0 releases very soon. Logos needs Sync v2 to work well (very soon). Once Sync v2 is working, then Logos iOS apps would offer more features and resource choices than Accordance and Olive Tree.
Keep Smiling [:)]
I have all 3 of those programs. A large Logos library, I have Olive Tree (on my iPad only) and Accordance 9. I also use BibleWorks 9 on my Mac via Windows 7 running through Parallels desktop. I agree with Keep Smiling that you will not find a more dedicated user base or more active forums than Logos, and people on those forums tend to be knowledgeable and helpful. Logos has amazing help resources and wikis available. So let me give you my $0.02 for what its worth:
Olive Tree is a nice Bible "reader." I find it not very powerful or useful for doing serious research that a pastor, Sunday school teacher, seminarian, etc might want to do. Especially on iPad its display and the way it displays the text is very beautiful (it works well on my Android phone too).
Accordance simply excels when it comes to original language research (and since it is based on the Gramcord project that was what it was designed to do). It is very "Mac like" in its design and extremely fast. On my MBP it opens almost instantly and searches are nearly instantaneous. It still does not compare IMHO to BibleWorks, but I have been a BibleWorks user since they shipped their software on floppies so I am a bit biased Accordance has quite a few resources available, but nothing compared with the number Logos has. Accordance's iPad app is also very nicely done.
Logos is unrivaled for the sheer number of resources available, how inexpensive those resources are when you buy one of the bundles (I have the Scholar's Library Gold with about an additional $1000 worth of resources) and how amazingly they are indexed and searchable. Furthermore they are constantly making improvements to the software and adding resources. It is not as fast as Accordance, but it is MUCH broader. If I could only own 1 piece of software I would own Logos simply because you can get so many resources for it. Even though I find its original language tools cludgy compared to BibleWorks or Accordance, it is simply the best out there for overall research. I also believe the Logos iPad app will be parallel or exceed Accordances in its next release (it is good now).
Blessings,
Orville
15" MBP, i5-2.53GHz, 8GB, 500GB, Snow Leopard
I am offering my son help in buying a program. He is a Mac user and I pad user. What are the advantages in buying Logos rather than Accordance or Olive Tree? Which program offers the best apps for the Ipad?
I can't comment on the iPad apps as I don't use them extensively, but this quote is the one that grabbed my attention that I would express in regard to the mac application.
Logos does seem to have a bright future, if it ever comes to pass. I just hope it isn't always "almost there".
So all this said, if you want it right now, then Accordance is where you need to go. It's fast, mature and slick. Yes, it doesn't have as many resources. You have to ask yourself how many of those resources are worth it to not quite be there yet. If there are a lot and you don't mind the condition of Logos for Mac (and some seem to find reasonable performance from it), then go for it.
I'm not just dishing Logos because I'm trying to be a pain. I know the development guys are working their guts out. Yet with more 'features' on the way, I have to give an honest evaluation. I'm glad to be wrong in the future (hopefully near future).
Get on Google and google 'Logos versus Accordance'.
One of my favorite Logos 4 features is visual filter highlighting of Greek morphological usage in Greek and English Reverse Interlinear Bibles. This thread has a screen capture => http://community.logos.com/forums/p/39240/293226.aspx#293226
Personally Thankful for Logos 4 visual filters so can see range of verbal mood and tense expression in a Biblical passage; albeit turning on visual filters can take seconds to search and highlight Bible text, then scrolling is OK.
Apologies: I do not know if Accordance has similar visual filter capability since was not mentioned on Accordance web site. Looking at the Accordance demo video did see different user interface layout and design compared to Logos 4.
Angry Birds
I am sorry to hear this. Does Logos 4 work better through Windows even on a Mac?
Hi Shmuel
Logos works fine (for most people) on the mac. There are some differences in the user interface and some aspects of the program are not yet implemented on the Mac version. At the start of Mac development many continued to use Windows emulators on their Mac's in order to keep up productivity. In those days these forums used to be full of discussion of 'Parallels' and 'Boot Camp'.
About the middle of last year there was a tide of people who decided that the difference between the two versions was insignificant and they moved to using only the Mac app. We hear little about the emulators these days.
Unfortunately some of the things that you do normally on a Windows machine have carried over to the Mac implementation - these include the necessity to shut down the operating system and restart periodically. Before Logos many of us had machines that were not restarted between operating system updates.
Logos is a fantastic tool on either platform - it is nicer on the Mac and will get better as the development team let go of their Windows mentality.
Does Logos 4 work better through Windows even on a Mac?
Depends on Logos 4 feature usage; wiki has Mac and PC User Interface Differences => Feature Parity that includes many Logos 4.5 Beta improvements. Caveat: Logos 4.5 Beta has some bugs to fix; hoping for stable release candidate later this month.
Thankful have viable options to run Logos 4 Windows on Mac; know of one recent forum poster that is configuring Boot Camp.
Logos is more powerful for original language study but you can do so on the OT Bible Reader if you have the right tools installed.
Absolutely agree "Glad to be wrong in the future" but now... really sick and tired of broken "promises".
