According to my study log, I have used L5 Mac about 100 hours since upgrading. I'll write a proper blog over Christmas, but here's a few impressions.
1. It is faster. Much faster - The guides populate faster and in general the program is snappier on my 2009 Macbook Pro. I assume on newer hardware with an SSD that it just screams along.
2. It is more refined and polished than L4 - Logos 4 suffered from feeling like it was never finished. It was not uncommon to find buttons and user interface issues that were not quite right. Sure it got the job done, but it was like driving an old pickup to town rather than a nice new shiny car. The choice of fonts and the tidiness of UI make it easier on the eyes and a pleasure to use.
3. The enhancements of L5 are great - I love the ability to filter the library window based on collections. The Bibliography tool has already saved me a lot of work. I like when you click a hyperlink to a resource that you don't own that it gives you a preview, plus a link to check it out on the Logos website. The addition of root searches, Biblical Facts and the Timeline are brilliant. I haven't had a lot of time to use the Bible Sense Lexicon, but in general L5 has a very nice collection of cool tools. At this stage I don't have much use for the community stuff, but I can see how that could appeal to some.
4. It still crashes - I have crashed L5 11 times. Over the same time period, this is more than all the other apps on my computer combined and then probably by a factor of 4. I believe I have found part of the problem. I used to leave Logos 5 running and would put my macbook to sleep and then resume my studies later. I would also use sleep for days without rebooting. Now I close Logos 5 every time before I put my macbook to sleep and at the end of the day I shut my computer down completely. Since doing this, I have had maybe one crash in 2 1/2 weeks. This is a huge improvement in stability.
5. It seems sensitive to internet issues - Failed synchronising seems to bog it down. If the internet is really, really slow, the program gives me a spinning beach ball while it is waiting for popular highlights to be downloaded. Running L5 in offline mode or shutting off popular highlights seems to make a difference in speed and stability. I am guessing that there are not lousy internet connections in the Logos development labs that allow for testing in these kinds of conditions. So again, by changing my usage patterns to limit exposure to the internet when it is problematic, I have dramatically reduced the number of crashes and L5 is faster.
My wish list:
a. The prioritisation window drives me nuts. I'm sure it works for many others, but I use it extensively and wished for a better format.
b. Going back to the early days of L4, I wished there was a way to select a workspace of my design for the daily reading plan and also for when I enter in a reference and click 'go'.
c. I'd love to see maps move beyond the static graphics that we see. This dates back to L3, so I know this is a big wish that for obvious reasons has taken a back seat to other things.
d. A very small wish would be to bring back 'fuzzy search'. Yes sure you can live without it, but this was an incredibly handy search function of L3.
In conclusion:
While I am not completely nuts about treating Logos 5 with kid gloves in terms of my usage patterns, it is manageable if it reduces crashes. In general, I am extremely pleased with Logos 5 and if this is what we have to live with for the next few years until L6 comes out, we are off to a great start. Unless development adds some stuff that breaks a bunch of stuff, I am hopeful that the program will continue to mature and I'm pleased to see the Mac version of Logos start to come into its own.
Good job Logos and Merry Christmas!
