I saw rumors of this a few days ago, but now it appears to be official. RIM, the company that makes the BlackBerry, has purchased "some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform" as noted in a statement given to CNET. Om Malik of GigaOM reports that RIM paid $50 million for the DataViz assets.
DataViz makes one of three main productivity suites for the iPhone, the Documents to Go app. Whenever attorneys ask me what apps they should get for their iPhone, this is always one of the first apps that I mention. I have been using Documents to Go for more years than I can remember, most recently on an iPhone but before that on my Palm Treo 650. As I have noted in the past, I am a big fan of Documents to Go. Over the years, DataViz has frequently been the first to add useful features to its product that were lacking in offerings of competitors. For example, Documents to Go was the first iPhone app to let you access Word documents that are attached to e-mails. This is now a built-in feature of the iPhone operating system that any app can use, but DataViz made the feature available a year before Apple did. Similarly, Documents to Go is currently the only app that handles footnotes in documents. Here is an example of a document with footnotes in Documents to Go. Just tap on a footnote to see a pop-up window with the text of the footnote:
The competitors to Documents to Go still cannot handle footnotes correctly. In the left picture below, here is the document displayed in Quickoffice, which just ignores the footnotes. On the right is a picture from the Office2 app which gives you the text from the two footnotes at the end, but doesn't tell you where the footnotes occurred in the text:
It goes without saying that for attorneys, footnotes are very important. Thus, when I am reviewing a brief on my iPhone, I always prefer to do so using Documents to Go.
The history of Documents to Go, Quickoffice and Office2 has been that the apps are frequently updated to add new features missing in the competitors' apps and to catch up to the competitors' latest features. I'm surprised that we have gone this long without Quickoffice or Office2 adding real footnote support, but one has to hope that this support is coming soon.
The hallmark of DataViz has always been compatibility and interoperability. I remember that back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was an avid user of the company's MacLinkPlus software which always did the best job of converting PC documents to and from Mac formats. The logo of the company even includes the word "Compatibility." And yet now that RIM owns most of the company, I fear that this will change. A few days ago, DataViz announced that it abandoned plans to come out with a version of Documents to Go for the Palm Pre. And now that most of the DataViz employees are working for RIM, one has to wonder whether Documents to Go has a future on the iPhone. As the CNET article by Jessica Dolcourt notes, "it's uncertain if or how quickly RIM will dial down support for the moneymaking Documents To Go on other mobile platforms."
On the one hand, I suspect that the product sells well, so there could be a financial incentive to continue to support and improve the iPhone and iPad app. On the other hand, it is not in RIM's interest to make the iPhone and iPad better tools for professionals such as attorneys who deal with a lot of documents. RIM would much rather keep all of the attorneys using BlackBerry devices.
Documents to Go is not the only game in town, and even without that app we'll be able to use Quickoffice or Office2 but I do fear that without DataViz pushing the envelope and adding new capabilities to the iPhone, the other developers will have less incentive to innovate and we'll miss out on improvements to this category of iPhone apps. Considering that RIM did not purchase the entire company, maybe the portion of DataViz that remains will continue to push iPhone products. But whether the development continues at what is left of DataViz or moves to RIM, my fingers are crossed that, somehow, Documents to Go for the iPhone survives.
[UPDATE 9/10/10: On September 9, 2010, DataViz released version 4.0 of Documents to Go Premium with a revamped user interface, support for external keyboards, increased speed, new options for formatting paragraphs, support for the iPhone 4 retina display, and more. Is the release of 4.0 a sign that the app has a future? Is this update just the last hurrah? I can't wait to find out.]
[UPDATE 9/13/10: Today, DataViz updated its Facebook page to respond to speculation about the future of Documents to Go on platforms other than the BlackBerry. The statement reads: "Despite the rumors, DataViz is alive and kicking and remains very much committed to many of the smartphone platforms we previously supported. While we did extend our business relationship with RIM, which included the sale of some of our assets, the details of this (and any other) partnership will remain private. Watch for some exciting releases in the near future!" With this statement, and the release of Documents to Go Premium 4.0, hopefully we can look forward to many more years of this app on the iPhone!]
