It’s Apptastic Tuesday here at Words on the Word, and there are few apps that are more AppTastic than Accordance Bible Software.
Today they’ve announced that there is a free demo version of Accordance 11 available. I can’t recommend their software highly enough. See my full review of Accordance 11 if you want to learn more, or just go here to check out the free demo and see what you think.
Logos, I appreciate you. I use your products. I was impressed with Logos 6. I even recently signed on as an affiliate to receive commissions for Logos purchases generated through a unique Words on the Word-based url. You’ve been kind to offer me a lot of great stuff to review.
You invest a lot of time and effort (and, I assume, money) in marketing.
I ignore most of it.
But you recently emailed me a link to an awkwardly titled blog post: 6 Reasons That Shouldn’t Stop You from Getting Logos 6.
This post has gone too far in trying to convince people to override their objections to spend more:
2. I already have enough books.
Even if you think you’ll never read through everything in your library, adding more books will make it more powerful and increase the value of the books you already own.
In other words, “If you buy more books to search, you’ll have more books to search.”
Dear friends at Logos, do we not already succumb enough to an insufficiency mentality in the world? I don’t have enough. I need to have more. My Bible study and teaching prep is good, but if I just had that one more commentary series, life would be awesome!
I’m as guilty of this mentality as anyone (probably more so)–and I want to fight it. Bible software marketing copy that taps into the culturally-rooted materialism that Christians are supposed to stand against? Not okay.
One other “reason” gave me pause:
4. I can’t afford a new base package.
If a base package isn’t in your budget right now, you have a couple of options.
You can take advantage of interest-free payment plans and spread out the cost over up to 24 months. That means you only pay a fraction up front, pay for the rest over time, and start using your new software right away.
Let me help with the rewrite:
If a base package isn’t in your budget right now, you have one option: don’t buy one right now.
“Our mission is to serve the church,” you say. How does enabling and even encouraging churchgoers and pastors to take on new debt serve the church?
I think it’s time for some serious evaluation of the sort of marketing mantras that (however unintentionally) undermine Kingdom values of sufficiency and wise financial stewardship and promote instead the harmful values of incessant accumulation and overspending.
Saying, “What I have is enough,” and curbing credit-card-style overspending are actually two excellent reasons not to upgrade to Logos 6.
UPDATE: The “6 Reasons” email I received from Logos had no author’s name on it. I didn’t see an author’s name on the blog version of the post, either, until just before this post was about to go live. I direct my critique, though, to Logos as a whole, since the individual post is emblematic of Logos’s marketing approach in general.
Want to read the Old Testament in Greek on all your devices? This is the cheapest way I’ve seen to get started: until midnight PST tomorrow (1/6/15) night, you can get this Septuagint bundle for less than $50. It includes
This is really an incredible deal, given that the Rahlfs-Hanhart text in print is about $50 (and doesn’t include running parsings). The LEH Lexicon in print runs anywhere from $40 to $80.
What can Olive Tree do, you ask? See my gathered posts here, including my recent review of a five-volume dictionary set that is still on sale.
The advantage to having the above combo in Olive Tree is that you can tap any word in the Rahlfs-Hanhart Greek text and get instant parsing information.
You can instantly access that word’s lexical entry in the LEH lexicon. I especially appreciate LEH’s inclusion of word frequency counts, according to sections of the LXX:
Using the split window setup, here’s what the Rahlfs text with apparatus looks like:
Though Rahlfs never intended his apparatus in this volume to be fully critical, it does help you at least compare LXX readings as found in Vaticanus (B), Alexandrinus (A), and Sinaiticus (S).
And because Olive Tree is fully cross-platform, you can sync any notes you take or highlights you make and they appear on any device on which you have Olive Tree.
Find the whole bundle here, on sale for just a little while longer.
I don’t really know much about Festivus, but in honor of it, for less than 24 hours, Nisus Writer Pro is on sale. I was pleasantly surprised by this really versatile and smooth (and high-powered) word processor when I started using it a few months ago.
Find Nisus Writer Pro here. You can also get Nisus Writer Express and a sweet Mac Mail searching program (InfoClick) on sale. I don’t think it gets priced this low, usually.
Here’s the pricing info, from the Nisus newsletter:
Nisus Writer Pro is $55 for the full version (regular price $79) and $35 for the upgrade (regular price $49). Nisus Writer Express is priced at $20, the upgrade price is just $15. InfoClick is only $10! Family Packs for both Express and Pro are also discounted. You can purchase from our store and from the Mac App Store (full versions only).
All you need to do is go to our store and buy, no coupons required. You will be happy you did as you will receive a fantastic deal on great Nisus products.
I have switched almost all of my work away from Word and Pages to Nisus Writer Pro. I highly recommend it. There are also demo/trial versions at the links above.
Now you can get 15% off any base package in Logos 6 through Words on the Word. If you order a base package through this Logos landing page, Logos feeds a percentage back to me, which I’d use for resources supporting the work of Words on the Word. (Current project I’m excited about: Greek Psalms in a Year.)
Check it out here, or just use the promo code ABRAMKJ6 when you checkout with a base package in your Logos cart. My review of Logos 6 is here.
Accordance 11 is now available. Here I offer a full review.
To fully understand all I appreciate in Accordance, I offer you this collection of links to my Accordance 10 review posts. While potential upgraders will want to know what is new in 11, those new to Accordance altogether will find a wealth of practical and impressive features. For example, a few initial standouts when I reviewed version 10 were: Analytics (#1 here), Flex Search (first feature noted here), the use of the Command key on Mac to make the Instant Details pane do even more, and Construct searches (see #2 here).
None of the features that so impressed me in Accordance 10 has disappeared. The overall layout and appearance of 11 is similar to 10. (Accordance 10 offered a significant update in appearance over version 9.)
An overview of the features in Accordance 11 is here. I’ve found 7 improvements in particular to be laud-worthy:
A new option is available when you have a Bible text open and click the “Add Parallel” button: Info Pane. Here’s what it looks like:
Though you can save a Workspace with dozens of commentaries tied to a Bible text, Info Pane automatically pulls up all the commentaries (and Study Bibles!) you own that treat a given verse. Clicking on the cover image takes you (in a new pane) to that commentary. What’s especially thoughtful about how this feature was programmed is that just hovering the cursor over a cover image shows the text from that commentary in the Instant Details pane.
You can also choose from a variety of Cross-Reference modules to display hyperlinked related verses in the Info Pane. The Topics section quickly links you to other verses that address the same themes your passage does.
The Apparatus portion is an especially nice feature for doing textual criticism–you can see the information multiple apparatuses contain very quickly.
Accordance 11.0.1 already added something neat: you can command-click on your Cross-References in the Info Pane to see them all at once.
So command-clicking on the Cross-References at right here:
yields this:
The Info Pane is useful in the Gospels, too, where it pulls up “Parallel Passages.”
Whereas in Accordance 10 I had to create and save new Workspaces with relevant commentaries for a given book of the Bible, now in 11 the Info Pane means I can get up and running with research on any book, right away.
And the speed with which everything operates from the Info Pane is quite incredible. Long-time Accordance users probably won’t be surprised, but it is good to see that even a more advanced and robust feature like the Info Pane operates with the same expected speed that makes Accordance what it is.
New to the online store in Accordance 11 is the chance to “Custom Upgrade,” which provides users with a discounted collection rate if they already own modules contained in that collection. The Custom Upgrade option is recently also available for various Add-on Bundles. This new feature will especially be welcomed by long-time users who will essentially be rewarded now for past purchases, should they decide to upgrade in various instances.
When I first heard about this feature, I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal–predictive text entry is already available in Google and a host of other free programs. But Quick Entry really does speed up my work with Accordance. One especially neat thing about this feature is how it works with Bible texts.
One can toggle between searching a Bible by Words or Verses. But here I get both options suggested at once, just by typing in the letter “G.” I can then select an option from the drop-down menu, which narrows if I type additional letters. This is a good refinement to the program.
You can have Accordance 11 automatically organize your tools into the following folders:
Of course, further customization is possible, but this makes for a great starting point, having everything so well-sorted, which it wasn’t in Accordance 10. David Lang from Accordance has explained the re-organization in detail here. (If you’re already an Accordance user considering an upgrade to 11, you’ll appreciate what David has to say.)
This easier organization also greatly enables what has recently become my most used new feature in Accordance 11….
Search All (Accordance 10) was fine, but Research (Accordance 11) is even better.
We’re in the season of Advent now. What does my Accordance library have to say about this important time of preparation? Think of Research as harnessing the power of a Google search, but utilizing the content of all the books Google only allows limited preview to. In a matter of seconds, or less, Accordance goes through all my Dictionaries (selected in the drop-down menu at top left in the image below) for “Advent.” The resources that have search hits are neatly listed in the left sidebar, and the main pane of the window below allows me to quickly scroll through all the places “Advent” appears. There is an option to see “More…” of a hit result, while still staying in the same Research tab. Or you can just click on “Open” to go directly to the resource:
At first I thought the new Research was just pretty cool, but it’s much more advanced than Search All, well-executed, and easy to navigate. I find myself using it much more than I used Search All in version 10.
How does it tie in to the newly organized Library? From that drop-down menu that gave me “Dictionaries,” I can hone my search in on any category of tools in the library–Grammars, Commentaries, Greek Lexicons, etc.
Here–it’s worth showing two more search results, just so you can see how cool a thing Research is:
Accordance 11 offers some improvements to User Notes, not the least of which is that users can at last take notes on commentaries, books, and other non-biblical resources they own. You can do this in Kindle, iBooks, Logos, etc., so I’m glad Accordance is caught up here. This has been a long-requested user request, so will be a much-appreciated addition.
You can make a single note file that is notes on one book, or you can make a note file that includes notes on multiple books you own.
There is also now full Unicode support for Notes.
Okay, this is definitely not a new feature, but it’s so much a part of what makes Accordance Accordance that I am compelled to mention it. Even running Research queries returns results before you can even think to navigate away to Firefox and check your email. Once again Accordance has added new features without sacrificing their trademark speed.
There’s still room for improvement, though. Here are some desired features:
1. More Seamless Syncing for User-Created Tools and Notes
The iOS version of Accordance allows the syncing and editing of User Notes, but does not allow the preservation of formatting styles therein. The iOS app also does not permit editing of User Tools at all. Accordance has noted that both are forthcoming in future updates, which I’ll be happy to see. The lack of ability to edit User Tools on iOS however, has led me to begin to use Evernote in place of Accordance on iPad, since Evernote edits and syncs automatically across multiple devices.
This is not a criticism of Accordance 11 per se (i.e., the desktop app), but it does affect the overall Accordance user experience. The installation screens in Accordance 11 hint that a 2.0 iOS app is not too far off.
2. More Robust Editing Capabilities in User Notes
I’ve often wished (whether in User Notes tied to a biblical verse or for my “Books of the Bible” User Tool) to be able to drop and drag images, or even just make a bulleted list easily. There are workarounds, but not easy ones. Editing options are fairly limited:
The “Auto Link” button was an addition in a later version of Accordance 10. That’s one thing Evernote can’t do; any verse references in notes you write are automatically hyperlinked to the version of your choice.
Accordance has hinted more is on the horizon. In the meantime, I’ve become reliant on with Evernote for sermon preparation and note-taking.
3. Future Additions to Info Pane
Given that Logos has had both a Passage Guide and Exegetical Guide since at least Logos 4, Accordance’s Info Pane feels a bit overdue. Similarly, BibleWorks’s Resource Summary Window (bottom left pane here) quickly links to grammars, lexicons, and other verse-by-verse references.
At the time of this review, the Info Pane does not have a Grammars section or Lexicons section or (what would be really fun) a Diagrams section. The improvements in Library organization and the Research feature make it really easy to get to words in multiple lexicons at once, so this is not a huge critique, but a more robust Info Pane would be great. Knowing Accordance’s responsiveness to user requests, I expect the Info Pane will grow and expand over time.
I have a contact form at Words on the Word. (Feel free to drop me a line.) Easily the most common inquiry I receive is folks asking things like, “Which is better: Accordance or Logos or BibleWorks?” or, “How can I do x in Accordance?” This post is not a comparative review (this one is). So I won’t answer that question in those terms here.
But I will say that the speed of Accordance and its search capabilities are hard to beat. Bibleworks is just as fast and can also run complex queries, but Accordance has more biblical studies resources, and just as many (or more) original language resources, not to mention the most customizable workspace setup of any software program (Bible or otherwise) I can think of. You gathered from the above that I like Evernote–though I also find myself wishing I could set up my workflow in it as flexibly as I can in Accordance.
Thinking about diving in? Check out all the Accordance collections here.
If you’re already using Accordance and wondering about the upgrade to 11, it’s a no-brainer. Go for it. It’s quite affordable for all the features you’ll get. The upgrade costs $59.90 ($49.90 if you have Accordance 10). And don’t forget about potential discounts you may qualify for.
Accordance has quite a few sources of support, too. Check out their blog for more features and tips and tricks in Accordance 11. All their sources of support (a video podcast, user forums, online seminars, and more) are here.
Accordance 11 is one of the apps I use almost every day. Accordance 10 was already good enough to be my first stop in Bible software. Version 11 has taken several significant steps forward that make it even more enjoyable and efficient to use.
Thanks to Accordance for the review license to Accordance 11. See my other Accordance posts (there are many) gathered here.
If you’re at SBL/AAR 2014 this last day, Accordance Bible Software is offering the best deal I’ve ever seen from them: $250 gets you the (normally $499) Essential Collection.
The deal is only available for new users. If you’re trying to decide what you think, you can see my Accordance 10 review series here, and my initial impressions of the new Accordance 11.
Here are a few other booths you might check out, too, before the conference ends.
Accordance 11 is now available.
I’ve already highlighted some of the new features, as well as posted about the new Collection upgrades.
I plan to write more soon in review of the program upgrade. For now, I point you to this excellent post from Accordance, describing the “Top 11 Features of Accordance 11.”
Okay, okay–I’ll post a couple more quick looks inside now, too. The overall layout of the program hasn’t changed as much as Accordance did when going from version 9 to 10. But there are two major new features that immediately make themselves indispensable, and better aid the user in accessing resources:
With a Bible text open, click on the familiar “Add Parallel” button and select the top “Info Pane” option. You then see this (click or open in new tab to enlarge image):
Commentaries, cross-references, thematic topics, and critical apparatuses from your library all show up instantly. And–this is especially cool–by hovering over the book cover of a commentary or apparatus, you can see the content. The Instant Details in the image above (the pane at the bottom) shows the contents of the BHS apparatus for Exodus 20:1, just by my hovering the cursor over the apparatus image in the Info Pane.
I thought Accordance 10’s “Search All” feature was fine–it wasn’t perfect, but it still very quickly helped you comb through all your resources at once for a given search. But the Research Tab is now faster (no idea how they did that), and the search results are (a) more clearly organized and (b) easier to work through. It looks like this when I look up Bonhoeffer:
I’ll post more again soon. I’m already making regular use of the new features above in my weekly sermon preparation.
Thanks to OakTree Software, which allowed me to beta test Accordance 11 and has given me a review copy. More to come.
Logos 6 looks good and offers some innovative, interactive tools for Bible study.
There are a lot of upgrade options. The upgrade process has not been as clear as it could be. But I think I’ve figured it out–and I was a beta tester! So if it hasn’t been clear to me, my hunch is that’s true for others, too.
In case it’s helpful to anyone else, here’s a short post on how to get Logos 6.
On February 3, 2015, Faithlife (umbrella company for Logos) will make its Logos 6 engine free. It won’t have the datasets (mentioned below), nor the Interactives (see here), but I believe it will have basic improvements like the Search Everything and notes upgrades.
Check out Logos 6’s new features here. I mentioned in my review of Logos 6 that the Interactives are, I think, the best part.
There are three crossgrade levels, and they’re pricier than you’d expect. They’re all noted and compared here. Crossgrades don’t give you new books, but they get you the Logos 6 engine (i.e., software), as well as its new features, interactive resources, media, and datasets. (I’m especially impressed at the moment by the Propositional Flow Outline.) As one of Logos’s pages puts it: “The crossgrade packages allow you to power your existing library with the new Logos 6 features.”
This is where it gets confusing. You can buy a Base Package–and previous purchases count toward your customized dynamic pricing–that gives you new texts, books, etc. and that gives you some or all (depending on the Base Package level) of the datasets, media, and interactive resources.
So if you bought Logos 5 Gold, Logos 6 Gold will cost you money, but not nearly as much as if you’re buying for the first time. Logos 6 Gold supplies you with all the new datasets and features, as well as some new books and commentaries.
For Base Packages you can choose from Starter, Bronze, Silver, Gold, all the way up through the Collector’s Edition. If you buy Bronze, for example, you get new books and some of the new datasets and interactive resources in Logos 6, but not all.
Making your decision more potentially difficult is that Logos offers denomination-based base packages at various levels.
All the Base Packages are detailed here. Especially useful is this interactive Base Package comparison chart.
UPDATE: Get 15% off base packages here, or use the promo code ABRAMKJ6 when you checkout with a base package in your Logos cart.
Logos 5 had what was acknowledged by the company to be an unclear rollout and upgrade process. The Logos 6 rollout has been better, but still could have been clearer (and should be simpler, perhaps with less options?).
The best single, succinct summary Logos has published on upgrading can be found here.
See more at the home page for Logos 6.
Logos 6 launches today.
Logos 6 sports a number of new features. Here are my favorite ones so far. Click on any image or open in a new tab to see it larger.
This is the most impressive part of Logos 6, in my view.
I would have loved to have the interactive “Psalms Form and Structure” when preaching through the Psalms this past summer. You can click on any of the Psalm bubbles above to get a structural outline and more information. As you can see in the left sidebar, you can sort the Psalms visually by genre (really helpful), attribution (author), and more. Out of all the Interactives, this one is my favorite: visually appealing and really practical. There’s also an Interactive for the Proverbs.
Searching your Logos library for “type:Interactive” pulls up all the Interactive resources in Logos 6. Here are a few more worth highlighting:
Here’s Logos’s video of the Psalms Form and Structure:
It’s not the CIA, and it’s not Facebook, although it does sort of function like an amalgamation of the two (in a good way).
Factbook looks and feels like one of the Guides (Exegetical or Passage) Logos has, and updates what in Logos 5 was called Bible Facts.
Basically any noun (people, places, things, Bible books, events, etc.) pulls up a corresponding Factbook panel. If I’m researching Isaac, for example, typing “Isaac” into Factbook will pull up multiple collapsible hyperlinked sections where I can learn more about him: events in which he’s involved, resources in my library in which he appears (that I can click on for more), even a nifty “Referred to as” sub-section, so I can find all his mentions as “my son,” which is important for understanding Genesis 22, for example.
You can search across Bibles and commentaries and resources. Here are hit results, all of which are hyperlinked and can be explored for more, when I search everything for Abram:
The new Inline Search feature (watch it in action here) is pretty cool, too.
These are two new sections that can be accessed in the Guides (Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Sermon Starter Guide is how I’ve gotten them). Have a look, and note that Ancient Literature is even sub-divided into Quotations, Allusions, and more:
and:
I run Logos 6 on an early 2008 iMac, but with a hard drive that’s been replaced in the last year. As a point of comparison, Accordance runs well on the same machine and returns search results quickly.
Logos’s lack of comparative speed on a Mac (even newer ones) improved between Logos 4 and 5. And you can see that the search times in the Search Everything query above are quite fast and impressive. However, it’s not uncommon even in Logos 6 for what I would consider a simple search to take 3 to 5 seconds (or more) to return results. The frequent Indexing and “Preparing Your Library” messages on startup are a pain that I really hope Logos pays attention to improving (or eliminating), especially for Mac users.
I do understand from the Logos forums that PC users and those with Solid State Drives see faster performance, but I would use Logos more often if it had consistently faster overall performance.
All that said, the Interactives alone (which are not sluggish) make Logos 6 worth the price of the upgrade. Sure, you can Google “Israelite Feasts and Sacrifices” and hope for the best. Or you can open the Interactive in Logos and see (and sort) this:
And this:
Check out Logos 6 here, and use the promo code ABRAMKJ6 when you checkout with for 15% off base packages.
Or you can click the banner below:
UPDATE: More on how to upgrade here.
Thanks to Logos for the chance to use Logos 6 as a beta tester.
Words on the Word 
