I purchased a Sente 6 license and installed it under Mavericks, following directions. All attempts to add the registration number failed with an odd error ('signature failed'). Part of this was my fault (I used the wrong email address), but I followed directions to fix this. Still no success. The support person then made a series of suggestions, all of which failed. I supplied the logs he requested and detailed reports on what I had tried. After two days of trying to sort this out, he simply stopped responding to my inquiries. After four days, when I was still unable to register and got no response despite multiple politely worded requests for help, I wrote a more firmly worded message saying basically that I required some kind of reply, and if I didn't get one, I would be compelled to file a complaint. I got an answer back almost immediately saying: No need to file a complaint, I have issued a refund you should see within a day or two. They would have saved me a lot of trouble if they had just admitted that they didn't know how to fix the problem. It's great software, but I was very unhappy with this unprofessional and rude treatment by support. And I still haven't seen the refund.

I decided that I need to write some positive reviews on MU of the software I use most often and Sente is a good candidate because I have it open almost every day. Why? Because all of my references are there! But far more informative are my reasons for using the application.

Like any hopelessly disorganized grad student, as comprehensive exams loomed ever closer, I decided I needed some applications to do some digital organizing for me, particularly one to keep track of my references. References when you're an undergrad are a doddle. Pull up a giant stack of books and dutifully type out your references in alphabetical order! At least that's what I did. But grad work is long and complex. So, as I churned out little papers for my last semester or two of classes, I started testing out these reference managers.

I started with Endnote because I asked for advice and it seems to be the only program IT departments have ever heard of. Endnote was very "wasn't." If it wasn't crashing, it wasn't generating references as it should have. I am forced, against my will and better judgement, to use MLA (the despiser of footnotes and jewel of the wordy) and Endnote was still using MLA formatting from the late eighties (or something). In fact, I found this to be the case with Bookmarks too. Can you imagine how annoying it is to go through your bibliography and type "print," "web," etc. at the end of every reference of a (rather overambitious) 140 reference paper? If you can, perhaps you've used these apps before.

I knew something better had to be out there somewhere. After days of extensive searching on Google, I finally typed in "reference manager mac" and discovered Sente. Sente imported all my references from the other programs and, when I asked it to generate a bibliography, it actually added those irritating "print" and "web" tags. It struggled a bit with journal articles, but reference formatting is fully and easily editable so just a wee bit of tinkering and the app was back on track.

That was enough to convince me. So for years I've been storing my references on Sente. And in that time, the developers have added lots of features that I never use. I'm sure they're great for someone looking to start anew, but if, like me, you'd been using other programs, you probably aren't too interested. For instance, you can now add pdf files to Sente and even tag them. Unfortunately, Sente doesn't use OpenMeta so my years of tagging in Yep! would be undone in Sente.

Sente also has a cloud feature that I don't use. Maybe I've been avoiding my advisor in my log cabin in Montana too long, but I don't trust digital clouds. I'm certainly not going to store my beloved references in one! I'll just back everything up on my daisy-chained time machine.

Even though I don't use these features, I still believe Sente is a great app. It works with Scrivener. It generates references. It stores enough references for the i-ching and the complete works of Confucius. It'll even look them up on various sites and build them automatically (although I strongly recommend a human review - Sente may think it's a Cyberman, but it is still being upgraded).
Apologies.

Well supported by thoughtful and accommodating developers, this software is simply the best. As I complete my dissertation I'm always pleased to see what new features it has been given. Additionally, with the change to 6.6 the developers were very generous to existing users. Such a delight, and so well crafted, worth every penny.

Huh? 6.5.6 is the current version.

Wow, the new user interface in this update is brilliant!! I would give it five stars for this improvement.