Promising, but ultimately another mind map failure?

I think initial impressions of mind map software are important. If you notice major design errors of absences of function, this may be a sign to warn you off from paying the full price.

What’s lovely about SimpleMInd, at least for me, and what elevates it to an app that blows most others out of the water is the simple and intuitive ability to add and MOVE text boxes/shapes just by clicking and dragging. You can spend an hour or more trying to figure out how to do this with other mind mapping applications only to find out it can’t be done.

Design flaws, some serious, include: 1) You have no apparent control over where you save your mind maps. I made one, saved it—there’s no ‘save as’ function--and then searched my drive for its title. It was nowhere to be found. 2) There’s no ability to export to jpeg or pdf. 3) There’s no Open function under File.

I’ve sampled most of the mind mapping software available and the ease with which you can carry out some basic mind map functions in SimpleMind makes it a compelling application, one of the better ones in my view. But its weaknesses, especially if they’re not corrected in the for-sale version, might be deal killers for some.

NOTE: For those undertaking the potentially long process of sampling other mind mapping applications, here is one highlight from my experience. Omnigraffle is still, at least for me, hands down the best mind mapping software out there. It used to be free with prior Mac OSs, but is now super-expensive. No doubt they’ve killed a large potential market for themselves.

Bottom line: I still await a mind mapping tool with intuitive ease of use, a few added functions, and a price point that’s either free or $20 or less.

redshift13 about SimpleMind − Mind Mapping