An in-depth TheBrain app-praisal !

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:34 PM

Hugh wrote:

>As a mindmap/graphical outliner for articles, speeches, reports or the
>equivalent, there are other tools that will give you more than four
>“levels” in one view, and quickly deliver OPML output - neither of which
>as far as I can see The Brain can do.

That’s where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating TheBrain, because I would agree it isn’t ideal for plotting out a speech or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular project and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn’t work that way, at least not optimally (though you can do that kind of work in TheBrain should you want to).

> >Its strength seems to lie, as Paul Korm says, in knowledge management.
>But can it do more than DevonThink, say, with its “See also”
>functionality? I guess if you tend to visualise information, logical
>arguments and the relationships between ideas strictly in graphical
>terms, The Brain may be for you. But is a series of graphical links
>innately more powerful, memorable or expressive than, say, an indented
>list that also uses clones or replicants?

I certainly would not urge anyone who is satisfied with DevonThink to switch to TheBrain. For me, DT has never worked, even though I appreciate the number of great features. TheBrain is not my data dump (that’s Evernote for now). It’s my primary project dashboard and management system, so for me the comparison with DT isn’t even really appropriate. I can’t do that kind of work in DT or any other info manager that uses a hierarchy, because that is too structured for the way I think.

The best way for me to illustrate this is with the demonstration I put up on my blog three years ago (TheBrain has changed a lot since then):

http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/personalbrain-as-a-management-tool/