mymind versus Apple's "multiple apps" overlay

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 25, 2015 at 04:37 PM

I have, with some trepidation, updated both my iPads (old iPad 2 and iPad Mini 2, so very different machines) to iOS 9 beta 2.

And to my surprise, it runs pretty well. Safari has a tendency to crash on the much older machine, but apart from that, most things run fine, albeit with the occasional hiccough (hiccup to you US readers).

My main reason for taking this step was to play with the new Notes. And yes, they’re really very nice.

On the downside, the drawing function isn’t supported on the iPad 2; neither is the multiple apps overlay, whereby you can pull a second app over the top of the one you’re working in by swiping in from the right edge of the screen (an app has to be open for this to work, otherwise you just move from one home screen to the next). But the operating system is smart: anything that’s not supported on the iPad 2 simply doesn’t appear, so you’d never know it’s there.

The whole system comes into its own on the iPad Mini 2. On an iPad Air 2, it will be even more exciting, because it will support two-pane displays (two apps side by side).

However, in a spirit of inquiry, I fired up the really very capable mymind (a bit like Tapose, only much, much better), and was amused to discover how much more flexible it is than Apple’s “multiple apps” offering.

mymind can have two windows open side by side. And in them, can show a wide variety of goodies, ranging from other notes in the various note collections through to lists of files in Dropbox or Google drive, web pages, photos and videos. Okay, so Apple’s new multiple apps approach can do this too. But mymind panes can be resized at will - there’s no fixed aspect. It’s very impressive. You can even edit two notes side by side, although the developer has admitted this is not supposed to be possible (and if you don’t do this in the right sequence, mymind will crash).

I’m also looking forward to the dual-pane view promised by Alfons Schmid for an upcoming version of Notebooks. Again, that should be much more powerful than the standard Apple offering (although possibly not on an iPad Air 2, with its full-scale multitasking).

And finally, although Ulysses doesn’t support dual panes, the latest version does now support folding (of groups) in the left-hand navigation bar. A huge relief and a huge improvement!

It’s always fun to play!