Is it worth it?

Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Sep 7, 2007 at 05:14 AM

How do you know development has been at a standstill? I don’t know. I assumed they just had a longer development cycle. Gael seems to have many corporate customers, and I think corporations tend to prefer development at Microsoft-pace. This is far from slow, but each release is a big event.

Anyway, I’m not even sure I care, as long as the product is otherwise supported, which it seems to be. I use a mindmapper in the manner of a pure outliner (albeit with the unfortunate two panes, which seems unavoidable with a mind mapper). To me an outliner is a collection of basic time-tested features (and of those innovations that really stand a chance of achieving parity with these classical stigmata of outlining). I am unperturbed by the lack of apparent development of BrainStorm, NoteMap, and MindGenius. (I don’t think MS Word did much more with its outliner in Office 2007—maybe someone can say definitely.) I don’t see outlining as a ‘discipline’ developing at a mad pace. (Information management technology is another matter, which is why the packrats are rightfully more concerned with life on the bleeding edge.) The only feature I would really like to see in MindGenius, at this moment, is customizable keyboard control. On the other hand, I find the pace of development of Visual Mind simply annoying, as I would the pace of Mind Manager, were I a user. I think it’s bloat in the worst sense.