is Scapple the best for "thinking on paper"

Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 24, 2017 at 02:14 PM

Tinderbox maps can do everything Scapple maps do—plus several dozen additional features not possible at all with Scapple.

Scapple’s minimalist feature set is nice, but I would never consider it for complex modeling. The recent update (coming three years after the last, minor, update) provides a few minor tweaks. Eastgate, on the other hand, produces a dozen or so feature upgrades annually. Scapple has always seemed like an afterthought to Scrivener—not exactly abandonware, but not a core product either. If Scapple eventually incorporate’s Scrivener’s custom metadata it will be a contender—but on the other hand, custom metadata has been part of Tinderbox maps since inception.

Alternatives to Scapple include Tufts University’s VUE (which requires an outdated version of Java), and the excellent Cmap Tools from IHMC—which has been around for about the same amount of time as Tinderbox. Cmap is the only tool in the class that is cross-platform—Windows, macOS, Linux and iOS—and it has more features than Scapple.