TheBrain v. Obsidian as of May 2021

Posted by Graham Rhind
May 7, 2021 at 08:20 AM

@Dominik Actually, that’s a great example of what’s frustrated me about The Brain for years.

I have good procedural reasons to choose to import files rather than linking to them, and for having large numbers of attachments in single thoughts. I’ve never had a problem with this approach before. In The Brain 11 I can have a thought with 280 internal attachments and it opens within 2 seconds. In The Brain 12 the same thought takes 35 seconds to open, every single time. It makes the software unusable for me. Each time something like this changes (which is with almost every major update) I have 4 options:

1) Abandon The Brain
2) Change the way I work and spend significant amounts of time altering existing Brains (which is as you suggest)
3) Run different versions of The Brain in parallel
4) Continue to pay the subscription but stick with the current version until The Brain has sorted out the issues (which can take several years and several updates, as with the notes editor debacle between versions 8/9 and 11)

Up to now I’ve usually adopted a combination of options 2 to 4, but this latest version is the last straw. The developers have always brushed off concerns from users about some updates. I’m putting in a lot of effort to make my work adapt to the software instead of the software adapting to my work. In the good old days, of course, I would have bought an update and could stick with it without extra costs until a later, better, version came along. Now, with a subscription, I’d be paying to use legacy software. It’s time for me to walk away (for the time being) and vote with my wallet.

Sure, I shall miss The Brain more than they will miss my subscription money, but having my data in more boring but more stable (and, incidentally, very much cheaper) software is saving me time and money. I’m not saying I won’t go back at some stage, but I shall be much more wary about putting any amounts of data back into it.

@TempusFugit I find the non-subscription version rather limited considering its cost, but that may be a way forward for me at some time in the future.

Graham