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MindManager back for Mac
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Posted by Franz Grieser
Mar 24, 2018 at 08:19 PM
Jan S. wrote:
>It would make a really good dashboard application. But I never took the
>time to set it up. Also from a productivity standpoint having a “visual”
>system is probably overrated—many people do quite well with the
>complete opposite, like org-mode, or are nostalgic about some DOS
>program.
If you are a visual person, a visual dashboard might be perfect - and not overrated.
Posted by Jan S.
Mar 24, 2018 at 08:48 PM
Also to the “off-topic” discussion. Many people don’t realize this but the big money for tech companies is (like for any other company) in government contracts. Which is probably why the classic OneNote program is dying. Microsoft wants to get in all classrooms, not just in the US but world wide. So they stripped down the app and added special features for teachers and students. Then they can either sell lots of surface tablets to school district—- and the corresponding professional services: cloud infrastructure, training etc.—- or get license fees from third parties (which is how Microsoft got big) like Lenovo, Dell etc. for their computers.
The importance of “data” seems—- to me at least—- very overrated. I can’t see a logical reason why companies wouldn’t be dissatisfied with Facebook or Google Ads in a couple of years. Just like they have been with magazine and newspaper ads previously. I think we are in the early stages of big data right now and many people can get away with making authoritative statements. There is really no good way of testing how reliable the predictions models are, that supposedly revolutionize marketing. But there is an obvious incentive for the people who develop them to overstate their effects. For example by using ridiculous multiplicators—-as in the example given in the thread above: paying 2$ for a single row in a spreadsheet. That would only be justifiable if one could expect to sell products with an average value of well above 2$ per person, which seems unreasonable to me. But selling more toothpaste by using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning sure sounds good—- right now.
Also, if more and more services move the cloud, then there could also be positive effects—- at least for the people in this forum. It would create more incentives for smaller developers to work on desktop software. Just like the proliferation of streaming created a vinyl revival.
Posted by Jan S.
Mar 24, 2018 at 09:15 PM
Conditional on the fact that there actually are “visual persons” this would be true. However, it doesn’t seem that people should be categorized by their learning/working “style”. Of course, they can be categorized by being more visual, textual, linear, non-linear etc. But those preferences are probably not hard-wired but also learned.
For example, somebody might take notes on a text as a mind-map. Then they are tested on their understanding of the text and receive an A. Now they are convinced that mind-mapping is a superior method of understanding—- even if they would have gotten an A anyway by learning via a different method or by not learning at all. This often holds true even if the expectation of high achievement is repeatedly disappointed: they learn with mind-maps but don’t get an A. The initial reward often introduces a very strong path dependency.
This is true for many phenomena. Many people swear by underlining or highlighting passages in a text. Meanwhile different approaches have been tested again and again. Highlighting is by far the worst—- even worse than just reading. So perception and actual outcome might be quite different. Highlighting is of course perceived as work by the student. It is also observable while thinking isn’t. However, it’s not a good representation of thinking/understanding, so the two shouldn’t be confused. Successful scholars who mainly highlight texts succeed despite of their inferior methods not because of them. I would think that a similar argument can be made about many ‘productivity techniques’—- visual tools included.
Of course dashboards etc. make a lot of sense when there are to many data points to be related by a single brain.
Franz Grieser wrote:
>If you are a visual person, a visual dashboard might be perfect - and
>not overrated.