MaxThink doesn't run on Windows 10. At least I can't get it to.

I loved MaxThink on MS DOS. But Neil could not afford to pay a programmer to make a Windows version. He initally planned to do it himself with Delphi, and ultimately wrote it with Visual BASIC. I could not hack the user interface, and immediately fled to a now-dead outliner for attorneys. Then I fled to Mac.

Productivity apps seems to have a mortality rate comparable to first world war pilots. ;0)

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

If this forum had a little "heart" icon to click, I would have for this comment!!

Andy Brice wrote:

Productivity apps seems to have a mortality rate comparable to first
world war pilots. ;0)

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Jeffery Smith,

What do you use on the Mac? OmniOutliner? How would you rate the defunct NoteMap compared to OmniOutliner?

The best outline processor for writing on Windows today, it seems to me, is far and away Inspiration 9. (Despite its promotion primarily as a concept mapper.) (This omits InfoQube, but my hunch is that a program that's difficult to learn, as IQ is apparently, will not be fluid to use, unless you really use it a great deal.)

Inspiration is also available on the Mac. How would you rate it compared to Omni?

So many questions! I too use an outline processor primarily for writing legal briefs.

By the way, my impression is that MaxThink could have been great in its Windows incarnation, despite its limitations, if only it had a (multiple) undo capability. I made too many mistakes to continue using the program, but if I could have undone them, I think my fingers would learn. I see "Undo" as a basic outliner functionality, but it is absolutely indispensable when the interface is terribly complex.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

I loved MaxThink on MS DOS. But Neil could not afford to pay a
programmer to make a Windows version. He initally planned to do it
himself with Delphi, and ultimately wrote it with Visual BASIC. I could
not hack the user interface, and immediately fled to a now-dead outliner
for attorneys. Then I fled to Mac.

I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker 4.0 (beta) through its paces. I very much liked Notemap when I was on Windows, and thought it was the closest thing to Grandview but on Windows. I started with ThinkTank back in 1984. What MaxThink provided that other outliners didn't is "hoisting" and "de-hoisting" with ease using arrow keys. That really made it great for brainstorming (idea processing), not just the formatting in outline form. Once Notetaker is out of beta, I'll probably use that for most of my notetaking.

I failed to mention that Notetaker does have undo, but I cannot find the number of levels of undo possible.

Stephen Diamond wrote:

Jeffery Smith,

What do you use on the Mac? OmniOutliner? How would you rate the defunct
NoteMap compared to OmniOutliner?

The best outline processor for writing on Windows today, it seems to me,
is far and away Inspiration 9. (Despite its promotion primarily as a
concept mapper.) (This omits InfoQube, but my hunch is that a program
that's difficult to learn, as IQ is apparently, will not be fluid to
use, unless you really use it a great deal.)

Inspiration is also available on the Mac. How would you rate it compared
to Omni?

So many questions! I too use an outline processor primarily for writing
legal briefs.

By the way, my impression is that MaxThink could have been great in its
Windows incarnation, despite its limitations, if only it had a
(multiple) undo capability. I made too many mistakes to continue using
the program, but if I could have undone them, I think my fingers would
learn. I see "Undo" as a basic outliner functionality, but it is
absolutely indispensable when the interface is terribly complex.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker
4.0 (beta) through its paces.

Without breaking any NDA can you give an idea of how you're liking Notetaker? If you used the app before it was discontinued, is it essentially a rewrite that works the same way, or has it been rethought or reskinned?

MacOS complains about Inspiration 9 but it runs, albeit with a powerfully ugly interface. Feature-wise, Inspiration has a better basic feature-set than OO with better text processing and mind-mapping but import-export is sad ... as you might expect for an app which hasn't been updated in 5-7 years+ and has been, basically, abandoned in the general market. I don't expect that an update is coming, any time soon.

IMHO, btw, MaxThink is better off dead. It had an awful interface -- even in an *era* of awful interfaces -- and I found its developer a pompous ass the few times that I met him. It's not terribly surprising to me that he couldn't master Windows programming; he's one of those dudes who you could retire on if you bought him for what he was worth and sold him for what he thought he was worth.

BTW(2), if you're looking for a good 2-pane outliner with very capable outlining and extensive rtf word processing in the text pane then it's hard to beat the granddaddy of them all, TreePad. It's simple. lightweight and feature-rich. For the most part, it's like an MS Word which allows sub-documents for easy organization OR as a more stable Scrivener (albeit without handy things like tagging and corkboards). Unlike Scrivener, tables, lists, outlining and compiling panes into a single .rtf file work flawlessly. Treepad is Windows-only but it works great in Parallels (and probably VirtualBox) on MacOS because of its minimal requirements; working well on a 2GB Windows VM.

I don’t think Notetaker had ever been discontinued (Circus Ponies Notebook is dead, though). Notetaker had been sort of neglected, and late v3 builds seemed too unstable for me. Happily, the v4 beta seems very stable. I haven’t noticed any new features, and most betas don’t have a help file. I just happy to have a stable, reliable build with its v3 features. I feel that it is reliable enough to trust it with my important work-related information.

Jeffery

satis wrote:

Jeffery Smith wrote:
> I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker
> 4.0 (beta) through its paces.

Without breaking any NDA can you give an idea of how you're liking
Notetaker? If you used the app before it was discontinued, is it
essentially a rewrite that works the same way, or has it been rethought
or reskinned?

I believe it's worth mentioning that tomorrow November, 30th is the 35th anniversary of Brainstorm from BrainstormSW; running fine on every Windows version I have tested as well on my Mac under CrossOver.

Listerene,

Very informative. Do you happen to know why the education market hasn't sufficed to incentivize the development of Inspiration?