MyThoughts Review

posted on Oct 31 in Reviews by Macness Admin

By Vincent Tan 

Validity, soundness, ad hominem, appeal to popularity, more and more fallacies – I’m sure all these terms are familiar to SMU students who have gone through an Analytical Skills course. With hundreds of terms to remember for the course, I am sure some (if not all) of us struggle to remember these terms and keep the information organized. Still fine for you? Make that a few times the information with the usual 4-5 CUs you take each term. Can’t handle it? MyThoughts comes in at this point to help you with the problem.

To put simply, MyThoughts is a Mac app that turns your classic mind map into an electronic one. Mind maps have long existed simply for the sake of organizing your knowledge and information. Turning a mind map into an electronic one has its advantages – no more erasing, re-organizing a branch, or even re-drawing an entire map when you re-organize your thoughts. Yes, MyThoughts allows you to make all these changes in a few clicks and keep your map as clean as ever.

Open up MyThoughts and you will be greeted by a “Thought” bubble right in the centre.

 

The clean and intuitive interface

This basically defines the appealing interface of MyThoughts – simple, clean and highly intuitive. I like to call this bubble the “central thought”, or simply the main idea if you like. So perhaps you would want to put “Analytical Skills” in.  How to do that? Duh, simply click on the word that you want to change!

Navigation is very easy. If you want to add a new branch to your idea, just click on the current branch and the “+” signs appear on either side of the selected object. Clicking on that will bring you to a new branch where you can enter your sub-idea. And so the process goes on and on. Everything works simply by clicking around your map.

Want to include the definition of ad hominem on a certain branch but fear cluttering up the mind map? This is where the Notes feature comes in. The Notes feature allows you to add more detailed explanation, examples to any branch on your mind map. These longer notes do not appear on the mind map itself but are contained in another interface. Once you have created a note, a Note symbol will appear beside the branch and navigating there is as easy as a single click.

Top: The Notes symbol as seen on the mind map

Bottom: The Notes interface for viewing and editing notes

There are also other features (mainly aesthetics) for you to explore, but one that I find particularly useful is the ability to export your mind map as Word or PDF. This allows you to share your maps with others who either don’t own a Mac or the application. What’s more – the Notes are exported too and the links are set up automatically on the PDF.

However, the app is on the pricey side ($49.99 on Mac App Store). While there are loads of colors and shapes to choose from, the app seems to lack templates and other features to allow you to mark certain points more easily. Overall, the app is useful for students but the price may be a major turn-off for most.

Pros:

• Clean, simple and intuitive interface
• Electronic mind map has its inherent benefits
• Notes function is highly useful in avoiding clutter
• Ability to export to other formats

 

Cons:

• Pricey – $49.99
• Lack of more advanced features
• Only for people who believe in the use of mind maps

 

Version Tested: MyThoughts 1.3.0 on MacBook Air 13” (Mid 2011) on Lion OS X 10.7.1

 

 

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