Price: $7.99 Score: 7/10 Genre: Productivity
The mind is a confusing, and often difficult thing to get a hold of. With iThoughtsHD though, it’s a little easier to wrap a mind map around the thoughts that seem to ebb and flow before disappearing forever.
Developed by CMS, iThoughtsHD works much like most other mind mapping programs out there. You start with a blank slate and then record your thoughts in the form of topic bubbles that connect with one another through squiggly lines of varying length.
While I wouldn’t recommend this app for anyone who doesn’t take the time to scribble down their ideas, it is a very effective way to tap out thoughts or integrate links. There is a little bit of a learning curve (especially if you’ve never used mind mapping before), but if you’re patient you’ll soon learn to utilize some of iThoughtsHD features to optimize your maps effectively.
One such example of that optimization is the “Keep Organized” toggle switch in the Properties menu on the upper left hand corner. Plus and minus icons attached to each thought also allow you to make specific branches disappear and reappear with the key of a button, and so that interrelated trains of thought don’t start looking like a dense set of brain neurons anytime early in the mapping process, iThoughts allows for maps that are 600x the size of the iPad screen. This size feature helps a lot, especially because new topics link to exactly where you touch on the iPad so for those who like clean white space, thought bubbles can be positioned far apart with the ability to slide between topics at your leisure.
On the whole, this is a great app with the ability to become an extremely useful tool. When maps are done you can import and export them to and from popular programs such as Freemind, XMind, Novamind, MindManager, MindView and iMindmap.
Bottom Line: iThoughtsHD is a clean and effective tool for the highly organized to-do list keeper and outliner type. It gets better the more you use it, and compatibility with other programs makes a difference for intense users.
