Such a poor effort

Lets get one thing straight. I am a huge fan of the MindMeister web app. Its awesome. Allows me to do work on any workstation, across any device. It is well designed, clean, intuitive to use etc - all good stuff.

Unfortunately this review is about the iOS app itself. Spending top $$ (relative terms) to attain an iOS version of the webapp seemed like a smart idea from my side. But after using it for a month I must say this is a very poor effort from MindMeister team.

Here are the shortcomings I feel attribute to such a low rating from my side

1) Text entry is a disaster - text entry in an app such as this is the basic bread and butter item. The fact that the team MindMeister has failed to implement a more intuitive way to enter text is shocking. And even with what is implemented - entering text is extremely difficult. For example, if you enter a full sentence, the width of the node allows only 1 text to appear per line. Which would be passable - only that you only get to see the 1st line of text (ie the first word). So imagine that, the rest of the sentence is not even viewable as you keep typing. This is basic stuff guys - come on, get it right!
2) No undo button - dont you dare delete or add something by mistake, else there is no way for you to bring it back.
3) Random errors - it tells me that my 2 of my mindmaps are not synced correctly to the web. Ok. But at least tell me what the problem is so that I can fix it. Nope - nothing given
4) Crashes - it will crash once every 2 days, which is one too many times to my liking.

Look, Im not against the company MindMeister. As a matter of fact they have done a fantastic job with the web tool allowing us to create some rather awesome mindmaps on the go. I pay for that service and will continue doing so as it helps me personally and professionally.

But this app - its extremely buggy and doesnt do simple things right. This app just got an update - so that it would work on the retina enabled new iPAD. Before this the last update was in November. I would recommend waiting for another few months to see if these guys get this app right - finally!

In the mean time, use the web app version - its works wonderful in Safari. And the only thing you lose out on is the extra real estate this app has over the web version. Oh and if you are not a paying member then you have a limit on number of maps you can have on the web.

Thanks for reading folks

Sunny Bahamas about Mind Mapping - MindMeister, v4.2