Hi there,
Thanks for all the replies, people. I’ve spent a lot of times contemplating the pros and cons of every alternative that was recommended. I finally decided to go with iThoughts. Basic consensus on the internet is that MindNode is nicer and easier, but iThoughts wins in the options department, especially when exporting is concerned.
… and it turns out to be all I hoped it to be! I am very, very pleased:
- Free bubble placement works like a charm. There has to be a central node for now, it’ll be fixed in the next update. Right now I just keep it dangling at the top, like a name sign, so that’s no big deal
- You can make all sorts of connections, lines, arrows going one way or both, straight lines or curved (you can actually bend them to you hearts desire), descriptions can be added to the connections (appearing like bubbles in the middle of the line).
- You can shape your ideas just like you want them, moving individual bubbles around, or selecting entire sections and moving them, you can modify your bubbles in a lot of aspects ( I use different bubbles for characters, events , locations etc.) You can easily make your own legend on the side
- You can save locally, in Dropbox, in iCloud, on your NAS etc etc etc. It saves automatically, but you can make extra save points along the way. And you can backup an archive zip file periodically. I use my iCloud file as my “working file”, I make extra save points locally on my iDevice along the way, and I backup zip-files to my NAS, but you can choose a different workflow as you please. You can also export in a lot of formats to a lot of programs. Just, wow.
- Although I work on my iPad, it’s nice to know that a Windows version is on its way.
- And last but not least: the developer, Craig Scott, is awesome: he’s very easy to reach, responds quickly and helps you out while you learn about all the options
I’ve got all I need brainstorming-wise in this wonderful app. No need for Scapple on iOS for me now, iThoughts does all the things I want Scapple to do. And if I ever start using Scapple for Windows, hey, I can easily export my iThoughts-maps to Scapple in Scapple-format.