MindManager for Mac (and how I use it)
If you rock a Mac, like me, you’ll be pleased to know that there is now a version MindManager that works with OSX! I’m super-stoked about it. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now, and it’s definitely in daily rotation. It’s my standard notetaking and brainstorming application. I’ve gotten into the habit of using it for taking notes in conference presentations, since it’s so easy to make connections between ideas (and my handwriting bites). At the last conference I attended, I just output all my mindmap notes as pdf files and sent them to the folks in my office who hadn’t attended. Very nice.
When I have to do presentations, like The Secret Art of Managing Your Boss, this is what I use. In fact, when I did that presentation, I ditched the standard print-all-your-slides-as-a-handout technique and just used a one-page mindmap of the presentation. People loved it, and since I was supposed to bring 200 copies of my handouts (and my presentation was 85 slides long), it paid for itself right there. I think the mindmap method of presentation handouts provides a much richer and contextually relevant document for viewers.
By way of comparison, I’ve used a few other mindmap tools for OSX, including all the commercial offerings. Prior to MindManager, I stuck with FreeMind, since it had (for me) the most intuitive keyboard setup of the other options and it’s free. Some of the commercial offerings for Mac have a decent set of graphics, which FreeMind lacks, but I’m not a heavy graphics user in my mindmaps. MindManager also has an excellent set of graphics, btw, and the keyboard entry setup is easily as intuitive as FreeMind–at least to my fingers. Like MindManager, FreeMind will run on both Mac and Windows machines, but that’s because it’s a Java app. Java apps run pretty good on my Mac, but I found them to be a little clunky on my old Windows machine and FreeMind was no exception. MindManager was built from the ground up for both Mac and Windows and doesn’t require Java–it’s just a native app on both platforms. Now I can exchange MindManager files with colleagues who run the Windows version, and vice versa. Very helpful.
I’ve seen some tips for combining ActiveWords and MindManager on a Windows machine and that looked pretty helpful. I’m going to mess around with something similar for Quicksilver and MindManager. If anyone has any tips, I’m open…
I love the idea of mind map handouts. Not only is it a money and time saver for the presenter, it shows how the process went together. A little background, if you will, to the presentation.
I must say,however, I still use FreeMind on my Windows machine. I looked at MindManager some time back and didn’t see any compelling reason to spend the money. The java app (FreeMind) is fast and extremely easy to use and like you said, free.
Thanks again for the time on handouts.
It looks interesting and I’ll give it a try, but the price is steep. $229 for non-academic users ($129 for education.) I don’t know if I would use it enough to justify that price. Bust out retail on BBedit is two hundred and I use that horse every single day.
Great post. I followed recently the same path and switched from FreeMind to MindManager for Mac OS for my implementation of GTD.
I have posted a template, which may be of interest to MindManager for Mac users on my blog. It should however work just fine on the PC version.
If this is of interest see:
http://venier.blogspot.com/2006/06/gtd-on-mindmanager-template.html
On Wintel machines, I understand that Results Manager is most popular and was very favorably reviewed by Marc Orchant.