How MindManager is going so Boring and Useless?

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  • Updated 2 years ago
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MindManager never evolve to keep power user using it all the time. It’s frustrating to use always quite the same since more than 15 years (I use this product since the beginning, starting with Tony):

1.       A lot of add on which are bugging very often, with low value.

2.       Not even able to adapt the character size on Windows when you use 125% for example, and this feature is on Windows since a very long time.

3.       AND THE more IMPORTANT STILL on ONE UNIQUE CENTRAL IDEA in the center of the MAP. WHY they didn’t ADD multiple central idea that we can link. In one word it’s becoming outdated or unfitted for me. It's too basic to help in complex situations.

4.       At last you don’t get much for your money, this product is very expensive for what it is.

I’m very annoyed with this product, it never evolved to meet the user’s requirement.

Unless commercial and financial people in the company I don’t know if somebody from Mindjet is paying any attention.

Thanks

Yannick


PS: I had many version of the product in other words I spend a lot.

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Yannick

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  • Annoyed and Frustrated

Posted 2 years ago

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2 years ago
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Bob Levy

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1.  Mind-mapping is the most important app in my collection. Boring, maybe, but useful YES.  Is the company Boring? Yes.  They have definitely lost touch with the user community as evidenced by the lack of response by the company to so many of the observations, complaints and suggestions on this community.mindjet group.  Problems and issues are YEARS old with zero status update by employees.   This community is comprised of what seems to be long time users and very little vendor support. 
Your last sentence, "Unless commercial and financial people in the company I don’t know if somebody from Mindjet is paying any attention."  in my opinion, describes the situation. Financial people are the only ones left.  The mind mapping support people and developers have become invisible.

The product (as I use it) is great, needs many improvements, is way to expensive, but I keep renewing and spending too much money.. Most of the people that I have convinced to buy over the last 15+ years do NOT renew.  The basic function is what they bought and use.
2 years ago
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Jigs Gaton, Consultant

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@ Yannick: I can't say I agree with any of this, if we are talking about MM 2018. One of the closest competitors (https://www.matchware.com/buy) is about the same price, with less features and pizazz imo. 

The point you raised about multiple central topics within one map is interesting, even if that idea goes against the basic tenants of mind-mapping. What you are implying (I think) is that MM should allow for a multi-map project, or as in MS Project, a master plan / sub plan structure. Since I primarily use MM as a front-end to MS Project, that would be very useful for me. See my article for a how-to on that here: https://www.mpug.com/articles/mind-mapping-your-way-to-better-microsoft-project-plans/

However, with the inclusion of publishing in MM 2018, I might even ditch Powerpoint for most of the presentations that I do, and just do them in MM from now on. It was so nice going to a preso yesterday and just emailing ahead the URL to the event coordinator - no laptop, dongles or USB drives for me :) Here is an example of what I mean: https://share.mindmanager.com/#publish/dMpXLBAaSHL6yiWRlKOVn52GdaKuGjvin4xjHvLo

Now I don't know if MM 2018 Publishing was a user request or not, but it's certainly innovative. Can't do that in Powerpoint! 

Cheers,
Jigs
2 years ago
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Alex Gooding, Champion

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Thanks Jigs for that example of MM 2018's Publish feature. It really demonstrates how effective it is.

I agree with most of your other responses to Yannick. One thing is that you can adopt a form of a master plan - sub-plan approach in MM2017 and 2018 using dashboard maps though I suspect that wouldn't translate to MS Project particularly well.

Yannick, is Jig's interpretation of your comments correct or were you talking maps without a defined centre at all? If so, I note that you're using MM2015 and I don't think concept maps were introduced to MindManager until after that version. These go some way to addressing this issue, though I suspect that MM will always remain inherently based on a central topic. If you want conceptual maps without a central topic you are better off looking at products like The Brain.

Bob, I might have agreed with your comments about Mindjet a year or so ago but things do seem to be looking up under their new owners Corel. I don't know if you've tried MM2018 but it seems to be a pretty solid upgrade, with a lot of useful features.

They also fixed a bug which I noticed had cropped between 2017.1 and 2017.2 in dashboard maps, plus I could forgive them just about anything after they brought back conditional formatting in MM2018 (actually this was never previously a core part of the program but it was a key feature of the Power Markers add-in which they deleted when they purchased and integrated Power Markers into MM).

It's early days yet but Corel at least seem prepared to invest in MM and to respond to user concerns. Let's hope this attitude continues.

(Edited)
2 years ago
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Jigs Gaton, Consultant

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Thx for the comment Alex. I had no idea that Corel now owns MM. Cool, I'm old enough to remember using WordPerfect, Corel Draw and Avid - good apps for the day! 

On dashboard maps, I'm assuming you mean map rollups? If so, you are right. The rolled up map is not treated like a sub project on export, but a link to the map file is created instead.

It would be nice if both the main map and the rolled up ones were converted to .mpp files on export, and then have all the maps turned into a master / sub project plan in MS Project. That would be something!

More on the publishing feature of 2018: my partner uses the software by Matchmaker, which also has a publish feature, but without the presentation mode found in MM. The presentation mode is really innovative, and reflects an understanding on how to present data using visual communication best practices - nice job Corel/MM! 
(Edited)
2 years ago
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Ary Velstra, Expert Trainer

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I think Yannick uses a different product.
I get to this conclusion based om his remark: "(I use this product since the beginning, starting with Tony)"
No Tony in my memory with regard to MindManager... (OK Tony Buzan, but he is involved in some other mindmap softwae product)
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