An in-depth TheBrain app-praisal !

Posted by Hugh
Jul 6, 2014 at 11:30 AM

I’ve long hesitated over The Brain. In fact I seem to recall owning a licence years ago, on Windows. In those days, the revolving of the animation at the centre of the view appeared to devour most of my computer’s resources!

Then there came a stage when The Brain seemed to concentrate on the corporate market, and went into hibernation for personal customers. Now it seems to have re-emerged, refreshed and much more powerful (and more expensive). But what does The Brain do that is better than any other personal software tool does, for the price?

As a mindmap/graphical outliner for articles, speeches, reports or the equivalent, there are other tools that will give you more than four “levels” in one view, and quickly deliver OPML output - neither of which as far as I can see The Brain can do.

Its strength seems to lie, as Paul Korm says, in knowledge management. But can it do more than DevonThink, say, with its “See also” functionality? I guess if you tend to visualise information, logical arguments and the relationships between ideas strictly in graphical terms, The Brain may be for you. But is a series of graphical links innately more powerful, memorable or expressive than, say, an indented list that also uses clones or replicants?