Up until recently, whenever I needed to do a brain dump and get my thoughts better organized, I would often turn to pen, paper, and a hand-drawn mind map. I know Federico uses a mind map for his iOS review each year, and lots of other people love visualizing their thoughts that way too, but mind maps have never really clicked for me – at least not on computers. I have a confession: I’m not a big mind map guy. I appreciated the alternate visualization but wanted the ability to move nodes around within the outline’s hierarchy. MindNode has included an outline view for years, but it wasn’t editable, which always bothered me.
Last year, as I planned my Big Sur review, I briefly considered switching from MindNode to an outlining app to organize my notes. However, when you pull back and consider most mind maps and outlines from a birds-eye perspective, they’re complementary rather than alternative ways to approach the same problem.
Outlines suffer from a linearity and information density that makes those connections harder to find. Mind maps provide a more visual way to organize your thoughts and afford more room for creativity by making it easier to spot connections between related ideas and organize them in a less constrained way. Outlines are a system of organizing my thoughts that have served me well, but it’s not the only approach, nor is it always the best. A big part of every law school’s first-year curriculum is teaching students how to synthesize vast quantities of research materials into carefully-organized outlines. When I think about my writing, I think in outlines, which is a remnant of my days as a law student. So, let’s dig into the details to see what it can do. The app is easy to use and impressively feature-rich for a new release. For them, and for anyone who has felt constrained by more linear, text-based ways of exploring ideas, Freeform is a perfect solution.Īt first blush, Freeform’s spare interface may give the impression that it’s a bare-bones 1.0 release, but that’s not the case.
Instead, Freeform is targeted at a broader audience, many of whom have probably never even considered using this sort of app. Freeform isn’t going to replace apps that are deeply focused on a narrow segment of apps in the blank canvas category. It’s an ambitious entry into a crowded category of apps that take overlapping approaches, emphasizing everything from note-taking to collaborative design to whiteboarding.Īs is so often the case with Apple’s system apps, Freeform falls squarely in the middle of the landscape of existing apps. Freeform is a brand new iPhone, iPad, and Mac app from Apple that lets users create multimedia boards on an infinite canvas that include text, images, drawings, links, files, and more.
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