Novamind 5

[Tonyflo]

Now it's one week later and one week from the end of January ... do you have any updates for us? I too am eager to try the new version 5 software for MAC!!!

Tony

PS -- Mindjet is a more PC-friendly mindmapping software and I thought Novamind was much more sympathetic (and functional for) Mac users ... so why did the Mac tech preview come out so much later than the PC???

[ksrhee]

I too have been disappointed with the lateness of the release.  I paid for the upgrade on May 2, 2009.  Now that's more than 8 1/2 months ago, and there is no product in sight.

Looks like Mindmanager 8 will be released this week (and I downloaded the beta to try it out).  If the preview version of Novamind is not released before the final release of Mindmanager, I might request a refund and go with upgrading my version 7 to 8.  Last May, I made a decision to go with Novamind over Mindmanager and paid for it, but I might have to reassess.

I too had an assumption that Novamind cared more for the Mac platform, but I was sadly mistaken.

Thanks.

[garyturner]

My thinking is the same. It looks like MindManager has a glowing reviews and I am going give it a test run and if I like it, I am switching. I am kind of giving up on NovaMind 5 because too many promises and no delivery.  There is five days left to the end of the month and NOTHING!!!---ABOUT THE NOVAMIND 5 RELEASE.  Oh well, lessons learned and what I have learned in the past is not to get upset but to look at alternative solutions--and usually the alternative solution turns out to be a better solution anyway!!!!

[DragonSoul]

I am downloading Mindmanager trial version. So I will wait for NovaMind 5 to be released before the 30 day trial period, if not I will cancel the upgrade, and go with Mind instead. I really hope it does not come to this. I have waited for almost  6 months for the upgrade, I think thats a very fair amount of time to do so, for something that is greatly needed by me and greatly overdue to the promised date, and yet seems to still be far from done.

[Patrick]

In case you haven't seen it yet:
We have launched the technology preview for Mac:

http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/novamind-5-technology-preview-for-mac-launched/

[Gideon]

...and we have the release dates for NovaMind 5.0: 28th April for Windows and 12th May for Mac.

[DragonSoul]

...and we have the release dates for NovaMind 5.0: 28th April for Windows and 12th May for Mac.

great news, look forward to it. Wish it was a bit sooner, but i have faith the product will be worth it.

[David4GTD]

Well I am assuming good intentions here - I know that Gideon and the team want to create the best mindmapping software out there.  Yet, I too paid in advance for this program.. almost after you first allowed early registration.  That showed my commitment... and I know you have had difficulties.  but again the May 12 date has passed and to be frank the current test version - while I can see the potential is still way to volatile to use consistently.

It is constantly sending reports of issues, moving a branch can cause mayhem leading me to totally have to manually reset the branches (time consuming), and when you do move or cut a branch the text is left behind with no way to delete it.

Does not feel we are any closer to even a "beta version" - Also it irks me a bit that Windows was first and now Mac Users are being left in the dust.  But I can get over that LOL.

Anyway - I will give you a bit more time but as far as I am concerned my year of refund has not started because you have not released the product yet. 

David

[Gideon]

If you have been following the progress, we have released 3 updates in less than two weeks, two since May 12th, including a massive number of fixes as well as the initial version of all the imports and exports, massive updates on the layout system, a completely new, and very powerful printing system etc. Please see the release history from within the application, or our emails we have sent out to testers, or the thread on this forum about the details of what we have done. This is massive progress, and would, I thought, have renewed confidence in the speed of progress. Printing, and getting all the previews happening correctly, and headers and footers, and updating the pagination etc is one of the fiddliest and most time consuming parts of the remaining development, and yet it was achieved in less than a week.

Sure, there are a number of functions to add before release, and then the performance tuning and final stability run, but we already know most of the code we need to restructure and things we need to cache for the performance tuning, and many of the remaining stability issues, and on every release, we have been squashing a large number of issues related to stability while adding the new features. Also, there are a number of areas where the Mac version is ahead of the Windows version (e.g. interpolated colors, color set automatic coloring, cloud topics, custom topics, parallelogram and arrow topics, gradient fills, canvas coloring, background images, shadows, reflections), so it's not just a one way street. (the windows program will catch up on these features, as the Mac version will also catch up on the remaining Windows features).

The reasons we are behind on the Mac version are in no way related to any lack in dedication to the Mac platform. As anyone who knows me personally, or has been reading the things that I write for a while knows, I am a Mac person through and through. I believe in the technical superiority and user experience superiority of the Mac platform, and will not let the Mac implementation be any less than the Windows platform - period. End of story.

I would have thought that all of the above would be ample to show our dedication to the Mac platform, both from a feature set and dedication to completion perspective.

[policarpo]

Gideon,

Thanks for being above board with your trials and tribulations concerning Novamind 5 on the Mac. I've used a number of mindmappping apps on my Mac, and I really find the logic and flow of NM 4 to suit my working style best. iMindMap comes in a close second, but it's Java implementation and quirky UI layouts leave me feeling a little taxed at times.

I've tested the Technology Release for NM5 a bit, but it's still too early for me to be doing anything robust with it (I tend to work fast and have rather complicated layouts with my mind maps and rely on NM4 for this).  I am looking forward to NM5 when it's finally Gold and production ready.

I guess I just wanted to say thanks and keep up the great work. Sometimes when an act of passion gets the better of us because of our intent, we must be reminded that the path has an end, and that soon we will arrive having learned so much with our achievement.

Cheers,
-policarpo

[Gideon]

Thanks Policarpo, your comments are very much appreciated. Not everyone can see what we are achieving with NovaMind 5 yet, and sometimes it is hard to keep up the enthusiasm when dealing with all the issues, so I would like to publicly thank both you and the other people who have emailed us with words of encouragement and support. It makes a huge difference to us, and helps keep the focus on delivering the absolute best application as quickly as we possibly can.

[edstone]

I have been loving Novamind 4 for the Mac and am eagerly waiting for version 5. I would like to take part in the preview program (assuming it is still open) and was curious if I will still be able to run Novamind 4 alongside the preview version?

Thanks for a great product, I have been using it like crazy!

Ed

[Gideon]

Yes, the preview is still open - you can get immediate access by filling in the form linked off the home page. We are just about feature complete, and plan to start debugging and performance tuning at the end of next week. Please see the dedicated thread on the forum for more details. Yes, you can run the two programs alongside each other.

[Nick Osborne]

I have just bought a licence for and started using Novamind 5 (the Mac Preview) and am excited about what it offers.

I have just done my first map with more than 5 branches for sub-topics and am dismayed to find that branches 6-10 continue from the top of the left hand side, and go down, rather than continuing in a clockwise direction from branches 1-5 and going up the left hand side. Is this the way the program must work, or is there a way to change the setting of how the branches unfold?

Any maps I have ever used and seen go in a clockwise direction all the way round, and this seem slightly odd for it to start again at the top on the left hand side.

Many Thanks,

Nick

[Gideon]

Hi Nick

I am not aware of any Mind Mapping application that does what you describe. In NovaMind 4, we had the option to number topics in that direction, and we had a special option to allow you to add the children (and number them) bottom up for the left side children to support a totally clockwise map, but we found that we had more people asking us how to turn OFF that feature than how to turn it on (by a factor of something like 100 to 1).

When we originally implemented the feature, it was done because we had ONE person who requested it, and this was after NovaMind had already been available for about 4 years, but we thought it might be useful to more people. The observed feedback was that it was a bad idea adding it. So we thought we would leave that out in NovaMind 5, and await feedback. Now the Windows version of NovaMind 5 has been out for several months and in that time has been used by many thousands of people, and the preview of the Mac version has over 1,000 people actively testing it and sending us feedback, and yours is the first comment about wanting this feature. So thank you for taking the time to provide the feedback, and we will see whether we have misread the market or not based on the feedback from the community.

For anyone else for whom this is an important feature, please use the Send Feedback menu option in NovaMind so that it gets to the right people, and we can assess the need for it.