Someone was asking about spider mapping or some such thing that I know nothing about, and I was looking in earnest and saw where iMindMap (the only mind mapping software authorized by Tony Buzan) has become Ayoa… i just now came across it, but it appears to be free and possibly kinda neat, so was wondering if anyone was familiar with this…
I’ve subscribed to Ayoa for 10+ years – starting back when it was called DropTask and was a separate, though integrated, Buzan product from iMindMap. The free tier is useless – you can store only 50 tasks, with a few other features. “Free” is more of a demo than anything.
There are a lot of better mind mapping applications than Ayoa. Almost all the main features of iMindMap were removed and the rest shoved into Ayoa. The integration is far from flawless, and is more an afterthought than a robust product. I like the product for its somewhat cheesy graphics. The task configuration is pretty robust.
But frankly I’m about to cancel and drop Ayoa. Mainly because it does not integrate at all with the Mac. It’s really a Windows-centric service, with more integration with Outlook on Windows than anything on macOS. On Mac, there’s no services, no browser plug-in, no share extension. The desktop and iOS/iPadOS aps are wrappers on the Ayoa website.
(I’ve always laughed at the “only mind mapping software authorized by Tony Buzan”. It’s like “the only water authorized by Mr. Rogers”. Means nothing.)
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I bought iMindMap and it was an absolute pig.
It was so slow as to be unusable. The support I received was inane.
I cut my loses, flushed that $200 and moved on.
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Apparently I need 20 characters to post a smiley face, so ignore the rest of this…
I know iThoughtsX has “task” capabilities with checkboxes to denote progress (0% - 100%) or completed.
I’m not a MindNode user but I believe that app also has some task checkbox feature as well.
I wonder if there was anything that made Ayoa unique to separate it from the pack?
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I love iThoughts! I used it extensively whilst preparing for a hearing… the task features and ability to export was a huge time saver
Ayoa has a wider set of views than I believe other task managers have.
At the top level – the views can be used for planning or brainstorming, and include: the mind map view, a whiteboard view, and “task boards”.
The task board is a detailed view – tasks created on a mind map or a whiteboard will appear on the task board for a project. There are five sub-views for task boards:
- Canvas – a sort of bubble chart that is used to group and link tasks one-to-another
- Workflow – a kanban view
- Gantt timeline
- Urgency lists (normal, urgent, very urgent – or whatever urgency designations you want to use)
- Completed tasks
There is also a “Planner” view (now, next soon – or whatever temporal breakdown you want to use). Finally, there is a “Calendar” view – columns for each week – that can be used to move tasks between dates or schedule them. The upper tier of the subscription includes Google calendar integration. Different calendars for different projects are supported.
It’s a complex application with features I’ve not seen in others. Downsides: it does not support markdown; it has no integration with any other Mac app except through passing tasks back and forth via Google calendar.