MarginNote 3 17+

1 year of use

I am a doctor and have to learn,reproduce and apply knowledge at a rapid speed.With increasing age and advancements in knowledge it is not easy.This compelled me to use MN3 and later on exporting knowledge to Anki droid.This combination has made my life easy as I have almost whole textbook of mine to Anki droid from MN3.
I m enjoying clear edge over my colleagues and they are surprised by my knowledge and it’s application.I attribute this progress to MN3 especially flash cards feature which are exportable to Anki.A must have combination of apps for all students and professionals with lot of need to retain knowledge and facts

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your comments, we will do better.

Crashing!

I have a test and the app keeps crashing upon opening!! Help!

Has potential, but not quite there at all

On the surface Margin note appears to be the best option out there for making mind maps, taking notes, and excerpts from multiple sources such as PDFs and websites. However, once you get familiar with MarginNote, it’s limitations make it a disappointing, unintuitive and clunky experience making you constantly wish if only it was better. Margin note lacks fluidity and it’s not a true mind mapping software. It is more of an excerpt collection tool for making flash cards. Flash cards may be useful for rote memorisation but not everyone uses flash cards as there are better non linear methods of learning and organising notes. All maps and excerpts follow a linear tree structure which makes for a very rigid format to collect thoughts and make connections. It makes it very difficult for reading and reviewing notes because of linear hierarchy, inability to emphasise or give importance to certain nodes, and overall poor legibility with all nodes following a linear flow. The tree structures created by margin note are not optimal for reading and referencing back to notes or finding relevant information quickly. Legibility is reduced without being able to control the spacing, position or sizing of nodes. Arranging excerpts without making them child nodes or forcing them to become part of the rigid linear tree structure keeps them at risk of being automatically rearranged without their position being saved. No ability to make fluid arrangement’s or connections. No ability to align or distribute nodes. Once a child map node becomes part of a tree structure or group it can’t be resized. Once in focus mode of a child map, no button to unfocus, have to instead go back to the main mind map and reopen the child map again. That is a basic usability violation. There is no ability to go back and forth through history of child maps which were opened. Instead the only back button is to go back to the document browser which one rarely needs to do. Making links from inside one child map to another is a difficult multi step process. The browser used to add webpages is terrible. It lacks tabs, history or bookmarking. The workflow with the browser forces one to have to import one webpage at a time and once it’s added it can no longer be navigated. It’s just a plain document. To go to other links on the same website, one will have to go back to manage and import another page. This is a frustrating experience. The whole advantage of using a web search engine to study subjects while researching across multiple tabs becomes impossible to do. Websites should be able to be opened and navigated freely, with multiple tabs, without having to import them as documents one page at a time. The research tool is awkward, no way to directly search new topics, and one has to first select excerpts and research the whole text node. The research tool and web browser both can not search text within the page. Notes taken with a pencil are difficult to group and select. Pencil Notes and excerpt nodes can’t be selected at the same time. One has to first select the pencil notes separately and then bind them to a node. What if the pencil note is on top of an excerpt? Then you have to first move the excerpt and the select pencil notes. A very unintuitive and frustrating experience. Grouping nodes restructures and repositions all nodes and all positions are lost. Difficult creating child maps, Can’t convert text nodes into child maps. The pencil tool lacks smoothing options, lacks ability to make shapes, and feels very basic. Highlighting tool is terrible, it’s not highlighting the actual text/words, but drawing a stroke floating on top. If you move the excerpt the highlights don’t move with it. Ridiculous. The highlight tool also is only layering a colour on top which reduces legibility instead of using a blend mode. Syncing to iCloud or backing up feels clunky and syncing shows no status or progress indicator, so one is never certain if notes have been synced. Pasting or importing images from external sources is difficult and there is no ability to resize the images. Limited colour coding options. Can’t define custom colors. Limiting text writing and editing features. No support for different heading styles or presets. No cross platform support, makes you tied to the apple platform. Sadly the list goes on. Most of the time spent using margin note is spent working around its limitations. This review is intentionally critical because Margin note has the potential to be the best app in the market for its purpose, only to fall short because of poor implementation in some critical areas. In the areas marginnote does do well it is truelly brilliant. It seems there is little movement in trying to improve Margin note, and updates introducing improvements to such problems are non existent. Unfortunate.