I just used Freeform to take notes at a conference. I knew going into it that it’s not really made for note taking. The experience was just OK. I made a sticky note for each session, and was frustrated by some things. The sticky notes could only be square, which posed some problems when trying to organize them on the board. Also, it would be really helpful to be able to write on sticky notes with Apple pencil. I couldn’t find a way to group items, either. A few font choices would be nice; just a few, like one serif and one simple script, as I realize part of the appeal is to keep things simple.
I will, however use Freeform again for days two and three. Maybe I’ll like it better after I use it more. I don’t really want to learn yet another app, and Notes has its limitations as well. At least with sticky notes it’s easier to move information around. I can zoom out to see it all at once, too, if I choose.
LOVE the app, but would have wished that all dates from beginning and all changes to the last date was accessible somehow. It would also be great if you could put your boards into folders like you can with notes, really hoping on an update where that is possible! Another area of improvement could be to have some kind of template, format or organization system to choose from. To start off of nothing can be a bit overwhelming. I would also prefer it to havw the alternative for other colored boards, especially black/dark grey, maybe green etc. Something else that is frustrating is that when you want to move what you have done around and it is a mix between drawing and other only the drawing part can move and not other objects which forces you to have to move the other things individually.
Great if you need to jot down a recipe, some notes, or if you want to brainstorm. The boards are all infinite canvases, so everything won’t feel crammed. I think it hit it’s target audience fairly well. The interface is awesome on iPad, but with the tiny screen of a phone, it’s way easier to just use the Notes app to type out your notes instead of handwriting them. (There’s a text tool but it’s easier to handwrite in my opinion) I love visualizing my thoughts so I’m definitely going to use this for personal things. I don’t see myself using it for anything more than personal projects. As for the collab feature, it’s a bit wonky, and I’m still trying to figure out how “in real time” it really is. Because this is semi-new, I don’t expect it to be wondrous in every way. With that said I hope it improves on itself in the future.
EDIT: here are some commonly agreed on suggestions to make it better/more efficient: double tap to undo/triple tap to redo, further zoom etc. And, I don’t know if anyone else said this, but I’d love a dark mode. Not just for the main screen, but for the boards as well. Would definitely be easier on your eyes.
I spend quite a bit of my time making and organizing lists and putting things into categories. I previously did this mostly within my photo albums, since it made it so that I didn’t have to copy paste, and could instead simply drag my images. While categorizing, though, the groups seemed to blend into one another, as there was no clear endpoint to anything. With this app, though, it functions basically as a bulletin board of sorts for me, but doesn’t require copious amounts of paper to use. It’s great!!
I do still have a few issues with this app, though I have learned to deal with them. For starters, it runs incredibly slowly. I don’t tend to put more than 40 images on a board, and yet applications such as adobe illustrator, which deal with many many more assets on average, seem to run twice as fast. Alongside this, typing is always a bit slow, and half of the time the app will not seem to register that I am even making an attempt to type.
Overall, though, despite my complaints, I am more than happy with this program, and I am extremely grateful that it even exists, let alone freely.
I love this approach so far but it seems to me like it would work best with the new system if the user has the e mail address and the password to the new system and the password for the new system to be used in the new system so I don’t know if that would work for you but I would like to get this done for you and I can get you a copy of the new system for you to use for your new system if you want to use it for your new system you can use it wwwww I think you could also get a new one that you can get the old system that you can get a different tertt you can get it efor free if you have the same system that is what tyrey and tr you are so sweet to be there with us I really do appreciate you and your family I really appreciate your prayers and prayers r always with us and we will always love and support our you
To be frank, I really appreciate that you make this app, it encourage me to do maid-map more, literately, I scarcely do it, but with this app,I will try and try, especially on the iPad with Apple Pencil, it’s convenient and modern, but the current use situation is very unstable, such as handwritten notes too much, will be stuck, and crash; I think it's a little rigid, given that multiplayer collaboration requires a lot more data processing and requires a lot less complexity and playability. My suggestion is that it can be separated. For example, a "share with others" can be added to the Settings. The "Yes" section of the page can give priority to "share", and take away some of the complexity and playability. "No" allows users to create their own random thoughts. I'm sure the iPad pro will handle the personal part more than adequately.
That’s all I want to say, I can’t help saying it’s an amazing app, a wonderful job, although there are already another mind-map apps, but I even don’t give it a look, I think this is the best app ever, thanks to you, thanks to ，❤️
Following up on my 1st review. Incredibly, you CANNOT “rotate” a drawing or object! It’s really amazing that Apple apps are so consistently disappointing…Google? This is the missing drawing too as well as being a superior organizational tool. My first use was to drop a series of screen grabs to create an investment document. I’ve used and dropped numerous such tools including Paper, which was the best until the new subscription era forced me to drop it. (Cripes, how many subscriptions does Apple think I want to carry!?) But this is better. I made my notes on a stack of images, complete with arrows and full control of top to bottom order (missing in Notability), and exported it as a pdf document into Notability, my go to document storage app. I was about to start another concept exploration and immediately thought to go with Freeform. Thus, I thought it was a good time to show my appreciation with this review. Thanks for doing a good thing Apple. But do fix your date function on documents. I don’t know why this is still an issue seen in people losing work—or just give users back the Save button.
March 22, 2023 This app is broken. I’m a UX designer and know what its like when your shipping an app. This feels like the MVP, the very lowest version of this app. When you paste text it defaults to center. There is a lot of clicking or tapping to get to what you want on both desktop and mobile. It’s frustrating to use cause of all the effort it takes. Take a note from Craft, Miro and Figma for user experience.
Feb 12, 2023 Man I feel like I wrote this original review a month ago and I still was having the same issue. It only just sink after I deleted the file and recovered it on my iPad. The problem is that it takes ages for it to sync, so if I want to come up with quick ideas and then carry it over it’s so slow. I’ve been using this on my iPad and then on my Mac and I just download it for my phone. What happened to hand over? Or the continuity features? I’d be nice if there was some sort of way to activate the sync or to save and sync without having to wait for the app to decide to sync when it wants to.
-Battery drain is ridiculous (iPad pro M2/256) -Pencil lag. You can’t write clearly because…where is the last letter in the word? -with Bkgnd app refresh off, it is still a BATTERY KILLER -Lags while zooming in/out -App shuts down while work is in progress. -For the life of me, PLEASE add options to the shared/collab mode. I’m pretty sure this is at least half of the reason this is such a batttery killer. -the pen lines/thickness/etc are sometimes glitchy/with somewhat of a narrow choice in the first place. You can do super fatties or thingy-winny’s, but in between is not as tweakable. -some functions can be a little glitchy/latent. -Though I jump on different appps, last week, my iPad oggged 100% of battery usage to this app-hence, the term “battery-killer”. -EXCELLENT LAYOUT AND POTENTIAL! EXCELLENT CONCEPT! -This app will one day rule the world.
Update: Jan 10, 2023- This app just drained my battery from 100% to 83% at a rate of 1% per minute. After writing two sentences, my screen was warm to the touch, and by the end of the paragraph, the back of my iPad was hot as well. This app CAUSES HEAT DEATH AND THIS ISSUE NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED.
I never heard of this application until it showed up on my iPhone in one of the more IOS 16 recent updates. As a creative myself, I was so excited to try and expand ways to make this work for me in several aspects of my passion projects and potentially professional projects. I can’t do that at this time because some tweaks have to be done to iCloud on Apple’s end. I’ve already toggled on the sync to iCloud and everything that I added on my MacBook (including a whole board )does not show up on my iPhone. I was willing to hold out on this review but the final straw was me taking the time to update my iPad to iPad OS 16, something I was looking forward to making use of Free form on- yet nothing showed up. Not a board, a note, nothing. And sync was turned on. This might be a iCloud issue, a Freeform application issue, or maybe both but the bottom line is nothing can be done from my end. I have 2 TB of iCloud storage and the fact that the key purpose of iCloud is to have your important information synced adds to my skepticism that I don’t trust it all the way 100%. So many creatives are looking forward to this and hopefully want to rely on this within both personal and professional formats. Apple please don’t let us and anyone else with a creative spark down.
Update - the sync updated and deleted something I spent an hour on creating. Apple & iCloud has to do better with the millions people pay for this service.
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