Mental Case - The Study App
By The Mental Faculty
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Description
Mental Case is The Study App. Combining traditional flashcards with the latest learning techniques, Mental Case can help get stuff into your head. It's the premium study app for your Mac, iPad, or iPhone/iPod touch.
Use it to learn a language, brush up on your human anatomy, or study for the bar exam. Enter your information directly, or import it from web sites like FlashcardExchange.com and Quizlet.com. Mental Case automatically schedules your notes for study, and can sync them to your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY...
“Mental Case provides a very nice balance of functionality, desktop and iPhone/iPod touch integration and ease-of-use that make it the leader of the pack in the flash card genre for Mac users.”
Sang Tang on TUAW (tuaw.com)
“Mental Case is an incredibly well conceived product that turns the iPhone into a truly powerful study aid. The application is polished, easy-to-use, and as stable as any application I've seen. The sync functionality is flawless and I've yet to run into any problem on either the Mac side or the iPhone side.”
Daniel Cohen (whatsoniphone.com)
“Mental Case is a beautifully designed new commercial offering in the flashcard software world ... It offers excellent support for interval study, graded slideshows for both study on demand and interval study as well as convenient set management. ”
K. M. Lawson (foolsworkshop.com)
“Flash cards are tedious to make, but Mental Case makes it quick and easy to create many cards. It is a great way to study and has many more options than old fashioned flash cards.”
Jack Amick (macapper.com)
FEATURES
✓ Enter mental notes with images, video, audio, and formatted text.
✓ Include as many facets ('sides') in your notes as you like.
✓ Flip through your notes in the unique 3D browser.
✓ Group notes in stacks, and nest your stacks in cases ('folders') as deeply as you like.
✓ Create smart stacks based on search rules.
✓ Flag and tag notes.
✓ Choose from several automated study schedules tailored to your goals, including long-term learning and cramming options.
✓ Download notes directly from FlashcardExchange.com and Quizlet.com.
✓ Import and export your notes in many different formats.
✓ Sync over Wi-Fi with a Mental Case app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
✓ Use global hot keys to quickly capture any piece of information, from whatever app you are working in.
✓ Take photos with your FaceTime camera.
✓ Grab screen shots to use in your notes directly from inside Mental Case.
✓ Study your mental notes in gorgeous slideshows.
✓ Study multiple choice quiz slideshows.
✓ View graphical slideshow statistics, including estimates of memory retention.
✓ Print your slides in many different layouts.
UPGRADING FROM MENTAL CASE 1.9
Mental Case 2 will automatically migrate your Mental Case 1.9 data when it first launches.
SYNCING WITH IOS
Mental Case 2 can sync in the same way as Mental Case 1.9 over Wi-Fi with Mental Case apps on iOS. The way you begin a sync differs slightly: To sync Mental Case 2, tap 'Start Sync' in the iOS app. Your iOS device should appear in the Mac app in the source list on the left. Select it there, and follow the instructions.
WARNING: At this time, the iOS edition of Mental Case does not support all features of Mental Case for Mac. There is no support for formatted text, no multiple-choice quizzes, and it can only handle a maximum of two facets (sides) per note. An update is planned to address these shortcomings. In the meantime, it may not be suitable for studying all types of notes.
What's New in Version 2.1.1
✔ Fixed text color of tooltips in notes list.
✔ Fixed some drawing issues in the note drawer.
✔ Fixed an issue where a warning dialog would continually appear if you tried to edit a note via the note list.
✔ The grading light in slideshows now comes on for a moment when you grade a note and the slideshow auto-advances.
Screenshots
Customer Reviews
elegant and functional
This app is fun to use due to the attention to detail of making it look like real world items, animations, and is gorgeous. A lot of functionality and simplification has been added to this version which makes learning fun.
Great app, but waiting on better iOS support
This is, by far, the best spaced repetition app I've ever used. I love how easy it is to add pictures, video, and sound to cards, and there is a good degree of flexibility in scheduling and formatting (although perhaps not as much as I'd like in formatting). The option to have multiple facets to a card, instead of just two, was a huge improvement in 2.0 and great for studying languages with different writing systems. I also appreciate the support for superscript and subscript.
However, I've been waiting a while for the iOS version to support multiple facets, and superscript and subscript. I'm sympathetic to the amount of time it must take to overhaul the iOS version, but at the same time I am disappointed it does not yet support these things because I have always intended to do the majority of my studying on the iPhone. I did all my studying on the iPhone for the previous version and just wished I could have multiple facets, but now that I have multiple facets I have to do all my studying on my MacBook, which is not always feasible.
If you don't need multiple facets or superscript or subscript on an iOS device, OR you don't intend to study on your iOS device, then I can recommend you absolutely get this app right now. If you are going to need those things and intend to study on an iOS device, you may want to wait -- and unfortunately, updates have always taken longer than the estimate given (2.0 was supposed to come out before summer 2011, for example, and didn't come out until late 2011). But either way, I don't know of a single app that can do what Mental Case does as well as it does, so I can't say I regret buying it even though I can't yet study on my phone again.
Oh, and just to be clear, the phone app works pretty great if you're just dealing with two facets and not any superscript or subscript. (Possibly other things format oddly, and I just don't use them.)
A couple other shortcomings that might effect someone's decision… I have found these bearable but hope they are dealt with soon:
- There is not yet cloud support for syncing between an iOS device and the MacBook. You can sync over WiFi, but it's a bit more cumbersome than I like. With Mental Case, you have to open the sync tab of the iPhone app, then you have to select the device in Mental Case on your MacBook, and THEN press another button to sync. I would much prefer automatic syncing when I open the app on my phone. For example, OmniFocus (an unrelated app) will automatically sync when you open the app, provided that OmniFocus is open on the MacBook and they are both on the same WiFi network; since I keep the app open on my MacBook all the time, I can pretty much sync on my phone even if I'm on my way out the door and nowhere near my MacBook. I really wish Mental Case had something more like that, because there are days where I don't physically touch my MacBook at all but sync apps with it in this manner anyway.
- The iPhone app, at least, does not schedule any cards to study; all scheduling happens when you sync. If you have due cards, they will appear on your phone as due and you can study them and mark them done… but you have to sync for them to come up for study again. If you sync and nothing is due, then your phone will just show nothing is due even when they come up due on your Mac app. I don't know if the iPad version does this (I don't have an iPad) but I would assume it's the same thing. This makes the app a lot less useful if you're like me and prefer to do as much as possible on your iPhone. This would be much less of a problem if not for the previous issue of syncing.
Despite these current shortcomings, which I expect to be addressed sometime in the future (even if not as quickly as I like), I really do love this app and highly recommend it. I have been using spaced repetition apps for years and once I had even the flawed earlier versions of Mental Case I never looked back. If you've never used spaced repetition before you will be absolutely spoiled by this app.
Excellent App!
Mental Case is an AMAZING app! I use it to for all of my course exams, which makes it an effective study tool. What I love most about this app is that it eliminates the hassle of lugging around a massive stack of flashcards and I can save them for future use without having to rewrite them. I LOVE this app and encourage everyone to buy it because it really makes studying easy, fun, and efficient. Thumbs up! :)
- $29.99
- Category: Education
- Updated: Feb 02, 2012
- Version: 2.1.1
- Size: 26.3 MB
- Languages: English, French, German
- Seller: The Mental Faculty
- © 2011 The Mental Faculty
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor
