This app wants to help organise your possessions, but there are easier ways.
MYStuff Pro aims to help you “store and organise information associated with the things you own”. In other words, it’s a database pre-populated with fields such as Model, Manufacturer, Location and Purchase Price, and categories into which you can slot your possessions – Kitchen and Personal Electronics, for example.
You can also create your own categories and fields, set up details of payment methods and insurance policies, enter warranty information for each possession, and shop online via the built-in browser or add items by scanning their barcodes.
It might be a handy tool, if only it were simple to use. The interface is complicated – divided into no fewer than a dozen areas when you start using the software – and some obvious functions you’d expect to find, such as the ability to import a CSV file into custom fields only, appear to be missing altogether. Life is made no easier by the absence of help, though the developer promises online tutorials in the near future, which should improve the software’s usability.
Configuring the software in advance for the kind of items you want to catalogue sounds helpful, but most of it will be irrelevant to us, and for Brits the many pre-loaded addresses for online sites are also unlikely to be the ones we use.
There is the core of a good concept here, especially where warranty and insurance information are concerned, and if it were straightforward to just fire up the software and get cataloguing, MYStuff Pro might have the edge over its rivals.
As it is, setting up your own record system in any basic spreadsheet or database package will be less frustrating.
Verdict:
Despite some good ideas, MYStuff Pro is far too awkward to succeed in its big aim of making your life much easier.
Pros/Cons:
- Database fields are already set up…
- …but possibly not the ones you need
- No help or tutorials
- Confusing interface
Price: $29 (about £20), upgrade $9 (about £6)
Developer: Minder Softworks, mindersoftworks.com
OS: OS X 10.6.8