Not for long-term users. Good for short term. – Studies Review

This will not serve med students or serious language learners who want a flashcard app that will allow them to retain cards in the app and allow the algorithm to continue to test and reinforce their knowledge for years rather than just a few months. The app itself is great, both in the mac and iphone versions (although I wouldn’t want to have to create a lot of cards using the phone app— that’s what I use the mac app for), but the cloud sync is terrible if you study long-term with a large number of cards. It takes a long time to complete a sync for a deck like this with a long study history, and if it is interrupted during this time, the odds are it may end up crashing later and require a reset, which takes even longer still. This problem appears to be a factor of a large number of cards that have been held in the app for a long period of time (long study history). So if you are just studying for a single class and intend to discard the cards once the class ends, it would appear that the cloud sync can handle this, and I would give it a try. Otherwise, I would avoid it and use Anki instead. Recent updates, while possibly improving things for lighter short term users, has not had an impact on this problem with a deck of about 9000 cards (text, no photos, and small portion with audio), many that have been held for years going back to the first Mental Case app by the developer that was the origin of this Studies app. In fact, since the last update, I added about about 100 more cards in groups of about twenty per week, and the sync times have gone from 30-60 minutes to 40-120 minutes. It is the iPhone sync that takes place after all due studying on the iphone app is complete for the day that takes this crazy long period of time— even more so if if u sync the iPhone, then the Mac, and then follow up with another iPhone sync. That last sync is sure to take ages. One problem is the developer does not use the app for long-term study himself and so only experiences what the short term user would experience, and this, coupled with lack of interest, makes debugging this problem a pipe dream. Also, if the approach to debugging is one of, if the developer can’t imagine himself what the cause may be, then he assumes it can’t be debugged or doesn’t need to be debugged because the problem then must not exist, even in the face of its existence! Very strange. Because of this, I don’t expect the issue to be resolved in future versions. If you do decide to use the app, I would get in the habit of scheduling backups of your phone or mac so you don’t lose the work you put into creating the cards, just in case, though I don’t think that will likely be a problem as much as losing the history (grading) of the notes you have studied for that day if the app does crash. If you can get by with only using the Mac app I think you will be fine ( no syncing to cloud needed)
Review by appzeppo on Studies.