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Note taking apps for iPad

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Bajafresk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 18, 2012
2
0
Hey guys

Just got an iPad and the wireless apple keyboard to go with it over bluetooth. I'll be starting law school in the fall and would like to use the iPad to type notes in lecure because it's so much lighter than my MacBook pro and easy to carry around.

What's a good note taking app for the iPad? I've done some research and have couldn't really narrow it down. Any help would be appreciated! :)
 
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epicmar

macrumors regular
Jul 7, 2008
155
0
Northern Florida
I have purchased 10+ note taking apps and have found that Notability is one of the best. At .99 it is an unbelievably good value. Its only serious weakness is that it is limited to two levels of folders for organizing your files.

It has an excellent user interface and is very full featured. You can type and record audio that will be synch'd with your typing. You can export your typed notes to rtf or PDF. It has excellent handwriting features. It can auto sync to various cloud services. And lots more. You will spend a lot of time and find other good note taking apps but none better than Notability.

Notability can also import a PDF and append it to an existing file where you may already have typed and/or handwritten notes, photos, and existing PDFs or import the PDF into a new note file. You can easily rearrange the order of pages. Handwritten notes can be easily selected and moved around (note that last time I checked Remarks does not allow you to move handwritten note, only delete). Remarks is quite good, but I don't think it is as full featured as Notability.
 
Last edited:
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robdam1001

macrumors 6502a
Sep 23, 2008
998
2
epicmar said:
I have purchased 10+ note taking apps and have found that Notability is one of the best. At .99 it is an unbelievably good value. Its only serious weakness is that it is limited to two levels of folders for organizing your files.

It has an excellent user interface and is very full featured. You can type and record audio that will be synch'd with your typing. You can export your typed notes to rtf or PDF. It has excellent handwriting features. It can auto sync to various cloud services. And lots more. You will spend a lot of time and find other good note taking apps but none better than Notability.

Notability can also import a PDF and append it to an existing file where you may already have typed and/or handwritten notes, photos, and existing PDFs or import the PDF into a new note file. You can easily rearrange the order of pages. Handwritten notes can be easily selected and moved around (note that last time I checked Remarks does not allow you to move handwritten note, only delete). Remarks is quite good, but I don't think it is as full featured as Notability.
Click to expand...

Remarks can do all that and more. Seamless syncing with dropbox and unlimited levels of folders and sub folders.
 
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epicmar

macrumors regular
Jul 7, 2008
155
0
Northern Florida
robdam1001 said:
Remarks can do all that and more. Seamless syncing with dropbox and unlimited levels of folders and sub folders.
Click to expand...

I would really like to make Remarks my primary note taking app because I like the organizational flexibility of unlimited folders and I think Remarks is an excellent note taking app. I do a lot of handwritten notes for business meetings and on PDF version of documents that I have to review and I frequently need to select and move handwritten notes around the page. I can't find a way in Remarks to select and move handwritten notes. Am I just missing how to do this?

Does Remarks sync audio to typed notes? I don't use this much now, but I think for law school lectures it could be important (I did law school about 10 years ago using a laptop to type all my notes and certainly missed some of what was said, but didn't have the time to record and sequentially listen to a recording to get to the place where I missed something in my notes).
 
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epicmar

macrumors regular
Jul 7, 2008
155
0
Northern Florida
I forgot to mention that Notability can search the contents of multiple files. Again, if Remarks (which I also own) cando this, I can't get it too work. It only seems to search note file names. I don't think it can search the contents of the open file, which at a minimum would be important for law school note review.
 
GerritV

GerritV

macrumors 68020
May 11, 2012
2,126
2,432
Remarks can not:
- select handwritten text objects (or other) to move them elsewhere
- search in file content
unless I miss something.

Remarks can:
- record audio (latest version)
- export this audio as part of a pdf (with annotations)
but you'll need to open this pdf with p.e. Adobe Reader to replay the audio. MacOS Preview, for one, can't handle it.

I'll stick with Remarks, among other things because of it's very clean interface. I'm not a fan of too much leather/wood textures that seem to be inherent to many other apps.

Featurewise, I would recommend looking at Notes+. Although I dropped that one, again for the interface clutter.
 
Readdlemate

Readdlemate

Suspended
Jan 26, 2009
385
37
GerritV said:
Remarks can not:
- select handwritten text objects (or other) to move them elsewhere
- search in file content
unless I miss something.

Remarks can:
- record audio (latest version)
- export this audio as part of a pdf (with annotations)
but you'll need to open this pdf with p.e. Adobe Reader to replay the audio. MacOS Preview, for one, can't handle it.

I'll stick with Remarks, among other things because of it's very clean interface. I'm not a fan of too much leather/wood textures that seem to be inherent to many other apps.

Featurewise, I would recommend looking at Notes+. Although I dropped that one, again for the interface clutter.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the support guys. We are working on Remarks day and night, adding new features, improving speed and so on. We'll gladly listen to your feedback and thoughts.
 
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Bajafresk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 18, 2012
2
0
Thanks guys for the advice. I looked into that thread you posted but it seems to be only for people using a stylus for handwritten notes while I need one more optimized for a keyboard. I'll check out remarks and notability. It's so confusing when there are so many third party note apps. I'd use pages but it doesn't have the sharing and syncing features like the others
 
GerritV

GerritV

macrumors 68020
May 11, 2012
2,126
2,432
Actually, your Pages documents are on the iCloud and will be automatically sync'ed to your other iOS devices and your desktop machine (in the upcoming Mountain Lion).
Furthermore, you can email your document from within Pages, and save it onto a WEBDAV server.
 
GerritV

GerritV

macrumors 68020
May 11, 2012
2,126
2,432
Readdlemate said:
Thanks for the support guys. We are working on Remarks day and night, adding new features, improving speed and so on. We'll gladly listen to your feedback and thoughts.
Click to expand...

Nice of you to chime in here, Denys. Readdle folks are proving to be very willing to listen indeed!
 
O

omni

macrumors 6502
Jan 20, 2008
335
6
For typing - I'm a fan of both Byword and IA Writer. Not sure if thats exactly what you are looking for though.

If not - maybe evernote?
 
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