Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

winchesters

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 5, 2014
1
0
I recently acquired a Wacom Bamboo tablet from a friend, and as much as I'd like to pretend to be, I'm not an artist. I am, however, a writer (and a college student), and handwriting notes while still having them available on the computer sounds really great.

Now, I've researched this as much as I can - and Microsoft Onenote seems to be the way to go. I have Windows 8 installed via Bootcamp and tried out Onenote, but I rarely use the Windows partition unless I have to use some specific program, and I'm not exactly keen on switching back and forth all the time. In the ten minutes I spent with the program, I got a pretty positive impression - especially the handwriting recognition. (Admittedly, it needs work, but so does my handwriting. I found it cool.)

All the alternatives to Onenote I've seen people recommend either don't have a simple pen tool or don't advertise it on their website. I tried out Evernote's Skitch, which had the pen tool Evernote lacked, and that is definitely purely a photo-annotating app. I've looked around at other alternatives mentioned (Circus Ponies, Devonthink, Curio), but I don't want to install fifty different free trials just to see if they have what I want. They seem to be similar in the notebook organizing aspect, anyway.

Does anyone have any ideas for what might work? I'm not looking for the notebook organization as much as something that might pick up my handwriting, or at the very least have ruled lines I can write on until I decide it's too annoying to bother with or suck it up and buy the full version of Onenote and just switch back and forth between OS X and Windows 8.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

//edit: If only I had looked a *little* further, I would've found Ink in System Preferences. Still, other ideas are welcome.
 
Last edited:

robgendreau

macrumors 68040
Jul 13, 2008
3,465
329
I seem to recall Wacom had a bamboo application that would send stuff to Evernote, which could do OCR on the notes. It does a decent job, but not real handwriting recognition. Myscribe might work but might require the Livescribe pen itself.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.