A look at the 18 notepad apps currently on my iPad

[afireintonto]

Soundpaper all the way. I just wish I could draw a graph or something when I need too.

 

[malbright]

And of course, Evernote. Brilliant, beautiful, super easy, highly functional ... and free.

 

[uraniumwilly]

Soundpaper all the way.

I'd like to echo this sentiment. The support guy for Soundpaper demonstrated the finest response to an app problem I've ever experienced, and, it turned out it was user error. I love this app. It's especially great for students.

Thanks to the original thread-starter and app-tester who tried out so many different types of doc making apps. Very helpful.

I only have one other sort of document app that I use and that is 'Chronicle.' It's a journal function allows you to password lock your journal and back up to googledocs.

Great thread!

 

[iLeo]

Jot!

You know what?

I use Jot!

This might be surprising, but I really like the way I can:

- type wherever I want on the page,
- draw wherever I want on the page
- the simplicity of the app

I don't know, maybe cause I'm usually a "messy" note taker on papers , this was the only app that made me stick with it!

there's a free version of it, if you guys wanna give it a try!

 

[doobry]

Soundpaper all the way. I just wish I could draw a graph or something when I need too.

THanks for this! You've just lightened my bag by removing my Black n Red and my dictaphone... What a great app! As for the graphs, why not email the app dev's. I'm sure they'll add it in if you give them a good reason!

 

[doobry]

***update***

First use of Soundpaper in anger in a customer meeting today. Never met the guy before. Best icebreaker ever was explaining the app to him..

Worked flawlessly, just played it back and the note skipping feature is truely fantastic..

If you need something to take notes in meetings. Get this, you will *not* be disappointed..

 

[rldunn]

***update***

First use of Soundpaper in anger in a customer meeting today. Never met the guy before. Best icebreaker ever was explaining the app to him..

Worked flawlessly, just played it back and the note skipping feature is truely fantastic..

If you need something to take notes in meetings. Get this, you will *not* be disappointed..

It seems ok, but it desperately needs an eraser. Tapping each letter one by one then hitting the delete button gets old fast if you need to delete a section.

 

[IrishVixen]

I haven't had the chance to really put SoundPaper to the test yet, but I grabbed it to use at an upcoming conference. What I've seen so far, I like well enough, at least for strict note-taking using the keyboard, nothing fancy. The timed recording feature is a huge plus.

My primary app though, is Notebooks. The ability to created infinite nested notebooks appeals to my sense of order, and it reminds me a lot of my OneNote days way back when. I've been using it for close to a month now, and it's been worth every penny. Just wish they'd add an RTF editor and sound file recording capability, but neither is a deal breaker for me.

There are some reported glitches with saving typed notes (versus clipped web pages or imported images/files); so far (knock on wood), I've found that so long as I "vanish" the virtual keyboard before I exit a note, I don't lose any data. I do this even with the BT keyboard--eject it, bring up the virtual, use the lower right keyboard button to vanish that one. Still, just in case, I'm backing up the important stuff in either Sound Paper or MaxJournal until the developer gets the next version through to the App Store--supposedly that one corrects the glitch with saving.

Even with that nuisance factor, the convenience of being able to have everything in one place is huge. I regularly clip webpages to it, store images from the web, or add PDFs to various notebooks. It's easily my most used app after Mail and Safari.

 

[richimages]

It looks like the original poster was not too interested in writing notes ... and I can understand that ... but, I would love to add my 2 cents worth along apps for taking notes in hand writing.

I have found handwriting apps that do a better job of smoothing out zoomed in jaggies ... but none are too useful for full sized pages with normal sized handwriting except for Note Take HD (IMO) ...

I would recommend getting a stylus, and taking the time to learn the app ( 20 minutes ) and used EDIT 2 mode with auto scrolling.

Here's a sample where I was trying to be neat, but not going slow, or re-doing anything. Pretty similar to writing on a normal sheet of paper. Output as PDF to email.

 

[richimages]

... but the one gripe I have is when I'm writing and my hand hits the bottom right of the page, it turns to a new page. I almost wish there was an option to move that to the top right instead ....

I've seen some artist-types use a glove on their drawing hand with the fingers cut off the glove for similar reasons ... you might not have to go to that extreme for writing apps ... perhaps you might try folding a simple handkerchief for a few layers and laying that across the ipad where your hand might touch. Just a thought ...

 

[TraceyS/FL]

It looks like the original poster was not too interested in writing notes ... and I can understand that ... but, I would love to add my 2 cents worth along apps for taking notes in hand writing.

I have found handwriting apps that do a better job of smoothing out zoomed in jaggies ... but none are too useful for full sized pages with normal sized handwriting except for Note Take HD (IMO) ...

I would recommend getting a stylus, and taking the time to learn the app ( 20 minutes ) and used EDIT 2 mode with auto scrolling.

Here's a sample where I was trying to be neat, but not going slow, or re-doing anything. Pretty similar to writing on a normal sheet of paper. Output as PDF to email.

I took the plunge and just bought Note Taker HD.

I'm going to have my kids use it for school work - i've emailed the Dev and got a mega fast response to some questions. He's working on a few of the things i asked about, so i think it will get more useful in time for me.

My kids all have a variety of issues getting things to paper, and i'm hoping this helps. The youngest two aren't at an age where they can just type everything, but giving them a different way to work on expressing themselves should help (they both love their iPad time).

Anyway, not a traditional use - but i did write a paragraph to try it and i could use it for sure.

It would be kinda cool if i could send the completed files to Notebooks for filing....

 

[iThinman]

In Soundpapeer, can i export the PDF to Goodreader or DocstoGo, or do i need to email it to myself?

Also, does it embed the audio in the PDF?

Thanks in advance!

 

[IrishVixen]

In Soundpapeer, can i export the PDF to Goodreader or DocstoGo, or do i need to email it to myself?

Also, does it embed the audio in the PDF?

Thanks in advance!

Looks like email only, no option to export to another program.

Interestingly, when I just tried it, it sent the text portion of the note as plain text in the email, while the audio portion came through as .m4a, which the Mail app offered to open in GoodReader. Audio played fine in that app, but no sign of an actual PDF of the text.

Edit--OK, very odd. The PDF comes through fine, but you can't see it through the Mail app on the iPad. Gmail through Atomic or Safari, I can see it as an actual PDF file. So it does send one. Unfortunately I can't get it to download properly in either, can only view it in HTML--I'd bet on user error for that part though! Anyone else?

 

[applesupergeek]

My main gripe with all these are two simple yet highly required measures:
Encryption
Syncing across devices

I really can't believe no one has really done this...

Important pluses which I see are already available are recordings and hand written notes.

 

[glitch44]

My main gripe with all these are two simple yet highly required measures:
Encryption
Syncing across devices

I really can't believe no one has really done this...

Important pluses which I see are already available are recordings and hand written notes.

Well if encryption is so simple, especially across multiple devices, why don't you whip up an app and make millions?

 

[caubeck]

I have just bought Noterize 3. It's quite good. Audio playback quality could be crisper but it's passable. Why must it use yellow paper? I'm beginning to think everyone in the USA writes on yellow notepads.

 

[iThinman]

Has anybody taken another look at WhiteNote recently since it was updated? I finally picked it up and while it is getting fairly close, it still feels a long ways away.

It is overall sluggish and I didn't get a big confidence boost trying to create multiple notes and pages. Several times when attempting to delete the only page of a note, the previous content would be shown as 'page 0'.

Also, It does not appear to do anything with audio recordings at all. No export option and I annotate find them in the apps folder structure. Can't record audio if I can't do anything with it outside the app after.

Overall, I really like this app though. The feature list and layout work for me, but I am starting to fear the dev may be in over his head. No offense to him/her at all, but I'd love to see what a seasoned coder could do with the framework as-is.

Overall though, this app is #1 on my list of 'damn I hope that becomes awesome soon' apps.

 

[tiestomate]

WhiteNote. Not a name I'd read much, and the icon is so run of the mill you'd be forgiven for not even bothering to take a look. But this one is superb. It is smooth, it allows you to combine text and images and handwriting, drag and resize images, play with the texture and use your own. You can change the fonts, colors, line thickness. You can send sheets as PDFs. You can access the Internet from within the app, and your PDFs and images, and take screenshots to add to the page you're working on....really, this one has it all. It's also relatively cheap.

How to browse the internet within the app?!
I often use online dictionary to translate unfamiliar words and keep them saved for future references. It's a bit annoying leaving the app to translate a word going to Safari. I couldn't find any infromaton regarding the internet on the whitenote userguide.