Make it work best for which human? The one who is flexible enough to change when the need arises, or the one who is resistant to change? To someone who has never used a desktop computer, iOS would be a small adjustment. However, for someone who spent years on desktop computers, such as myself, iOS was only an easy adjustment after I realized the need to unlearn and relearn.
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"A Note Taking System" - what the iPad Pro should be
- Thread starter jozero
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unlearn and relearn is hard, but yes sometimes required. However you can already see Apple giving up its strict silo idea. iCloud Drive works pretty similar to an old school file system.
I still don't get why iOS "import" documents though, just *work on the document* itself. However I am going to try some of the suggests listed here. They seem close to what I hoped for. It still seems very disjointed though. Like why are the PDFs in iBooks unaware of the PDFs in iCloud Drive ? Shouldn't it just show them all ? Same goes with photos.
Maybe Apple can come up with a multi layered display. A layer of e-ink over the traditional lcd....or maybe oled solves this? Allow notes to be captured via Pencil on e-ink display, and allow reading books via e-ink but still allow full display mode for the rest of iPad usage.
Yes, some of the suggestions posted here are quite ingenious and should offer assistance. It feels disjointed because it is, to a point, and that is partially due to the security model. Sandboxing, disallowing the sideloading of apps, the security required for iCloud.. these things serve to lock down an iOS device. A balance between security and user friendliness will always be required for a computing device. But, as one poster said, it is what it is and we must deal with it as best we can.
Yah e-ink is in a really weird place. The main makers of it have created a colour version but the colours look really weird - newsprint link.
Dual layer screens sound too complicated and error prone. I have seen transparent LCD screens, but have never seen transparent e-ink
Before the Apple Pencil I always thought the iPad was just a big iPhone and thought I would never buy one; the pencil unlocked so many more capabilities with the iPad like drawing beautiful pictures and taking note taking to another level. The only reason I bought the iPP in the first place was to take notes in college. Haven't used a notebook or folder the entire semester, I'm now more organized than ever, and I honestly feel I'm more apt to study because it's all on my iPP! Notability is what I use for PDF files and Pages is what I use for typing papers. As for this product in the video, it does look beautiful because of the paper-like look it has, but an iPad does exactly what this product does and so much more.
They really need to create better product "videos". From the perspective of a deaf person, like myself, that video is nothing more than a picture. There is no indication of any activity, no information being presented.. nothing. Even a basic Pages presentation would have been better than that. Those folks need a better marketing department.
For me, the iPad Pro (and Pencil) with OneNote is the best Note-taking system around. All of my PDFs go into Adobe Acrobat where I can annotate.
I wouldn't like the e-ink device because I've gotten used to colors and how smooth Pencil is.
I wouldn't like the e-ink device because I've gotten used to colors and how smooth Pencil is.
Personally I don't "get" that issue, but I understand for some people, it's a noticeable one....have you tried putting an adhesive screen protective cover like this (https://www.amazon.com/Screen-Protector-Premium-Crystal-Cleaning/dp/B003I4TGDC) on the iPad? Some people say they get a better feel for paper when they do.
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Actually, I went the opposite route and put a zagg tempered glass protector on; which is even slicker than the glass on the iPad Pro.
Another solution would be to make the tip of the Apple Pencil have more resistance like the S Pen. The tip already unscrews off the Apple Pencil. So maybe make more tips with different friction coefficients.
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Couldn't agree more. The Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard are what make the iPad Pro "pro" for me. Both accessories made it so much more useful of a device for me--and I didn't even think I would ever use the Pencil. I bought it with some gift cards I had laying around.
I wish I could use it together. The iPad would be able to lay flat with the smart keyboard, which I do like quite a bit.
I started using noteability, reading a PDF. Thanks for the suggestions. Two questions :
- some of my books are epubs. Doesn't appear that notability can import them. Is there a notability app that can do PDFs and epubs ?
- why can't notability import from iCloud Drive ? Only ones listed are dropbox, google drive, box, and webdav.
Not sure about your first question--I'd have to look into that a bit. But for your second thing, yes, that's annoying. There's no reason an app like Notability can't support iCloud Drive, and I really wish it would. That's an annoyance that comes up every week or so for me, as I use iCloud Drive as my common file system between Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Not something I blame on Apple though. iCloud Drive is supported in almost every app I commonly use. I'm not sure what makes Notability unable to do it.
Also--I do use Pencil and Smart Keyboard together sometimes--it's not ideal, but when I need to mark something down on a page of notes I've already written up, it's a handy thing to be able to do here and there.
All of this could be easily alleviated if they would create an on/off switch. I suspect that with the Pencil they wanted it to feel like a real pencil, rather than some sort of electronic gadget. You don't turn a pencil off or on, and with the Apple Pencil you don't have to, either. But artists generally aren't on the go or expecting their Pencil to last for more than a day or two. The Pencil writes flawlessly, but it wasn't designed with the mobile professional in mind.
The Adonit Jot Pro is meant to emulate a pen. The on/off switch is at the top, emulating one of those "click" pens. Take it out of your pocket and "click" the top to turn it on - that's a muscle motion most of us are used to doing. "Click" again to turn it off before storing it back in your pocket. If that is somehow patented and Apple can't use that type of design, they could just have a Pencil-like device that turns off when the tip cap is in place, and turns on when the cap is removed (again, similar to a pen). Or they could just have some other kind of switch.
I hope that they'll release a writing-focused device at some point. On/off switch and a bit smaller and lighter, with greater battery life, would be perfect.
I'll echo what others have said here: unfortunately iOS is designed such that each app stores the file in itself. To get around that, use Documents, as others have suggested. It's free. You can easily read and highlight within documents. Buy PDF Expert to add functionality to Documents. I generally highlight using the highlighter "pen" (rather than the system-based highlighter, which is similar to selecting text) and you're able to write and draw directly on the PDFs as well. Documents is already designed to be an excellent PDF organizer and note-taker, but the added benefit is that it's so easy to shift things from Documents to other apps. Documents can also store any file you want, even if Documents itself isn't capable of opening the file. It's the "Swiss army knife" app for iOS, and it's probably my most- or second most-used app on my iPad. (For what it's worth, I use Notability heavily as well, but unlike Documents it's not particularly strong at reading through PDFs or organizing them.)
Thanks for everyone advice, specially with the poorly named "documents" app. I have a system down I am quite enjoying.
The central hub is Notability. Each note is a topic. A line across the note, date, then the title of whatever document I am writing notes on. I paste the URL in if relevant. Then brackets and letter of "container app" that contains document [ (D) or (B) or (I) ]. Highlites are made on the document itself in the respective app. No notes are made on document, all in notability.
Split Screen.
Right Side : Notability
Left Side :
- (D) Documents : PDF
- (B) iBooks : ePub
- (I) Instapaper : article from the net (allows highlighting)
My guess is the next iOS release, rumoured for March and focusing on iPad, will let you highlight PDFs in iBooks, so it may reduce the amount of container apps to 2. If I used the "export to PDF" feature of Safari it could be reduced to one, which would be awesome.
The central hub is Notability. Each note is a topic. A line across the note, date, then the title of whatever document I am writing notes on. I paste the URL in if relevant. Then brackets and letter of "container app" that contains document [ (D) or (B) or (I) ]. Highlites are made on the document itself in the respective app. No notes are made on document, all in notability.
Split Screen.
Right Side : Notability
Left Side :
- (D) Documents : PDF
- (B) iBooks : ePub
- (I) Instapaper : article from the net (allows highlighting)
My guess is the next iOS release, rumoured for March and focusing on iPad, will let you highlight PDFs in iBooks, so it may reduce the amount of container apps to 2. If I used the "export to PDF" feature of Safari it could be reduced to one, which would be awesome.
Epubs are basically HTML files with some special codes added to make them act like a book, and need ePub reading software (like iBooks) to decode those special code and display like a book. If you want to mark them up like you do a PDF, I think the best thing to do would be to convert them to PDF. There are ePub readers that allow you to add notes to your ePub -- iBooks does this, so you can check it out to see if it does what you want. But basically, ePub and PDF are such different formats, that no single app is going to handle both well. I mean, iBooks opens PDF, but all you can do with it is read. And PDF readers don't open epubs, as you've found.
I like iBooks for reading books that I bought in digital form, but I don't like it otherwise. Perhaps by design, it's very difficult to shift documents out of iBooks. By comparison, that's where Documents really shines.
For .CHM and.EPUB documents, I use CHMate. There's a free version that I think restricts how many documents you can have on your device at one time, and then there's a paid, unlimited version. I don't recall any markup capabilities (or if there are, I haven't used them), but it's a decent application that still allows you to move files to other applications or to share with Airdrop.