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iPad as a research tool. What Productivity apps to get?

zer0tails

zer0tails

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 23, 2008
1,224
0
Canada
Hi everyone,

I just purchased a 64gb WiFi iPad on black friday. My main purpose for the iPad is to use it as a research tool. I'm interested to see how many others on this forum use it for this purpose and what apps you use in your workflow.

So far the apps I've downloaded are:

1. dropbox
2. Papers
3. Mendeley
4. simplenote app
5. Instapaper
6. Goodreader (Is iAnnotate worth getting since I already have goodreader?)

While simple note app is great for taking short quick notes, I'm looking out for a good full featured word processor. Any recommendations? I know there's papers and documents to go but from the reviews I've read, exporting docs from these apps is quite difficult.

thanks guys!
 
Pages is alright as a word processor, might be a few other good ones out there but I just sort if played safe with using the apple one.
 
I use my iPad constantly for research. After trying lots of apps, I have settled on Notebooks as the best note management app for me.
 
Sorry to intrude in your thread but it's sort of on topic, I heard some rumors about MS Office Mobile coming to iOS? It worked flawlessly on Windows Mobile, I was able to edit documents seamlessly and without anything changing one way or another, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and One Note, all great. I'd pay for that, if it was available. Either way I'll be watching this thread, about to get mine and intend on using it for school next semester, would be interested to see what folks think are the best things for this. Unfortunately, despite what Jobs has said, Apps have gotten much more expensive than they used to be.
 
Keynote.

The slide presentation via VGA connector has yet failed me. I particularly like the laser point (activated by touch and hold). For setups with two or more projectors, this is a fantastic feature!
 
Yeah, Pages is the best word processor right now. I've gotten to like it, though I still think of it as more of a page-layout and design app than a writing tool. Nonetheless it gets the job done, and The ability to share easily in multiple formats (.doc, .PDF, and the native .pages format) via iWork.com is pretty handy.

For situations in which plain text is sufficient, I strongly recommend IAWriter, a beautifully designed app that provides an extended keyboard including such time-saving features as a cursor/arrow key.

Chapters is somewhat more versatile than Simplenote, in that it allows for multiple notebooks.

Wolfram Alpha might be useful, depending on what kind of research you're doing.

If you follow a lot of RSS feeds, or visit certain websites constantly, you might want to check out reader/aggregator apps like Reeder or Pulp.

Articles is a nice front-end for Wikipedia.

Oh yeah -- the browser. Check out iCab Mobile as an alternative to Safari. Many important features like tabs, background tabs, various plug-ins, and the ability to download files directly from the web. There are other good tabbed browsers like Atomic and Grazing, but iCab is the best, in my opinion.

My daughter is very big on an organizer-type thing called Things (as in "things to do," maybe?) -- expensive but she swears by it.

Depending on your field of work there is an increasing number of specialized reference apps and the like. I'm a writer so I've bought stuff like the Oxford dictionary, a Shakespeare compendium, and other stuff. I do most of my work on the iPad these days, and seldom feel cramped or constrained in any way.
 
Papers. While Goodreader is the best PDF renderer out there, Papers (along with its Mac OS parent program) is the best PDF management / indexing program available--very useful for science or any other technical field.

Notetaker HD is the best handwritten notepad app for the iPad (although I have yet to find a capacitative pen that I actually like; the one I have is slightly better than the Pogo sponge approach, but is still strange).

I've yet to find a decent office suite for iOS, pretty much everything sucks. I have Office^2 HD and it's mediocre, but so is everything else. The office suites available are still only viable for reading things, editing/creating is still crap.
 
I've just bought an iPad too and looking for some effective productivity tools for my writing and research. I already have Pages, Dropbox, GoodReader, Things, IAWriter and a couple more. I'm currently using Safari for my browser, but I'll definitely check out iCab Mobile like what wyneken has suggested. Will keep track of this thread for more app recommendations. :)
 
Evernote

I'd also think about this - you can use it as a PDF/document indexing app, take all sorts of notes, access it from your iPad iPhone, computers, Web, store notes offline, index, it's very flexible.

I've used it extensively whilst doing a diploma - it's really useful.
 
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