iPad vs notebook

[username:]

3000 years ago: "Why did you invent paper? Chiseling things into rocks and carving them into cave walls works just fine!"

As a student that uses his Apple Pencil everyday I can tell you that it is a huge leap forward in the storage and retrieval of human knowledge.

As others have mentioned: even 15 years from now very few people will still be writing on dead trees. The Pencil IS that good. A few student-cycles from now (~8 years) most people will be writing their notes electronically. It is vastly superior!
[doublepost=1459094382][/doublepost]

I don't ever use mine as a "stylus". It's for writing and drawing.... two things you don't want to do with your finger.

Steve jobs did say handwriting is the slowest form of input. How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper? Surely we should be trying to automate that effort of handwriting to make it way more efficient.

It just seems lazy to say "oh handwriting is just easier and more flexible. No point trying to develop apps that support mathematical/scientific writing, diagrams, more flexible keyboard inputs, let's just create apps that act like a blank sheet of paper and use an electronic pencil. That's progress!"

I think information input can be supercharged way beyond handwriting with these devices and using a pencil for that is just lazy and stunting progress.

 

[Night Spring]

Steve jobs did say handwriting is the slowest form of input. How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper? Surely we should be trying to automate that effort of handwriting to make it way more efficient.

Handwriting on the iPP is a supplement to other forms of input. You can still type things when that is faster. But there are times when handwriting is more convenient, and now people have a better instrument to handwrite on the iPad.

 

[friedmud]

Steve jobs did say handwriting is the slowest form of input. How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper? Surely we should be trying to automate that effort of handwriting to make it way more efficient.

It just seems lazy to say "oh handwriting is just easier and more flexible. No point trying to develop apps that support mathematical/scientific writing, diagrams, more flexible keyboard inputs, let's just create apps that act like a blank sheet of paper and use an electronic pencil. That's progress!"

I think information input can be supercharged way beyond handwriting with these devices and using a pencil for that is just lazy and stunting progress.

"Slowest form of input" for what? For text? As a scientist I can tell you that there are MANY things that are not text that I need to write down everyday... yes mathematical expressions, formulas, etc.... are part of it (those are close to being text and I can type them fairly efficiently in Latex, but not as fast as writing them down). But also other things: diagrams, drawings, spatial representations of problems, spatially organizing thoughts, etc.




Attached are two pages from my 12.9" iPP where I was working out a line-line intersection algorithm as part of my research a couple of weeks ago (yes, they are ugly! They are just for myself! . Are you telling me that I should have typed / typset the math and done the diagramming where I was double checking the results of my code in Adobe Illustrator?! These are not things that are going to be published, they are simply notes I take while I'm working.

Or maybe you believe in some sort of fairy land AI that I could have described this all to using my voice and it created all of it for me?!

Just because writing is an old idea... that doesn't mean it's a "bad" idea! The iPP makes writing _even better_... letting me keep all of my notes, drawings, diagrams, etc. in one easy to retrieve place. It also lets me type the things that are more efficient to type... even mixing the two in the same document (or marking up a typed document).

 

[mrklaw]

Those of you marking up PDFs - what's a good app for that? Ideally one that integrates with Dropbox or one drive

I've been using a coulle of apps on my surface pro 4 and really like how natural it is to annotate with a pen, so I'd like to be able to do that on my iPad Pro 9.7 when it comes next week

 

[sflomenb]

Those of you marking up PDFs - what's a good app for that? Ideally one that integrates with Dropbox or one drive

I've been using a coulle of apps on my surface pro 4 and really like how natural it is to annotate with a pen, so I'd like to be able to do that on my iPad Pro 9.7 when it comes next week

Notability is good for PDFs.

 

[friedmud]

I do most things with Notability... but if you want good Dropbox integration you can't beat PDF Expert.

For a full listing of these apps that I've tried, check out my huge list here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/app-for-strictly-taking-notes.1950982/#post-22474535

 

[Krevnik]

Steve jobs did say handwriting is the slowest form of input. How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper? Surely we should be trying to automate that effort of handwriting to make it way more efficient.

Is the goal retention, or efficiency? Studies show that retention requires you to be involved in the process, and actually processing the information you are receiving. Automation, typed notes, along with anything else that pulls people out of the process hurts retention. So if my goal is to actually be a tool for learning, then efficiency might be counter productive to the goal.

And this ignores the other uses for this sort of setup, where I can treat the canvas in ways that I'd need a whiteboard or similar tool to get the flexibility of letting me play around with an idea that isn't about any specific thing. Or prototyping designs in the very early stages. Things that I used to use something like a Moleskine for, but have abandoned because I have a lot more flexibility with an iPad and the right app. And it was also more about already having the iPad, and adding this new functionality into my workflow. But let me know when I can manipulate paper with infinite undo/redo, tweaking, being able to clip and move things around freely, etc.

It just seems lazy to say "oh handwriting is just easier and more flexible. No point trying to develop apps that support mathematical/scientific writing, diagrams, more flexible keyboard inputs, let's just create apps that act like a blank sheet of paper and use an electronic pencil. That's progress!"

I think information input can be supercharged way beyond handwriting with these devices and using a pencil for that is just lazy and stunting progress.

Actually, I'd say a good approach here is to blend what works for humans, along with supercharging the technology so that this underlying technology becomes more transparent to the process. This is part of the mentality behind new technologies in "Natural UI" which includes things like Siri and Google Now. Good tech accounts for the human factor, rather than always forcing us to adapt to it.

 

[friedmud]

Steve jobs did say handwriting is the slowest form of input. How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper? Surely we should be trying to automate that effort of handwriting to make it way more efficient.

It just seems lazy to say "oh handwriting is just easier and more flexible. No point trying to develop apps that support mathematical/scientific writing, diagrams, more flexible keyboard inputs, let's just create apps that act like a blank sheet of paper and use an electronic pencil. That's progress!"

I think information input can be supercharged way beyond handwriting with these devices and using a pencil for that is just lazy and stunting progress.

Since I was watching a couple of online lectures tonight and generated some notes... I thought you might appreciate a couple more examples of writing that would be VERY difficult to capture any other way than with a Pencil:

 

[off_piste]

Since I was watching a couple of online lectures tonight and generated some notes... I thought you might appreciate a couple more examples of writing that would be VERY difficult to capture any other way than with a Pencil:

View attachment 623461 View attachment 623462

Does Notability have OCR?

 

[pika2000]

I think information input can be supercharged way beyond handwriting with these devices and using a pencil for that is just lazy and stunting progress.

I still think writing, or any physical interaction between one's hand and the canvas (paper, etc), is still the basis of human creativity. Even the brightest people still jot down ideas in a physical manner, electronic or not. Until we have a wireless neural transmission that can directly translate what we think into a visual representation, we have to make do with current tech.

 

[StPatty33]

I still think writing, or any physical interaction between one's hand and the canvas (paper, etc), is still the basis of human creativity. Even the brightest people still jot down ideas in a physical manner, electronic or not. Until we have a wireless neural transmission that can directly translate what we think into a visual representation, we have to make do with current tech.

Exactly. Communication may be able to be done more efficiently through streamlined technology, but that doesn't mean it's more effective in all cases.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then that means a picture is a more effective communication of the given message, and a picture is created best with tools like the pencil.

 

[Farrellcollie]

Those of you marking up PDFs - what's a good app for that? Ideally one that integrates with Dropbox or one drive

I've been using a coulle of apps on my surface pro 4 and really like how natural it is to annotate with a pen, so I'd like to be able to do that on my iPad Pro 9.7 when it comes next week

I use iAnnotate pdf - it is dropbox compatible. I don't know anything about one drive.

 

[Krevnik]

Exactly. Communication may be able to be done more efficiently through streamlined technology, but that doesn't mean it's more effective in all cases.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then that means a picture is a more effective communication of the given message, and a picture is created best with tools like the pencil.

And it's not to say we can't use tablet interfaces to make the experience better. While I am off in the weeds compared to most folks with the app I use, I still get some really nice things from my workflow:

- Easy diagramming that looks rather nice for very little effort.
- Ability to clip parts of a page, and change the layout of the page so that things make more sense.
- Access to colors and tools that I can leverage without taking up any extra space.
- Organizational flexibillity that allows me to keep pages in the right place for reference. I can "refactor" pages as things change.

Other things folks are getting:
- OCR / Searchability
- Some nifty organizational tools that I don't particularly care about (tagging, etc)

I wish I could add some of my notes to the pile, but it is difficult finding one that I could publically share (and would make any sort of sense outside of the developer community).

 

[friedmud]

Does Notability have OCR?

No. I don't know of a note taking tool on the iPad that does.

GoodNotes can at least search your handwritten notes... but it doesn't actually try to turn your handwritten notes into text documents. In my testing it actually did "ok" at searching handwritten notes... but the one big limitation is that it can only do it within the current document (not over a whole folder - or over all of your documents)... which is kind of a bummer. I would really want it for figuring out _which_ lecture talked about a specific topic.

At any rate... GoodNotes, while good, is not as good as Notability at actually taking notes... so Notability is what I've stuck with

 

[jeremiah256]

Since I was watching a couple of online lectures tonight and generated some notes... I thought you might appreciate a couple more examples of writing that would be VERY difficult to capture any other way than with a Pencil:

View attachment 623461 View attachment 623462

I've been gearing up to buy the baby iPad Pro for class, but your posts are making me think I need to re-evaluate my decision and look at the daddy iPad Pro again.

Edited for clarity: I have some hybrid classes coming up (classes that are partially online, partially on site). With the daddy iPad Pro, I could have the video open on one side, OneNote on the other.

 

[harrypham]

Since I was watching a couple of online lectures tonight and generated some notes... I thought you might appreciate a couple more examples of writing that would be VERY difficult to capture any other way than with a Pencil:

View attachment 623461 View attachment 623462

What app are you using to take notes? I need to take notes in my college classes, especial math.

Is this calculus 3 or differential equation?

 

[throAU]

Uh...a lot

-Having everything in one place
-Not having to buy notebooks and pencils
-being able to go back and erase things and change notes
-being able to mix a lot of elements together in your notes like clickable links, pictures, lists, highlighting, audio recordings, etc
-being able to easily share notes with others

I don't know why anybody would use paper if given the choice. Years from now, I doubt they will

You forgot about synchronisation and backup.

My notepad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, i lost all my stuff.

My iPad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, I just re-synchronise my new one or access my data on a different device.

 

[friedmud]

What app are you using to take notes? I need to take notes in my college classes, especial math.

Is this calculus 3 or differential equation?

Notability. In my mind it's clearly the best.

You can see my huge list of note taking software I've tried here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/app-for-strictly-taking-notes.1950982/#post-22474535

The class is a Computational Enginnering class. I'm in the actual, real (in person) class, but anyone can do the class for free here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-085-computational-science-and-engineering-i-fall-2008/

If you want to watch the videos associated with these notes I posted here... They are lectures 17 and 18.

It's taught by Gilbert Strang... who is an absolute legend in the field. The class is honestly too introductory for me... I really just took it so I could have him as a professor once
[doublepost=1459147553][/doublepost]

I've been gearing up to buy the baby iPad Pro for class, but your posts are making me think I need to re-evaluate my decision and look at the daddy iPad Pro again.

Edited for clarity: I have some hybrid classes coming up (classes that are partially online, partially on site). With the daddy iPad Pro, I could have the video open on one side, OneNote on the other.

To me, the size really matters for school. I REALLY like how much like a real piece of paper the big one is. I even do all of my homework on it.

Split screen multitasking is great on the big one too. Did you know that the palm rejection is so good with the Pencil that you can have your hand resting in one app in split screen mode while you actually write inside the other one! Completely freaked me out that it worked so perfectly!

It's absolutely the perfect tool for school.

BUT: some people value portability more than I do. There's a girl in one of my classes (actually, THIS same class I was just talking about) who takes all of her notes on an iPad mini with an old-school "dumb" stylus. I haven't been able to see what her notes look like yet... but I can't imagine they look very good. Who knows though!
[doublepost=1459148195][/doublepost]

You forgot about synchronisation and backup.

My notepad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, i lost all my stuff.

My iPad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, I just re-synchronise my new one or access my data on a different device.

Hah, this is huge for me too. Just before a big test I always used get nervous about my backpack with my notebooks in it getting stolen. Around here you always get to use your notes during the tests... so if yours were to go missing just before a test you would be really screwed! I don't worry so much now that they're backed up to Dropbox.

Speaking about that subject. Some of my classes let you use a computer during tests too (because so many people have electronic notes now). Some of them still stipulate that you don't use the Internet though. They've all been fine with me using my iPad during tests.

However: for the ones that don't let me use a computer/iPad during the test I have to print out all of my notes and stick them in a binder. It's a small bummer... but actually the printing from Notability looks AWESOME. It's like I wrote thee notes with the most awesome, perfectly black pen ever. I'll find some and take a picture tomorrow.

BTW: Noteability has a Mac OS X app too. They stay in sync via iCloud. Works perfectly. That's what I use when I need to print out my notes for a test.

 

[username:]

Since I was watching a couple of online lectures tonight and generated some notes... I thought you might appreciate a couple more examples of writing that would be VERY difficult to capture any other way than with a Pencil:

View attachment 623461 View attachment 623462

But imagine a good mathematical keyboard that had all the inputs possible.. Differentials, integrals, matrices, graphs... You could sketch a quick graph outline on the keyboard with your finger and it outputs a nice formatted editable copy..

Yeah it's not possible yet, but why are we settling for a pencil? Also, as I mentioned in my original post, I do believe tht mathematical/scientific notes are the exception in that no good alternative yet exists.

 

[Cascades42]

But imagine a good mathematical keyboard that had all the inputs possible.. Differentials, integrals, matrices, graphs... You could sketch a quick graph outline on the keyboard with your finger and it outputs a nice formatted editable copy..

Yeah it's not possible yet, but why are we settling for a pencil? Also, as I mentioned in my original post, I do believe tht mathematical/scientific notes are the exception in that no good alternative yet exists.

Because even with a keyboard like they you said sketch with your finger - for everyone in today's education system we learn to write with pencils and then pens which means we're much more precise with those. Even a fantastic input processor needs to be able to understand the input to prettify it.

Also: I don't know about everyone else, but in maths and science I'm frequently writing as I think which means the keyboard idea (there are mathematical keyboards - on iOS, I own at least one) just doesn't seem to work for me.

 

[illitrate23]

Does Notability have OCR?

No. I don't know of a note taking tool on the iPad that does.

NotesPlus does OCR. You handwrite your text, then when you're ready, you circle the words or paragraphs and it'll covert them to typed test. works pretty well in my experience - my trouble has been finding a stylus that i can write quickly with, so hoping that the Pencil works for me. In meetings it's something not quick enough to type notes when people are speaking, so being able to write them, and later convert to text that can be searchable, would be invaluable.
[doublepost=1459153893][/doublepost]

How can we have this amazing device, and all we do with it is write on it like paper?

If all you are using your iPad for is to write notes then you're missing out on a lot of what it can do.
A better way to look at it is, isn't it amazing that we have a tablet device that can do nearly everything a laptop can do AND we can use it as a replacement for pen and notepaper as well.

 

[off_piste]

You forgot about synchronisation and backup.

My notepad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, i lost all my stuff.

My iPad gets stolen, lost or destroyed, I just re-synchronise my new one or access my data on a different device.

That dredged up painful memories from 2004. Had my laptop, notes, and books stolen from my car the day before Thanksgiving my first year of law school. Talk about stressful when 100% of your grades are based on finals that start in a week and a half.

 

[off_piste]

NotesPlus does OCR. You handwrite your text, then when you're ready, you circle the words or paragraphs and it'll covert them to typed test. works pretty well in my experience - my trouble has been finding a stylus that i can write quickly with, so hoping that the Pencil works for me. In meetings it's something not quick enough to type notes when people are speaking, so being able to write them, and later convert to text that can be searchable, would be invaluable.
[doublepost=1459153893][/doublepost]
If all you are using your iPad for is to write notes then you're missing out on a lot of what it can do.
A better way to look at it is, isn't it amazing that we have a tablet device that can do nearly everything a laptop can do AND we can use it as a replacement for pen and notepaper as well.

Thanks. Do you know if you can pull Notability notes into NotesPlus? Or if NotesPlus has the Notability feature of recording audio and tying it to your notes so you can easily jump to what was recorded at a particular sentence/notation?

 

[illitrate23]

it definitely has a audio recording function.
I'm not sure if it's possible to attach to a paragraph/sentence or just to a set of pages. not a feature i've needed yet so haven't explored it