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Notability or Notepad + for iPP?
- Thread starter ssledoux
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Never used Notepad+, but Notability flows just so sweet. They added pressure sensitivity for Pencil, so now you can do bold writing and light writing, if need be. I'm also able to export to my Mac and create PDFs out of my own notes. That in itself is pretty priceless.
My key criteria are the ability to record while taking hand-written notes. Synchronization with iCloud and Dropbox are important too. Notabilty covers all of these points, NotesPlus covers all of them but the iCloud synchronization. I use NotesPlus because on my Air 2 it has had greater compatibility with the stylli I've been using (Bamboo Fineline and Adonit Pixel). Why my IPP on the way, I anticipate using Notability exclusively.
So for those with Goodnotes, have you also used Notability?
And what about Evernote? Just saw that as I was looking at Goodnotes.
And what about Evernote? Just saw that as I was looking at Goodnotes.
I suspect that each one of the major apps has a strength or important feature that the others don't share. I've used Notes Plus for years while Notability languished in the background. Now that I have an iPad Pro 9.7 and am also doing some projects that require a lot of notes and annotated PDFs I took another look at the features. I decided that a Mac version and synchronization among devices were essential. That plus a very comfortable implementation of the Apple Pencil made it a no-brainier for me. For example, I opened a document on my iPod touch this morning when I was out w/o my iPad, typed in some notes, and then when I got home the information was on th document on my iPad, which is my primary device. I gave up the conversion of handwriting to text that notes plus offers because I'm not sharing my notes and my handwriting is fine as is.
jrs22, that is exactly the process I went through. Being able to instantly see them on my mac was the clincher.
My writing experience: on my old Ipad 3, my favourite writing app was Noteshelf using Adonit Stylus. I really liked the infrastructre, and was very intuitive when creating new books, changing notebooks, moving pages. However, with the Apple Pencil, Noteshelf has become too 'creative" and changed my writing to calligraphy. This does look nice but I found it hard to decipher - I have terrible writing but can read my own writing, whereas the calligraphed version did not look familiar and although looked good was difficult to read.
Notability: The writing experience is good,but I found the 'filing' system to be cumbersome. The app uses Subject and Divider format, which makes sense when setting up but very difficult when looking for past notes. The thumbnails are useless and each divider has its own page and tiitle . Its library of templates is limited - some available for download but not available when creating a new page. I even invested in the Mac app but the overall experience did not meet my expectations. Gave it 2 weeks and eventually gave up.
Goodnotes 4 - This comes closest to Noteshelf. The notes look personalised, and the writing experience is good. Navigation is easy, although sync with iCloud is slow - for a while I thought sync to iCloud was not working!
I also use PDF expert - it works great with Apple Pencil and use it on IPad and Mac. Really beats preview when annotating notes or publicity material
Each to his own, and you might have to try a few before identifying what suits you and your needs
I have used Notability enough to find it's writing experience much less pleasing than in GoodNotes.
Let me add though, that I don't have the Apple Pencil - and that I use the zoom window on most occasions.
Something with the Notability zoom level makes me feel like drawing shapes rather than writing letters.
In GoodNotes, I immedidately "get" the scale of both my writing in the zoombox and the note paper as a whole.
About Evernote, I guess it's more a place to store your digital stuff than an actual note taking app. Handwriting isn't available at all, unless you link to apps like Penultimate and Noteshelf - and perhaps others that I don't know of.
I have Notability, but Goodnotes does look really awesome. I'll definitely download it and give it a try.
