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thibaulthalpern

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 2, 2008
241
2
East Coast, USA
I've been wondering why people would prefer to buy a note-taking app versus say a more fully developed word processor app like Pages or some thing else. Beyond price differences (I think Page app is about $10 and many note-taking apps are below $8?) what other reasons are there?
 
The most obvious difference is freehand note taking.

For those that prefers to type instead, Pages lack of outline mode which can be very valuable for note taking.
 
None of the notetaking apps have OCR for freehand drawing. As the name implies, it's just freehanding writing and drawing in their original handwriting glory. Some apps have zoom mode to help you write with your fingers, but as far as I know, none convert to text.
 
Most note taking apps have advanced formatting functions that allow you be a bit more creative in the moment. (highlight, draw circles, add a "stickie", insert a pdf or picture to annotate. I've attached a demo I did quickly with notarize (yes it's gibberish) but there are many apps that do similar things. You can also record the meeting with Notarize and have the sound and pages synced. It's pretty cool. Again, other apps do this as well. I'll use Pages or Office HD when I'm drafting a document because they have more traditional word processing features. (margins, bullets, etc..)
 
O yes, they do...

Try Writepad. It converts to text. I believe one of the others uses the same recognition engine but I can't remember which
David

None of the notetaking apps have OCR for freehand drawing. As the name implies, it's just freehanding writing and drawing in their original handwriting glory. Some apps have zoom mode to help you write with your fingers, but as far as I know, none convert to text.
 
I've been wondering why people would prefer to buy a note-taking app versus say a more fully developed word processor app like Pages or some thing else. Beyond price differences (I think Page app is about $10 and many note-taking apps are below $8?) what other reasons are there?

Word processor doesn't mean better - it depends on what you need.

Something like Notebooks for iPad is very feature-heavy and very good for organising work and research.

Also, an app like this can work better into someone's workflow when they're using their Mac. For example, if you look at users of Scrivener, many find Notebooks for iPad works well with it, far better than a word processor app, because that's not they need.
 
A word processor like pages is overkill in a lot of situations, like driving to the market in a 5 ton truck rather than a car just to pick up a six pack and a bag of chips. Check out apps like IA Writer or Markdown Note which offer an extremely clean interface so you can concentrate on what you are writing rather than how it is formatted.
 
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