my iPad apps & reviews (mostly drawing and note-taking)
ShowMe: FREE! Perfect for Khan Academy-style lectures.
DropText: $1. For editing plain text documents on the DropBox cloud, a feature that the DropBox app is lacking.
These 2 apps are mainly for annotating pre-existing documents:
iAnnotate PDF: $10. Highlight and draw on PDFs. Annoyance: pencil thickness is zoom-dependent, so every annotation has its own thickness.
GoodReader: $5. Basically a filesystem. It feels like many different apps bundled as one. You can edit text files. You can highlight and draw on PDFs, but the UI is too complicated and tool icons are unpleasantly small. I suspect that there's a way to connect to DropBox, making DropText obsolete, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Notability ($5 $1) and NoteShelf ($6): Very similar apps. They are both (a) paper-like note-taking apps that (b) support typing as well as handwriting, and (c) offer dual zoom view, which is very useful for handwriting more precisely while viewing a bigger area of the "paper", and which comes with a nice line-wrapping feature. (d) Organized into 3 levels: Notability calls them "categories > notes > pages", while NoteShelf calls them "bundles of notebooks > notebooks > pages".
Notability has text search; NoteShelf doesn't. On Notability, you move by using 2 fingers; on NoteShelf, you can use just one finger on the zoomed-out view.
On Notability, each page is associated with an audio recordings (a feature I've never wanted). NoteShelf has a wrist protection feature, which works sometimes.
Notability has a silly use of colors by default (which you can change), while NoteShelf has a very tasteful look.
Noteshelf vs. Remarks vs. Notability: iPad handwriting app shootout!
Apparently Notability can also annotate PDFs via DropBox! Maybe I should move it to the category above.
Notability is lacking a textbox feature, but planning to add it in a future version. This means that typing can be clunky, since all text starts from the left margin.
Skitch: FREE. For annotating maps/pictures. Not very good. No scrolling.
Unlike the above, this one is for artists:
SketchBook Express: FREE. Lots of fun. Transparent layers lets you overlay things. Unfortunately, it doesn't deal properly with the iPad's rotational symmetry, so many saved pictures end up upside down. The Pro version apparently gives you more drawing tools, more layers, etc.
Infinite Sketchpad: $1. A toy. Drawing app with unbounded zoom in both directions.
mirror of this post
DropText: $1. For editing plain text documents on the DropBox cloud, a feature that the DropBox app is lacking.
These 2 apps are mainly for annotating pre-existing documents:
iAnnotate PDF: $10. Highlight and draw on PDFs. Annoyance: pencil thickness is zoom-dependent, so every annotation has its own thickness.
GoodReader: $5. Basically a filesystem. It feels like many different apps bundled as one. You can edit text files. You can highlight and draw on PDFs, but the UI is too complicated and tool icons are unpleasantly small. I suspect that there's a way to connect to DropBox, making DropText obsolete, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Notability ($5 $1) and NoteShelf ($6): Very similar apps. They are both (a) paper-like note-taking apps that (b) support typing as well as handwriting, and (c) offer dual zoom view, which is very useful for handwriting more precisely while viewing a bigger area of the "paper", and which comes with a nice line-wrapping feature. (d) Organized into 3 levels: Notability calls them "categories > notes > pages", while NoteShelf calls them "bundles of notebooks > notebooks > pages".
Notability has text search; NoteShelf doesn't. On Notability, you move by using 2 fingers; on NoteShelf, you can use just one finger on the zoomed-out view.
On Notability, each page is associated with an audio recordings (a feature I've never wanted). NoteShelf has a wrist protection feature, which works sometimes.
Notability has a silly use of colors by default (which you can change), while NoteShelf has a very tasteful look.
Noteshelf vs. Remarks vs. Notability: iPad handwriting app shootout!
Apparently Notability can also annotate PDFs via DropBox! Maybe I should move it to the category above.
Notability is lacking a textbox feature, but planning to add it in a future version. This means that typing can be clunky, since all text starts from the left margin.
Skitch: FREE. For annotating maps/pictures. Not very good. No scrolling.
Unlike the above, this one is for artists:
SketchBook Express: FREE. Lots of fun. Transparent layers lets you overlay things. Unfortunately, it doesn't deal properly with the iPad's rotational symmetry, so many saved pictures end up upside down. The Pro version apparently gives you more drawing tools, more layers, etc.
Infinite Sketchpad: $1. A toy. Drawing app with unbounded zoom in both directions.
mirror of this post