If you have been wanting to use your iPad as a legal pad, go and install Penultimate right now (here’s an iTunes link to get you on your way). In a nutshell, this app turns the iPad into a very functional notetaking app. No fancy OCR or conversion of handwriting to text here. Just straight notes organized into notebooks. Notes you take are easily exported to pdf as an entire notebook or a page at a time.
Below is a sample of a short note I took using Penultimate. I found that I could write almost at full speed – I think my handwriting was only slowed from using my finger rather than a stylus.
Note from Penultimate
I’ve also attached the pdf export of my note to this post so you can see the actual export from the program. The app uses the familiar interface from the iWork suite for opening a new note and paging through existing notebooks. Instead of “My Documents” at the top of the screen, you see “My Notebooks.” Penultimate has a multiple undo feature, an eraser and a command to erase the entire page.
I love the real pen and paper feel of the app. The app uses earthy brown tones and has a natural or recycled paper feel to it – like a Moleskine. I found my handwriting to be just as legible (or illegible) as when using paper. I especially like how the app renders handwriting as though put down with a nice pen full of ink. No jagged curves, just smooth writing. You can select either grid, lined or plain paper. Though I would prefer not to carry around a stylus, I think a stylus is truly necessary to be able to write full speed. I did not have a stylus available during my testing of this app – but I have a Pogo Sketch on order now.
I only have a few qualms about the program. First (and this isn’t Penultimate’s fault), the pages are sorta small. Consider the notes you take on a legal pad in a typical meeting. You should probably double or even triple your page count. Even though the iPad device is very close to the size of a legal pad, the writing surface is about 2 inches slimmer and 3 inches shorter.
Second (again, not a Penultimate problem), when you rest your palm on the iPad while you write at the top of the page, your palm “smudges” will sometimes register rather than the tip of your finger or stylus. So, you have to hover slightly when writing at the top of the page (especially in portrait mode).
I’d also like the ability to move pages around. Currently configured, this is exactly like a Moleskine notebook. Short of pulling pages out, you can’t move them around in the notebook. Of course, this is easily solved inside a pdf editor. Perhaps some page management will be available in a future version.
Finally, I might like to change ink colors sometime. This is a small nit, as I don’t use it when taking notes in a client meeting very often, but I can see where the option might be useful.
Those of you who caught my post this morning about Note Taker will note that I hastily declared the absence of functional note taking apps on the iPad. Shame on me. Penultimate was released over the weekend and has quickly climbed to the top of the charts in the Productivity section of the App Store. While I’m excited to see what Note Taker will look like on the iPad, I’m convinced that Penultimate is the ultimate note taking tool on the iPad right now. Get it while they have $2.99 introductory pricing in the App Store.
Seems to me that if the iPad were held in landscape mode, it would be more like using a 8.5×11 pad of paper. You would need to use screen flicks or slides to move the paper up and down. In fact, it would be really cool if it acted like an endless roll of paper that you could write on. At the end of a ‘page’ you could just draw a horizontal line to indicate new page to the app.
If each paragraph or page could have a date/time (and even geo location) attached to the writing, that would be even cooler. The meta data would not need to be seen or it could be an option.
Wow, there are so many ways this device could be used!
Now if they will just ship my 3G iPad so I can start using it.
When in landscape mode, Penultimate doesn’t expand to full width. The far right space is like your “desktop” and is where you swipe to scroll.
I think the features you suggest would be excellent additions without making the app clunky.
Randy, I feel your pain. I think I can wait the 9 more days until the iPad is delivered on April 30th, as long as I play enough golf and watch enough of the NBA playoffs.
I think.
I’ve owned a Dell Latitude XT for about two years and an iPhone since the first iteration arrived.
My XT is a tablet PC and I run Win7 on it. I primarily use it in the Courtroom. I debated purchasing an iPad when it became official especially because I have been familiar with the OS and although Android 2.1 is exciting (I also have a Droid Eris just for kicks) IMO nothing touches the iPhone OS.
My XT is different is size and weight than the iPad. Frankly, aside from the size and weight differences, as exemplified by the above post, I am surprised that so many iPad fans are limiting themselves with inferior technology.
Reading this article made me laugh. This software is primitive by XT and Win7 standards. I’ve been writing on my tablet with a stylus and my finger (not so much) for about two years. My XT has a few different apps led by Microsoft’s OneNote that makes Penultimate look cheesy. I’m just not understanding the great leap backwards here.
While it’s been a while since I’ve used an XT, the primary difference for me in the two devices (and similar tablets that have been around for years) is the amount of computing overhead a full OS/apps adds to the computing experience.
I think this is an overall design principle for the OS and apps and what makes it attractive and more usable than a full OS. In applications like note taking, less most certainly is more. Similarly, I don’t need a full OS (and attendant problems) to calendar, email, browse the Internet, blog, play a game, etc. It takes me maybe two seconds to begin working (or playing) on the iPad. The other day someone described the iPad as the Ikea of computers. Simple, attractive and designed for its utility (the differences being you don’t have to assemble it yourself or go to a giant box store to buy it).
That said, Penultimate is a fraction of the program that OneNote is. I know lots of attorneys use OneNote or similar programs I fully suspect that we will see a OneNote type app for he iPad soon enough.