Take note, Apple. This is how it’s done.
Apple's iPad is certainly capable of replacing every notebook you'll ever need, but let's be serious -- nothing about Apple's Notes app is going to entice any fence-sitters to ditch their trusty pen and paper. Ginger Labs' Notability, however, just might.
As you might expect, Notability records your written thoughts in a portfolio-style pad not unlike the one in Notes, but its array of features quickly set it apart from Apple's one-trick pony. For one, the font type, size, and color isn't limited to three lame style options; for another, notes can include photos (which can be resized and cropped, but not rotated), Web clippings, and in-app sketches.
Why copy and paste paragraphs from a website when Notability can grab the whole darn thing?
And if that's not enough, Notability also sports a nifty menubar that offers one-click access to tools that have no right being in a note-taking app -- multiple undos, Dropbox, iDisk and WebDav exporting, and its killer feature, audio recording. Using the iPad's built-in microphone, Notability records and stores audio notes alongside your written ones, a valuable tool for lengthy lectures or interviews.
With great ability comes great scrutiny, however, so it’s only natural to hold Notability to a higher standard. The lack of a dynamic spellcheck wouldn’t be so noticeable if the app wasn’t so powerful in other areas, and a complementary iPhone app would take some of the clunkiness out of importing and exporting files.
The bottom line. But overall, there isn’t much about Notability that isn’t, well, notable.
iPad running iOS 4.2 or later
Slick interface. Built-in audio recording. Support for photos and Web clips.
Can't rotate photos. No dynamic spellcheck. No accompanying iPhone app.
mbbs
July 14, 2011 at 2:53am
Version 3 looks nothing like the photos above, and infact is quite awful. I have emailed the developer my feedback and have been ignored, so i posted to the Facebook page, and my post was deleted.
The new Aqua/candified interface of v3 makes the app look like something most suitable to a 5 year old's xylophone, circa OSX 10.0
I appreciate that one can change the colours, but the whole candy interface is still an eyesore (as compared to refined, subtle, classy and mature textured tan leather look of version 2. Even the app icon has changed from leather book to candy blue). Even the file browser names are much bigger font (and cannot be changed) and the bubbles around each folder are massive. I don't need a fluorescent yellow cartoon/icon next to each subject group, surrounded my fluorescent yellow highlighting with fat psychedelic colours around it. Each item now resembles the windows7 start menu.
Furthermore the forced page breaks are a disaster also, they cannot be disabled, I have been happily storing documents that i had written in macjournal, and exported to RTFD. They have a combination of pictures and text, your forced page breaks are a disaster to my photos, I can only fit 2 photos per page, and the next photo cannot follow (across a page break) hence the text is messed up, and the photos are all messed up (and cannot be resited across hard page breaks).
Do not update to version 3 !
