hi this is life of Macworld and today we're gonna look at the best note-taking
apps for the iPad and the Apple pencil now I've actually been using my iPad
this way for a long time I like to use it kind of like a legal pad as opposed
to something that you type on and everything and the Apple pencil makes
that really convenient the really good news is that there's a lot of apps
already on the App Store that allow you to do this even though the Apple pencil
just now came to the smaller iPad so today let's try some of those out so the
first step we're going to look at is Apple's own Notes app it's Apple's own
stock app so you shouldn't expect any big features in it so down here
basically you have a pen you have a highlighter you have a pencil you have
an eraser and a selection tool and assortment of colors you can also choose
if you wanted to have lines or you want it to be unlined and but that's about
the extent of the customization you're going to get with this tool one thing I
really like about it is that the pencil actually looks like you're riding with a
pencil you believe it or not that it's really hard to get in a lot of
note-taking apps but another really amazing thing about this is that this
selection tool is extremely accurate it'll pick up the line if you want
summary of a section of the text and because this is Apple's own app it works
directly with the iPad interface itself so very nice if you have an Apple pencil
you can just tap on it and boom you don't even have to unlock your iPad you
can scribble a note but again it's very bare-bones
so the next step we're gonna look at is notability and if I were to tell you to
spend 10 bucks on any of these apps this would be the one I would try to spend 10
books on I'll tell you why because it's the one that I actually bought and it's
the one that I use frequently I use this app almost every day so you have a lot
of the same features as Apple's does you know you have the pin but the difference
is you can actually adjust the stroke width here which you could not do with
Apple's one you have a lot more colors here you have the highlighter you have
the eraser a cutting tool and just something there that allows you to you
know the move around the text you also have a you know you can actually just
write by regular text using a keyboard if you want to but the most amazing
thing about a know bit none note ability and which makes it more notable than any
this is that it feels exactly like riding
with a pen so many apps don't get that they feel you know you can you feel like
you're still using a stylus but this one it actually feels fluid and I think
that's really important nobody else nails that quite like notability the
other thing that's really nice about this is other apps dude that's better I
should say is that you can take the selection tool and you can click on it
right there and convert the text and it'll actually see it actually misread
it there but I was trying to say dog and this is what I mean by some apps do this
better but it's not that it's not the best one and so converting your
handwriting into text is still very much a work in progress but it is possible if
you write super neat the thing you have to remember with a lot of these apps is
that often you're not really writing neat so don't expect perfection with
that one final feature that I really love about this is that you can start
recording up here and it will tell you know so if I'm writing this later on I
can go back to these notes and I can press on this and you'll hear the actual
audio that was being saying while I was writing dog is black you know this is
really helpful if you're in a lecture hall taking notes and you're writing by
hand and you want to see what your professor said alternatively you can
also import PDFs mark them up with this app and you can also change what the
paper looks like there are many different varieties of colors here you
can you know make the paper gridded just like you could a notes but there's a lot
more options here but basically anything you want a handwriting based app to do
with your Apple pencil with taking notes not necessarily making art with it you
can do it with notability so the next step we're gonna look at is good notes
for good notes for is still a really great app I wouldn't call it as great as
note ability but one of the really cool things that it does is it allows you to
categorize your your subjects by notebook so say you know you can change
the art here you know you can change the paper and so you can create that book
and gives you a really good idea of having like different subjects so we
would you know just like a regular you know notebook that you buy at Walgreens
or something like that you could you could boom you know you've
got a subject heading for that and then you can you can start writing it here so
let's do something right here
now the problem with this as I see it is this is an app that basically mimics the
feel of using real paper I actually consider that a weakness because one of
the amazing things about digital ink is that you know technically you should be
able to just keep scrolling and writing as you want with this you're basically
limited into how the page looks which is the way paper used to be which makes it
convenient for printing out obviously if you want to and you can do that with
this app but the problem is it really limited you and what you do but this
doing still has a lot of good options you know you have the highlighter you
know you can erase you have the selection tool and you also have a
really cool feature in that which you can basically use the shape tool to make
perfect shapes more along the lines of what you want it so let's make a circle
let's make a triangle and see it'll basically make them on your page the way
you meant to make them so much like notability and a couple of the other
apps we're gonna be looking at it does recognize your text but unlike a lot of
these other apps it doesn't try to give you text that you can paste into an
email or something however it does allow you to search through your notes which
is kind of cool because it will actually recognize what you wrote and sometimes
like video or this will show up I doubt it could read Macworld here but
what that one feature I really like about good notes for is that you can use
this little zoom in tool you know so if you're typing if you're riding along as
I should say and you remember something so I want to put a big note up here so
boom as you can see that shows up in the actual text here on the page but it's a
lot smaller and especially when you have a lot of text going here it's a lot
simpler to get that in so the next step we're going to look at is my scripts
Nero and Nebo is really cool because handwriting recognition is its thing
it's a fairly simple app otherwise but you know you can't really adjust these
lines you can't put the grids on there and everything but it is absolutely
fantastic at handwriting recognition this is what it is meant to do so let's
write a line out here so I wrote the sentence this is a video about apps and
I don't know if you can see it but I it came out perfectly in text as I was
writing it and so there's none of this circling it and everything else it does
it immediately and it does it very well the problem is again you're really stuck
in this one structure but if you're just interested in getting your you know
translating your thoughts from handwriting into actual text without
doing a lot of you know retyping or something like that this is a good app
for doing it now the problem is as a person who writes a lot by hand I can
tell you that if you're taking notes and you're in a classroom or something and
your professor is going so let's see I want to say the nearest star to us is
the Sun and he's - saying that that's me being I can actually read that but it
came out the nearest start to co-ed he ate you MA so that gives you an idea if
you're really rushing to write something down maybe you have better handwriting
than I do it's gonna you know you're not gonna have an easy as a time and I
should say you know this works best with a print based handwriting system as
opposed to cursive or something so let's let's write my name yeah see I was
looking all pretty there in his putting leg so if you're writing you know the
way it wants you to riding along the lines writing and basically you know a
manuscript non cursive script it will do really well other than that I don't know
but if handwriting recognition is what you want
niebo is a really good app for it so Apple fans get this the next app we're
going to be looking at is actually a Microsoft app this is Microsoft OneNote
now he is a good chance that you've actually used one notes before it's a
very robust app especially if you're taking text and everything like that you
can insert photos you can answer tables files but since we're working with the
Apple pencil this is what we're going to be focusing on the drawing section now
in a lot of ways it's very similar to Apple's own app and that it's got very
simple tools you know you you have the pin you have a blue pin a green pant a
highlighter and some other stuff and the nice thing is is that unlike Apple's
Notes app you can actually adjust a stroke width and stuff so let's take a
look at it so far so similar to anything else that we've written and let's add
another one now one of the reasons why I really love OneNote is a lot of these
you can't really you know let's say I want to scribble in something in between
here as you saw sometimes I had to use like a magnifying tool or something but
watch this I can actually insert more text in between here for me that's very
amazing especially when I'm writing like handwritten drafts and I want to insert
another paragraph or something boom I don't have to rearrange the whole thing
and another really amazing thing especially if you're using this for like
a corporate group or something is that you can actually add people too you know
you can invite people to collaborate on this notebook with you and if you think
this is a small space so so let's add a little blue here check this out it gives
you a massive range this is a massive board to work with so this little bit
that we were working out of here the opening page that's right here this is
the whole whole screen that you have to work with so if you're trying to use
mind mapping with your colleagues or something like that this is a good way
to to map it all out unfortunately this means that you can't easily export it to
PDF like you handle with some of these other apps but you know for the chance
to collaborate they're having a nice easy place where your notes are stored
in the cloud available anywhere you want them to be it's an excellent app so the
next thing we're looking at is notes plus this actually used to be my
favorite handwriting app but later on I found that notability had the really
fluid writing and so I went over to that but other than that it's a it's you know
it's something that really gets what it's like to write with a pen on digital
paper you're not really necessarily limited to the actual page that you're
working with you can keep writing you know so you know if I have this here
now I can just keep moving it and just go on forever and that that's really
amazing thing to do here now another thing as you saw you know some of the
other ones you know you I can use this to zoom in to say something else so it's
uh yeah so if I need to really you know zoom in to write something I can do that
now the really cool thing about this one in
my opinion is that I can't believe that and other apps don't do this but if I
make a mistake and I want to scratch it out look at that I can just scratch it
out that's such a simple thing you think that would be very intuitive with the
rest of apps with the Apple pencil but this is the only one that I know of that
really does it and I think more of them should do that as with other apps you
have you know handwriting ticket you know handwriting recognition that one
actually did recognize me saying dog so hey good for you notes plus but it's
basically the same thing as good notes for note ability but it does some things
a lot better like that scratching out so the next step we're gonna look at here
is car flow and unlike using in an iPad like a legal pad or a notebook
it focuses on allowing you to use index cars without killing a whole forest
worth of trees and I really like this because it's a good way of arranging
your ideas in a way that a traditional outline won't allow you to it's
basically a storyboard you know the way that screenwriters and novelists will
put their ideas on the wall of index cards and rearrange them as needed and
this allows you to do that right here on the screen and it's it's really cool
because you know you can select multiple of them and therefore you know you can
arrange them as you need and I could add so many more cards to this the problem
is is that I've noticed sometimes when you get too many cards it'll sometimes
crash but other than that I really love this way of doing it you can also do it
with text you don't have to just use the the pencil you know if you buy the the
premium version there is there actually a very good free version you can add
hyperlinks and images and stuff like that and it makes it really useful but
again I love this it is actually my favorite outlining tool and for similar
reasons that you see with storyboards and the like so today we've looked at
seven apps that all focus on writing by hand with the
pencil on the iPad they all have various strengths and they did those strengths
very well but if I were to choose ones that I would use every day and one that
I would spend my money on it would be notability