Wow. Penultimate is a really good app for drawing and taking notes like a pen. By far the most responsive of all the apps. I paid 3 bucks for it after reading the reviews but its well praised and well deserved.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Penultimate is really good. Very fast
- Thread starter Dammit Cubs
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I thought about buying it, but decided not to (for now) since school notes pro does something similar. It definitely looks better than that app though. How would you compare it to that app?
While I haven't try out school notes pro, I have seen it. Penultimate is very pretty and very good for what it does but also very limited. You just have notebooks (no tags, no organization or anything like that), three type of papers(graph/lined/blank) and just one pen color. Nothing else. There's the ability to send a page as an image or the entire book as PDF. Nothing else.
So far, it's the most responsive note-taking app I have tested, excluding smartnotes and school notes pro.
I too was considering to purchase this app. What are you guys using it for? Does it feel weird to use your finger to write?
I actually use then tip of my nail to write combined with a little skin from the finger.
I have used them all
Doodle buddy (fast response)
Adobe ideas (great zooming in and out)
Student notes pro (best integration of multiple different ways to take notes)
Sketchpad HD
Pen Ultimate does the best job at writing. It's not even close. I can write equations, draw items and even the pen will slip a bit causing a trail when I a write.....like a pen should of this type.
Awesome app. All they need is zooming in and out
I have used them all
Doodle buddy (fast response)
Adobe ideas (great zooming in and out)
Student notes pro (best integration of multiple different ways to take notes)
Sketchpad HD
Pen Ultimate does the best job at writing. It's not even close. I can write equations, draw items and even the pen will slip a bit causing a trail when I a write.....like a pen should of this type.
Awesome app. All they need is zooming in and out
I have a pogo sketch stylus, it works well with this app too. I can actually understand my handwriting even with my fingers in this app. It's pretty responsive to the point that I can write a sentence without stopping or looking at where I'm going. I probably will stop using the stylus and just use my fingers with this app.
Nice. That's exactly what I do as well. The technique works really great for this drawing webapp as well:
http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/#sketchy
Visit that site on your iPad.
Each have its own merits.
I bought Penultimate because the writing looked the best. You can see how much smoother it is. I like the fact you can email the page or entire notebook as PDF. Now that Evernote supports email, I can email the note/notebook directly to Evernote or Posterous or self or...
I also like Student Notes Pro's feature for accessing wikipedia & google to copy stuff over to the note. But I don't like the writing as you can see. But the app is free.
I bought Penultimate because the writing looked the best. You can see how much smoother it is. I like the fact you can email the page or entire notebook as PDF. Now that Evernote supports email, I can email the note/notebook directly to Evernote or Posterous or self or...
I also like Student Notes Pro's feature for accessing wikipedia & google to copy stuff over to the note. But I don't like the writing as you can see. But the app is free.
Guys, when posting the large screenshots, please edit it to use instead of [IMG].
I'm enjoying the app much more over time. I have contacted the dev, they said they'll be pushing out updates with features. I was worried that there might not be anymore to Penultimate but glad to see I was wrong.
I'm enjoying the app much more over time. I have contacted the dev, they said they'll be pushing out updates with features. I was worried that there might not be anymore to Penultimate but glad to see I was wrong.
Can someone provide feedback on which works better with this app, stylus or finger? I have the iPad app, but not the iPad, yet.
yea, i got the app, and its nice for large note taking, but cmon, for taking notes in class, its useless, unless you have a stylus that can write small and good as a human can write, and I dont see this app doing it...
This app is good for sending yourself reminders or sending notes to people that are somewhat large...
yes, it might be the best in the store, but taking notes from lectures with this is impossible.... a pen and paper is probably 100x faster
This app is good for sending yourself reminders or sending notes to people that are somewhat large...
yes, it might be the best in the store, but taking notes from lectures with this is impossible.... a pen and paper is probably 100x faster
I have both and Penultimate is a lot better for taking notes with your finger. I do like school notes because it does have more options.
The line width is probably too big for taking school notes.
It's good for jotting notes to yourself with your finger though.
It's good for jotting notes to yourself with your finger though.
I think I might buy this app. I like its simplicity, as opposed to some other note taking apps that look bloated with menus and features that just confuse things. I also like how people say its very responsive.
It must be doing well, since last night it suddenly was the number 1 iPad app in the app store.
It must be doing well, since last night it suddenly was the number 1 iPad app in the app store.
I love the app, mostly using it for notes to my self, like if I'm on the phone and have to jot stuff down.
Haven't tried using it in a meeting yet but am looking forward to trying it out just to see how it goes..
Since the stylus has to have a wider surface because of the touchscreen I can't see how it would be more efficient than just using good ol' paper and pen..
Haven't tried using it in a meeting yet but am looking forward to trying it out just to see how it goes..
Since the stylus has to have a wider surface because of the touchscreen I can't see how it would be more efficient than just using good ol' paper and pen..
A pen and paper will remain the best detailed note taking solution for a long time. There's no electronic solution to this, the closest is a Wacom integrated PC tablet with Onenote running, that's what students would go for if they got the money, otherwise they'll just type it in or write it down on paper.
There'll be no application at all that'll be as good as the PC/Wacom tablet, not with an iPad. iPad is excellent for straight, short and simple note-taking and this application has the best handwriting style but short on features to make it more powerful.
Well, one advantage that devices like the iPad have over pen & paper is that they can automatically transcribe notes using voice recognition (e.g. with the technology they use to let you read voicemails that people leave you).
If an app does this with the microphone and also lets you do easy markup on the transcription, I think that'd be much better than pen & paper.
Other than looking good, I dont understand how this app is really useful? From all the screenshots Ive seen, it looks you can only fit about a sentence of writing on the page, or 1 ~ 2 equations. The best usage I can figure out is that this is a glitzier alternative to a post-it note.
yes, agreed. You can't fit a lot of text on it. Regardless, I like this better than School Notes Pro primarily because you can have one notebook for an entire subject. I'm using it at work for meeting notes. I can have one notebook for each projects. The thing I don't like about SNP is writing is horrible and how it organizes notes. It's a new note for each meeting in my case. It'll get unwieldy to organize. With Penultimate, all are organized in a notebook, as you would typically expect.