Tablet (iPad) apps review

In this blog, I will share some of my experiences with iPad apps. I have been using an iPad for about 6 months and have been quite eager to try out productivity apps. I must admit that I have initially mainly focused on free apps. My Dutch tightness shines through (a friend once characterized Dutch people as having short arms and deep pockets...) and I haven't really mind the ads coming with the free versions. One does want to try out an app before buying and many app developers should consider giving either free apps or introducing a trial period.

 

As with all (new) things, it is largely about identifying potential winners among the many options. Betting on the right apps will secure long term availability, ongoing improvements and higher likelihood that the app will be available on various platforms (iPad, PC, Android, WebOS, mobile, etc.). This is especially valid for productivity apps that one would like to use on a day to day basis while incorporating the use of the tablet into daily life.

 

Apple includes mail, calendar and notes in the base set up. Mail works very well for both Gmail and other mail clients. It allows to handle multiple inboxes and is very easy to set up. It generally works in 'conversation' mode where messages belonging to the same thread are shown together in a sub directory. The archiving of multiple messages is only possible by sliding across the main message in the inbox. Multiple deletion is not possible. Calendar provides good calendaring functionality and is quite nifty integrated with Mail where dates are recognized and hyperlinked for easy calendaring. Multiple calendars can be integrated or shown separately.

 

The notes application is rather limited and does not have location identification and basic time stamping. Individual notes have only one page and can only be edited in simple text. I have used Catch and Evernote as alternative notes apps. Catch is similar to Notes but provides location identification, tags (need to use # in front of the tag in the title or note text) and time stamping. Catch notes are cloud-based and can be accessed from any computer after establishing an account. Evernote is my favourite notes app. It uses 'Notebooks' to files notes as well as tags through an easy interface. Evernote includes audio recording, HTML pages, photos, files (different formats including PDF) as well as input from Noteshelf (a handwritten notes app). Notes can also be send in by email (Evernote provides you with an email address to which input for notes can be sent as part for your account) or 'printed' to Evernote from other apps on the tablet. Like Catch, Evernote notes are cloud-based and can be accessed from any computer. Evernote provides users with 60MB free upload allowance per month in the cloud. Evernote is searchable and has a location function albeit not as intuitive as the one in Catch. There is an Evernote Premium that allows 1GB upload, searching within PDFs and, most importantly offline access to notes. I would expect Evernote to be a winner in the space due to it's broad functionality, strong integration with other apps and good development potential.

 

The discussed notes apps can be used for text input which then can be copied and pasted into other applications be it productivity (MS Office, Pages) or in web-based environments. There are many other text editing apps on the market. I have typed this on Draftpad, a very simple notepad. Draftpad comes with an Assist Library through which text can easily be copied, deleted or uploaded into Evernote. Assist Library also allows users to search Draftpad entry in Google or Safari. Draftpad saves your work regularly and keeps a timeline of your various versions.

 

So far, my views on some of the Notes and Mail apps. In a next blog, I will write about Utility apps such as Dropbox, Task apps and handwriting notes apps.