3 ms·

I mostly agree. I'm a condensed matter theorist and though I do some numerics, most of my time is spent doing handwritten math. It's the handwritten math that t

I mostly agree. I'm a condensed matter theorist and though I do some numerics, most of my time is spent doing handwritten math. It's the handwritten math that the iPad pro really excels at. I absolutely love writing on it and as a pretty disorganized person, I'm sure that if I didn't have an iPad there is absolutely no way I'd still have notes and calculations I wrote 6 years ago. Not only do I still have all my old notes in a quite organized form but they're actually searchable with in-app handwriting analysis. Not only that, but I can edit, resize and move my text very naturally on an iPad in way that are just impossible with pen and paper. Because my iPad is so pleasurable to use for the things that its good at (media consumption and handwriting for me), I always feel so tempted to just get rid of my laptop and move over completely to my iPad but it honestly just isn't as good at keyboard centric tasks as a laptop is. I feel the iPad's real strength is in the intimacy of the experience so its really great for handwriting, looking through photos, reading books. It really gives a stronger feeling of connection to whats on the screen than a laptop or desktop can in my opinion. But it still has a long way to go before I’d use it in anger for programming

mensetmanusman 8y ago
I second this. Using the new apple pencil’s are quite amazing in terms of how natural it actually feels. I use it constantly for communication at work and idea exchange.
esmi 8y ago
I’m an electrical engineer and I also do the initial design with pencil and paper and only skip over to CAD once I have the design space understood. But I do everything in paper notebooks and old notebooks do get lost and/or damaged (or they’re somehow always in the wrong location), so I’m curious what iPad apps you use for notes and handwriting recognition as maybe they could work for me too. Can the handwriting recognition software understand mathematical equations too? That would be amazing.
- eigenspace 8y ago
  So currently there are two dominant iOS apps for handwritten notes: GoodNotes[1] and Notability[2]. They have much more features in common than they do that are different but there's enough differences that some have strong feelings one way or another. Neither app can recognize math unfortunately (sounds like a very hard thing to support!) but both recognize handwriting. Notability in my opinion has a much more pretty UI and has infinite scrolling (scrolling down to the bottom of a page just brings you continuously onto the next page). On the other hand, GoodNotes has * More levels of folder nesting, a feature one only truly appreciates after a few years of collecting daily notes. * More control over the 'background' of your note. You can upload whatever PDF you want, with whatever proportions and use it as your 'paper', and you can have notes where the background paper changes from page to page * Inking that I like a bit more. It's less pressure sensitive than Notability is which I think makes my writing look a bit more uniform. This one is completely up to taste. There's more to the differences but if you decide on an iPad I'd recommend getting both apps and seeing which you prefer. I started with Notability and switched after 4 years. I like both but find GoodNotes works better for me these days. They're relatively cheap (cheaper than nice a physical notebook) and both allow for a variety of cloud storage options which is great. I can't recommend an iPad Pro enough for anyone who does a lot of math with pen and paper. [1] https://www.goodnotes.com https://www.goodnotes.com [2] https://www.gingerlabs.com https://www.gingerlabs.com
  - esmi 8y ago
    Thanks. I’ll give them both a shot. I was recently given an iPad Pro and I was wondering what I was going to do with it. :)

mensetmanusman 8y ago

I second this. Using the new apple pencil’s are quite amazing in terms of how natural it actually feels. I use it constantly for communication at work and idea exchange.

esmi 8y ago

I’m an electrical engineer and I also do the initial design with pencil and paper and only skip over to CAD once I have the design space understood. But I do everything in paper notebooks and old notebooks do get lost and/or damaged (or they’re somehow always in the wrong location), so I’m curious what iPad apps you use for notes and handwriting recognition as maybe they could work for me too. Can the handwriting recognition software understand mathematical equations too? That would be amazing.

eigenspace 8y ago
So currently there are two dominant iOS apps for handwritten notes: GoodNotes[1] and Notability[2]. They have much more features in common than they do that are different but there's enough differences that some have strong feelings one way or another. Neither app can recognize math unfortunately (sounds like a very hard thing to support!) but both recognize handwriting. Notability in my opinion has a much more pretty UI and has infinite scrolling (scrolling down to the bottom of a page just brings you continuously onto the next page). On the other hand, GoodNotes has * More levels of folder nesting, a feature one only truly appreciates after a few years of collecting daily notes. * More control over the 'background' of your note. You can upload whatever PDF you want, with whatever proportions and use it as your 'paper', and you can have notes where the background paper changes from page to page * Inking that I like a bit more. It's less pressure sensitive than Notability is which I think makes my writing look a bit more uniform. This one is completely up to taste. There's more to the differences but if you decide on an iPad I'd recommend getting both apps and seeing which you prefer. I started with Notability and switched after 4 years. I like both but find GoodNotes works better for me these days. They're relatively cheap (cheaper than nice a physical notebook) and both allow for a variety of cloud storage options which is great. I can't recommend an iPad Pro enough for anyone who does a lot of math with pen and paper. [1] https://www.goodnotes.com https://www.goodnotes.com [2] https://www.gingerlabs.com https://www.gingerlabs.com
- esmi 8y ago
  Thanks. I’ll give them both a shot. I was recently given an iPad Pro and I was wondering what I was going to do with it. :)