Hello all,
My doctor has asked me to use a paper planner for planning stuff and (Moleskin) notebook for writing stuff (stress related reasons). I am trying to adjust to analog stuff. The only thing that bothers me is to “back up the moleskin” and that I need to import the pages somehow to my mac,
Anyhow the other day I met this guy that had a Microsoft Go and a pen. Instead of a Moleskin, he wrote on the glass directly to OneNote. He was very satisfied with his system.
On the other hand, I am an Apple Fanboy. Now here is my question.
What kind of software for the iPad can I use an Apple pen with and write documents on the glass? Bonus points for software that can try to OCR my writing.
Could Evernote be used for this? Or what do you recommend?
The “best” handwriting recognition app for iPad is Nebo. There are others, including apple notes.
I use Apple Notes for all of my handwritten notes. Apple Notes can also be password-protected. But, I’m not sure how good the OCR is in Apple Notes as I’ve not tried that function. For excellent OCR and ability to take good handwritten notes I would recommend GoodNotes. I don’t know whether GoodNotes allows you to password protect notes or not. I’m sure others in this forum will know. Notability is also an extremely good option. I much prefer Notability’s file structure over that of GoodNotes.
I like notability best.
I would recommend Goodnotes
I use Nebo as well - find the hand writing recognition is excellent.
For me, the choice depends on the battery hit of the application because I need my iPad to last all day.
GoodNotes and Nebo took too much of the battery, meaning when I used them all day the iPad would run out of battery hours before my working day was over.
Notability was better but even that caused considerable drain (less than the other aforementioned apps though).
In the end, I settled for Apple Notes because it hardly affects the battery level and guarantees that my iPad lasts until the end of the day.
If you are not a heavy user, this may not affect you so much though. I have no idea about how good Apple’s OCR is but searching handwritten notes always works (I’ve never tried exporting with OCR).
Interesting, I use Goodnotes for work all day, and my iPad never gets below 40%.
Are you sure it’s those apps causing it?
Normally, I only use my iPad for note taking, and I only have a few apps installed (I mostly use stock apps), as I use my MacBook for anything more demanding.
I tested note taking apps extensively at conferences where I need to continually take notes.
At one conference, all my battery was gone after only using GoodNotes with less than 6 hours of continual use. The next conference I attended, I took over 8 hours of notes in Apple Notes and still had 30% battery.
I use my iPad to display notes all day while lecturing, and just having GoodNotes open constantly means my iPad always runs out by the end of the day. It never does if I switch the same setup to Apple Notes.
My use case is pretty extreme because I have the app open almost all day.
If I use GoodNotes, my battery usage doubles and it’s the only time when I have to plug in my iPad at work. I’m very sure it’s this app because nothing else is open and this rapid battery drain only happens with using GoodNotes.
+1 for Notability. Great organisational structure. Beautiful “pens”. Wide variety of ways to get content into your notes.
Both Goodnotes and Notability are really good. I, too, prefer Notability’s file structure. At least for my classes, though, I’m using Goodnotes. I use the app as a digital whiteboard in class. Goodnotes plays well with Air Play — it hides the controls so all students see is the page. And if Goodnotes is on the left, I can have another app open on the right in split screen, and can even bring up an app in Slide Over, and all students will see is the Goodnotes page.
Notability, unfortunately, doesn’t do that.
Sigh. I guess I can’t have everything I want in one notes app. 
I really love GoodNotes but you can also use the OneNote app on an iPad. It’s very good and cross-platform.
MakeUseOf surprisingly has some good overview articles for Mac and iOS.