Greetings:

A while back I posted that I was using MagicalPad on my iPad as an outliner. One of the things that I liked about MagicalPad is that you can tap anywhere and begin typing, much as you can in Onenote. I still like that capability, but the app lacks a bit in terms of organizing what you enter. It is easy to use, but not quite as useful as I had hoped. I will keep it on my iPad, but I am looking around to see what I might be able to replace it with. I use Omnioutliner on my MacBook Pro, and I like the program, but with the lack of sync with Omnioutliner on the iPad, I don't see that as being useful for a mobile solution.

I have been looking at Outline + for the iPad. It is billed as an app that will open Onenote files on the iPad. Does anyone have experience with the app? Apparently until recently you couldn't edit the files on the iPad, but in the current version you can. I realize that I won't be able to sync the files with anything on my MacBook, but I will have a mobile notebook/outliner that will allow me to organize things.

Jim

Hi, Jim,

I've played around with Outline+, but I don't feel my experience is enough for me to offer valuable advice. All I can say is that it didn't stick with me, not sure why. I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the best option is Evernote, because it is the easiest to keep in sync on my work PC, my MacBook and my iPad Mini. I am not overly impressed with Evernote, except for its ubiquity. It works and I've been able to keep access to my notes, so that's enough... but in true CRIMP fashion I'll keep looking for a better alternative.

Steve Z.

i know Jim was asking about Outline+, but I just wanted to say that like Steve the advantages of Evernote have been becoming clearer to me. I can use it as a universal repository ... that I can put stuff into from any device I'm using. The hierarchical tags are appealing too ... it would also be useful to if an item would be tagged with a parent tag automatically if it is tagged with a child tag, at least optionally. Also there is the ability to link to an Evernote item either from withing Evernote or from another program. Also I like the built-in voice recognition. Now there are things I want that are missing to be sure. And I don't know if I want to pay for the premium subscription.

Hi.

I bought Outline+ to sync 2 projects that resided (then) in OneNote to my iPad. But I never managed to get O# und OneNote to sync correctly. There are always pages missing in either OneNote or in Outloine+ (just synced and checked again).
I quit using Outline+ because of these troubles. And because I find the "tap anywhere and start writing" method on my iPad annoying.

I also use Evernote more and more to sync material for my projects that I work on at home and on the road. OneNote is the repository for projects I mainly work on at home.
For writing on the iPad I use Index Cards and Notebooks (there is a fine app for Windows and Mac available for that).

Franz

I too find myself using Evernote more -- again, ubiquity across iOS, Android, Windows and Linux (with Nixnotes). On the iPad, I also really like the PlainText program -- a two pane outliner that makes up in absolute simple elegance what it lacks in features. It too syncs to Dropbox. I've also played with CarbonFin Outliner as a tool, but the syncing is just to the cloud outliner.

I've had good experiences with Outline+, which is a very nicely designed app. Having said that, there are other nicely designed apps out there, not all of which have desktop clients. I think Franz already mentioned Notebooks (by Alfons Schmid), which has a good (if basic) desktop client for both Mac and PC, and has the enormous advantage of generating HTML as the basic code underlying each notebook page (notebooks themselves are treated as folders in e.g. Dropbox or your WebDAV server of choice). But it doesn't allow you to draw anywhere on the page.

One app that does is Notability, a very powerful app that's generally speaking a pleasure to use. It backs up to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and any WebDAV server of your choice in a variety of formats (incl. PDF and RTF). But it doesn't sync as such.

Microsoft's own OneNote clients for Android and iOS are pretty good, but don't do the 'enter stuff anywhere on page' thing - in fact they don't do formatted at all, really. Other 'anywhere on page' apps include corkboard apps like Corkulous (I'd go for the Pro version, which is very powerful and allows you to embed corkboards inside corkboards, and also has a good search function) or Infinote (one of my faves, if a bit simplistic). I also love Concept, which is like a peculiar kind of combo of whiteboard with corkboard with index card manager with... well, mindmapper, I suppose. It's just rather nicely done, and very entertaining to use. Otherwise, check out Markdown apps, especially my most recent discovery, Notato.

Has White Note been mentioned yet? If not, it may be worth looking at. It's another app that you can click anywhere on your notebook page and type notes. It is like a lightweight cross between OneNote and Circus Ponies Notebook, with an effective notebook metaphor. You create notebooks, sections and pages. So far my biggest complaint about it would be that its tool icons are kind of muddy, and hard to discern on my iPad Mini.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whitenote/id363747216?mt=8

Steve Z.

One problem I just discovered with White Note: Paste a long piece of text onto a page and there's no way to scroll down to read what has flowed past the bottom of the page. Clearly, not developed for long text, just short notes.

Steve Z.

I bought MagicalPad and while it looks really neat, I haven't been able to put it to good use (yet). I think part of the reason is that the UI is necessarily deep since there is a lot of manipulation required to move things around, create different types of objects, etc.

I don't regret the purchase because it was on sale at the time for 99c, which was too good to pass up for something that looks really cool. Part of the issue is that I haven't had time to really get into it yet, I will get back to it at some point and really give it a go.

Outline+ has just released their new Onenote reader for Mac:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outline/id604802021 (link for the US Store)

They say it will become an editor... we shall see.

jaslar wrote:

I too find myself using Evernote more -- again, ubiquity across iOS,
Android, Windows and Linux (with Nixnotes).

Thanks for the heads up on Nixnote. I am truly impressed. I believe that when I had seen it in the past it had a text interface. Now it has matured significantly and offers an excellent tool for my keeping Evernote notebooks locally in my Linux laptop and in sync. It tool a couple of days to download my 10,000+ notes but now all seems well. I've spotted a couple of bugs, but if development continues this way I may soon prefer Nixnote to the original Evernote interface.

Yes, I like the idea of backing up everything FROM Evernotes to somewhere I own. Nixnotes is fast, and has been pretty reliable.