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ProjectBook arrives - and turns into NoteSuite
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Posted by Hugh
Jun 28, 2013 at 07:38 AM
Thanks, Bill. Just downloaded it - £2.99 in the UK Mac App Store. What I can say at the moment is that its signature colour is a nice, graded blue.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 29, 2013 at 01:59 PM
Well, I’m playing with NoteSuite in earnest now, and I can say that its web page import function is faultless! I’m currently doing a lot of research into various things on my PC (not Mac, unfortunately, otherwise this process would be even more seamless). Whenever I find a page I want to include in my research database, I send the URL to my iPad using myPhoneDesktop. The equivalent app on my iPad opens the page in Safari. In Safari, I press ‘copy’; then I open NoteSuite, which immediately asks me if I want to import the web page in its entirety, or as an article. I add a few tags, then press the ‘Clip’ button - and hey presto, a few seconds later, the entire web page (fully formatted - impressive!) appears in NoteSuite. And it’s automatically indexed, too.
The above procedure is fast and practical, and has seriously impressed me with NoteSuite’s consistency and stability - no crashes so far, no problems importing complex pages (e.g. from Amazon). Faultless indexing. Wow. On the other hand, it’s vexing: I managed to talk myself out of moving over to Mac last time I upgraded my laptop (I use a very pleasant 13” Lenovo running, I confess, Windows 7 - not because I’m “afraid” of 8, which I’ve played with fairly extensively, but because too many of my fave progs don’t run on it); now I’m gnashing my teeth, because so many of my favorite apps have Mac equivalents - but not PC equivalents. Curses!
However, it’ll do for the time being! Now I need to experiment with other types of file…
Cheers,
Bill
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 29, 2013 at 02:38 PM
Silly me - what a complicated process. After sending the URL from my PC to my iPad using myPhoneDesktop, I simply copy the URL to the iPad’s clipboard, which is where NoteSuite is picking it up from in the first place. No need to involve Safari at all!
D’uh! Sorry about that!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 2, 2013 at 09:08 AM
After lots of playing about with NoteSuite (for iOS: I remind readers I don’t have a Mac), and importing lots of documents/pages, I have concluded:
- it’s really very good. Very stable, indexing appears to work very well.
- it doesn’t import web pages as well as Alfons Schmid’s Notebooks for iOS (it doesn’t preserve formatting as well), but it handles imported web pages better (faster and more fluid). I save web pages that really interest me to Notebooks by cutting and pasting the article bits, however, and in this respect Notebooks is the equal of - and in fact slightly superior to - NoteSuite.
- the search function is good - again, on a par with Notebooks’s (very good) search function (highlighting of search terms, fast search within notes as an extra function etc.).
- image/graphics handling is actually very impressive - fast and fluid, with great word-wrap options (but see below).
- the range of Cloud sync options is awesome! As is the range of Cloud import options.
- the ‘Related Notes’ function really works!
I did manage to unearth a bug, by dumping graphics and drawings on a page that also had an extensive outline to-do list, and then opening and closing the outline (which caused all the images to vanish!). But this would be, I suspect, an unusual scenario - I was deliberately stress-testing a single note to see just how much I could cram into it!
There are also hints in the blog and product descriptions that the developer is thinking of bringing NoteSuite to more platforms. Very encouraging!
I am on the point of tentatively concluding that you could actually use NoteSuite as a replacement file system - the combination of indexing, tagging, folders and auto-linking (the ‘Related Notes’ function, plus the customisable folders function) is moving in precisely that direction. For an app that started on iOS, that’s impressive!
I’d love to know what Mac users of the app think?
Cheers,
Bill
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 2, 2013 at 10:59 AM
I just published a review of NoteSuite on my blog, which, if you are interested, you can find here:
http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/notesuite-the-ultimate-ipad-note-keeper/
My conclusions are similar to Bill’s. I like NoteSuite a lot—much more than Evernote. But since Evernote is available on so many other platforms, it will continue to be my go to note taker for many things, especially those that relate to my office, where I work on a Windows PC.
Steve Z.