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Notability is now available for the Mac
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 28, 2014 at 02:06 PM
Notability is an impressive note-taking app for iPad. I noticed that a companion app for Mac was just released today and is available through the App Store. Until now, Notability was restricted to the iPad (and iPhone, I think) ecologies, which made it impractical for me. So, despite some very nice features, I haven’t used it. Sadly, the Mac version requires Mavericks, so I may still not use it, but others might want to take a look. The iPad version has a strong following, especially for education.
More info: http://www.gingerlabs.com/
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Aug 28, 2014 at 02:50 PM
Thanks very much, Steve.
I *quite* like Notability on the iPad, but its use for handwritten notes suffers from some - though not all - of the challenges often posed by using the iPad for handwriting. It will be interesting to see whether the Mac edition can be used for precise hand-writing of annotations on a pdf, a facility which the author David Hewson has spent a long time searching for, according to his blog, and indeed which anybody who tends to write more than a single draft of long-form documents would value. Possibly Notability plus the addition of a Wacom Bamboo tablet or similar would do the trick.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 28, 2014 at 02:50 PM
And just a little follow-up: On the web site for Notability, they really play up hand-written notes, and drawings. Notability is good at those things, but it also takes typed text, and does a nice job with outlines (haven’t tested the Mac version).
Steve Z.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 28, 2014 at 03:49 PM
Hugh,
I can definitely sympathize with David Hewson, as I’ve had very limited success/interest in using handwriting on the iPad. My writing isn’t great to begin with and it just gets too clunky writing on a screen with a stylus. I’ve not worked at it enough to become comfortable with the entry tools like Notability (and others) has. And I’m a miserable artist, so the thought that I might create attractive and interesting diagrams and sketches by hand is laughable (to me, anyway).
Steve Z.
Posted by Paul Korm
Aug 28, 2014 at 07:38 PM
I’ve always enjoyed Notability and keep it on my iPad’s first page because it is a pleasant app to work with. It has a good basic feature set—or good enough for me for note taking. The new desktop app is a bit less featured, but the developer has managed to navigate the mysteries of working with the iCloud API and created a much more reliable synchronization between the iOS app and the desktop than many other apps. I think this is the sort of seamless cross-platform document sharing that Yosemite and iOS 8 are supposed to incorporate