iPad, pt. 3: Three Nuts to Crack

Because I am determined to push the envelope with this iPad, I have continued to chip relentlessly away at the few things the iPad doesn't do, or doesn't do very well. There are three nuts I keep trying to crack on the iPad: solid note taking in the format I prefer to use, printing files directly from the iPad, and the ability to open and edit files from cloud-based services such as DropBox, Google Docs, MobileMe, or others.

Note Taking

Update (6/28/2010): Since posting this entry Pages has been updated to support menus from the landscape orientation, making it easy to toggle bullets on and off.  Also, QuickOffice Connect for the iPad has come out, and offers similarly easy bulleted list formatting as well as great cloud-computing connectivity.  I would say those two program have fully cracked this nut for me.

When I take notes in a meeting I like to use expanded bulleted list format. Main agenda items or topics are left justified and may be a heading or a short paragraph. Under each agenda item, I like to use bullets, though each bulleted line may be short or several sentences long. Visually, I like a line break between each agenda item/topic. As a result, I tend to favor note taking applications which sit in between a dedicated outliner and a word processor. Of paramount importance to me is the ability to find and learn quick keyboard commands for toggling bulleted lists on and off, and for indenting bulleted items in (or out), so I can take notes without taking my eyes off the conversation or presentation.

Evernote's desktop client gives me this ability, and because it is Evernote, it comes with all the cloud-based goodness the iPad needs to be truly effective and powerful. Unfortunately, the current version of Evernote for the iPad, while beautifully configured to match the iPad's layout and style of operation, doesn't yet include those additional editing tools. Plain text input is all you get, no font or formatting tools. If your note taking style can live with that, Evernote is still my top recommendation (for all the other reasons that make it such powerful tool). Until they get around to adding in some basic formatting tools, though, I keep looking for something else.

In a previous post I mentioned Carbonfin Outliner. This is a solid basic outliner with straightforward outlining tools, fairly easy keyboard navigation, and the ability add notes to individual outline elements. I can make this work for me by creating the agenda outline first, and then using the notes option to incorporate additional free flowing text in and around the outline structure. However, because it is a pure outliner, it defaults to check box style outlines and there is no keyboard-only way to toggle out of check box mode on the fly. Also, when using the menu buttons to shift an outline element in or out, the keyboard focus is lost. You then have to double click on the line you want to continue typing on, which gives it focus and again brings up the keyboard. Finally, it only exports in plain text or OPML format, which is ideal if you want to get your content into another outliner, but ugly and useless if you want to get your notes into much of anything else. I give the application kudos, though, for being a very solid outliner and for having an easy way to export files via email, even if I don't like the file output options.

I have tried pretty much every other note taking application available in an iPad version and nothing solves my primary want to be able to quickly and easily incorporate bulleted lists into text note taking. Bulleted lists are, in fact, a surprisingly hard to find feature in any iPad editor right now. Pages, of course, offers bulleted lists, but since you have to first rotate the ipad into portrait orientation, select a menu and tab within it to select the list style you want before you can resume typing, (and there is no easy way to indent or outdent list items), it is only useful for applying a style to text already written.

There are many note taking applications to choose from for the ipad already, and some of them have unique features that might suit other folks note taking needs better than my preferred style. Some offer the ability to finger sketch along with type text, a couple will record audio while you take notes, several can incorporate pictures, Web content, and more. In general, though, when using the iPad interface, the more things you can do with an editor the more tapping, fingering, and moving things around you will end up doing. None of which is especially good if you are trying to quickly capture information in a meeting, class, or conference.

In the end, I think I will need to content myself with either using the Outliner application or taking notes in such a way as to avoid bulleted lists (or take notes in Pages and apply bullets to sections of notes after the fact), at least until someone updates their software to provide the editing tools I want.

Printing

Update (6/28/2010): Steve Jobs says native printing is coming to the iPad, so this nut will eventually be cracked, though nothing really solves this need well yet.

There are a number of third party applications which purport to provide some degree of iPad printing. Most will set you back around $10, and none of them provide anything approaching native print driver based direct printing. The most common approach is to provide an application which can open and read files you have created or stored on a network/cloud drive, and then to print them using shared printing services through a networked computer.

AirSharingHD is the one I finally settled on. It can connect to a number of file storage sites using built in APIs or presets, but doesn't yet have the ability to connect to files stored in DropBox or Google Apps. What it does do, though, that I find quite handy, is present itself as an "open file using..." option for files attached to email messages (in both the built in email application and via Gmail's Web interface). This allows those files to be printed directly to any local or networked printer available to any computer on your network (that you have configured to share printing through). No software needs to be installed on the serving computer. This makes it very easy to get up and running. And since you can email files to yourself from most iPad editors, it is also a quick way to print files when you need to.

AirSharingHD doesn't allow you to print directly from applications, so you cannot print email messages, Web pages, or things of that sort. There is at least one application that does indicate it will do this, but it requires additional software to be running on a hosting computer.

So it is possible, under some circumstances, to print from an iPad, but it is a limited functionality and one that requires access to and through another computer on your network.

Remote File Access

Update (6/28/2010): QuickOffice Connect and Dropbox have both released updated iPad versions of their software and both meet this need very well.  Dropbox now allows you to download and edit any files you have stored there using any applicable iPad apps you have installed.  QuickOffice Connect gives you "office" file editing (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) for MS Office, Open Office, and iWorks files, connects to all the major cloud computing systems (Google Docs, Google Apps, Dropbox, Box.net, MobileMe, etc.), and even allows you to copy and move files between systems.  This application totally cracks this nut!

For all my dinking around, I really haven't made any additional progress on this want. Dropbox is read only on the iPad, whether you use their iPhone application or their Web site. They indicate they are working on an iPad release that will be especially good, and that it will be out soon, but no release date or feature list is available. I am going to pin my hopes on this coming release because DropBox is such a great service in all other respects.

I gave MobileMe a test drive, thinking it would have better integration with the iPad for functionality like this. There is only the iPhone version of the iDisk application and, like DropBox, it is read only for files from the iPad. It is also a lot more expensive and felt, if anything, less integrated. Since my calendars are all Google-based, my contacts are also already Google-synced, and Safari's bookmarks are also in sync through iTunes, the other features MobileMe offers are not sufficiently compelling for me to shell out $100/yr. The ability to find, lock, or wipe a lost iPhone or iPad would be nice, but not at that price point.

Google Docs and Google Apps cannot be created or edited on the iPad––end of story (though you can edit cells in Google spreadsheets, but that process is far from easy to use). Until Google or some third party company provides a workaround or update to meet this need, there is no way to make this happen that I have been able to discover.

QuickOffice Connect does this for the iPhone, and you can run the iPhone application on the iPad, but it keeps quitting on me. If they release an iPad version of this software, it may be the ticket. It works well on the iPhone for those times when you want to edit or create a Google file on the go, but the iPhone is a pretty small form factor for doing much of this kind of work.

One application that at least makes accessing and viewing files from almost any cloud based storage system easy and clear is GoodReader. It connects to Google Docs, Google Apps, Dropbox, and will even connect to and present email messages that have file attachments from your various email accounts, all from within a reasonably easy to use application interface. No document editing, but this is a highly recommended and inexpensive (99-cent) piece of software for accessing all of your cloud based content for reading purposes. [Aside:

I just discovered there is no cent symbol available on the iPad keyboard.]

Summary

This is as close to solving these three issues as I have been able to get. If your justification for getting an iPad includes any mix of the three uses I describe here, be aware that these limitations exist. I think it likely that each of these functions will be available fairly soon (though printing may always be a limited option for a device like this) but they are not here yet. DropBox is hinting at an expanded iPad client soon, Evernote has done a great job getting a great iPad client out quickly and has said they intend to "...support the hell out of..." the iPad, and Google has already created a unique and rich iPad version of their mobile Web interface for email, so it can be reasonably hoped that we will see more innovation from each of these companies. Just be aware that none of this is promised, yet.