Great notes with GoodNotes

So I left my trusty Tiger Stores sketchbook and biro at home yesterday, and went to the Dublin Startup Marketing Club Meetup.com event armed with my iPad 2 and Maglus Black Edition. I wanted to try out the notebook app GoodNotes – €5.49 in the Apple Store, at time of writing this post.

I’ve used the Maglus and iPad to take notes before, but at a fairly leisurely pace.
I wanted to see if the experience of using the Maglus and GoodNotes in a more fast-paced environment was comparable to using a pen and paper and, in short, yes – it did indeed compare favourably – in fact, I loved it!

That New Notebook smell

When you start GoodNotes you are given the option to create a Notebook – name it, and save it.
You can also choose different colour covers and orientation, as well as choose from a number of rule types, which is nice.

Writing window

It looks a little confusing when you start – but it becomes very clear very quickly and is really very smart.

The top part of the window gives a zoomed-out view of the page, and the area in the blue box is reflected in the bottom part of the page – where you write.

You can move the box quickly (for carriage returns, and back and forth) with the buttons in the top-right of the bottom window, or by grabbing it and moving it about in the top window.

Writing with the Maglus on the iPad 2 was responsive, precise, fast, and felt great.
And the ability to undo came in handy – you don’t get that with a pen!

Adding a photo

What made the experience vastly better than pen and paper was I could hold up my iPad, take a photo of the speaker’s slide, insert that into the page of the notebook, then resume notetaking, referencing the slide. This was quick and easy, and probably my favourite thing about using GoodNotes.

And here’s the page view of the notebook – you can see the multiple slides and notes, and where I’ve highlighted sections:

So to sum up – I loved using GoodNotes and the Maglus – it’s like a paper and pen for superheroes! I’m sure there are other features that I’ve missed, but I plan on doing a follow-up in a couple of months, when I’ve used it more extensively and for different tasks.

My handwriting is still chickenscratch, but there isn’t a stylus or app in the world that can sort that out!