Posted on: December 25, 2010 Posted by: Jesse_Hayges Comments: 0

Redux, by its definition, is a thing that gets brought back, or experiences a resurgence, today on the short list is a review of an I’ve reviewed before, but not exactly. Tell you what I mean: awesome note, by Brid, came out for the iPhone quite some time ago, and I looked out unto the AppSphere, and found that it was good. Now I’m coming off like I think I’m god, neat, huh? Brid, however, not resting on its laurels decided to release a completely reworked and remained version of their self proclaimed awesome product specifically for the iPad. So, as you can see, I find myself, on some level, redoing my previous work, but yet again not. With this in mind, I would like to kick things off and just say this; just forget everything I said in the last review and prepare to be blown away.
Doing reviews constantly, I tend to write reviews on the object that I am review an app for. If I’m on my iPhone doing a review, I tend to type up, at least some of it anyway, a review on my iPhone. The same goes for my iPad. I like reviews on my iPad better because I can get access to a keyboard that is a little closer to full size, and it tends to go smoother as a result. My usual means of doing reviews though is through apple’s own pages App, but with this new version of awesome note, that might just change. And why is that? Well, there is something to be said about the inherent looks of pages, and things like having things like headers and rooters and columns, all of which I will need for working on serious academic works, without a doubt, but pages tends to have some little problems that awesome note has solved for me in terms of what one would call “everyday writing”, as opposed to academic works.
The first thing that they solve for me, right out of the gate, is the ability to have folders. Lovely, lovely folders. Awesome note for the iPhone had them as well, but this new version allows me to see, and do more things at once than before, and allows for me to use folders in a much more useful fashion. In either mode, portrait or landscape, I can hide the keyboard in the usual fashion, and slide my note off to the right, and review all other notes in my current folder, OR go back to a whole different folder by sliding the stack of notes to the right again. This makes taking things from one note and putting it in another much more enjoyable. Tapping a different note or folder will close out your first note, but with the folders views it’s not hard to get back to where you were in a hurry. I like the folder system because I can compartmentalize all of my works, whether they be works of poetry, or rough drafts of short stories, or reviews like this one, into their proper place. No awkward sliding back and forth through endless pages to find what I want. I’m sure apple is working on making pages a little more user friendly in that regard, after all they just added collections to their iBooks App, so that is some cause for hope. However, while we wait for them to catch up, awesome note has you covered.
Another helpful thing in this newer version is having a tab key right above the iPad’s normal keyboard. When the keyboard tray slides up, there is also a second tray, very thin no worries, that comes up with it that has very useful things on it, such as: tab, a round bullet point, a long dash bullet point, and yes finally arrow keys. True its only the left and right ones, but they come in all kinds of handy. Also the tools bar that used to show up on the bottom of the screen has been moved to the right hand side of the document panel, allowing you to read more of your notes or other works and eliminating clutter. Also, they have incorporated printing into this version as well, a big win.
Hands down, this is the best iPad note taking app out there, so far. Awesome Note has really raised the bar for the rest of the Apps out there. This new version still has evernote integration, along with google docs, and it stills allows for wifi back ups to your computer. With all of these core features still in existence, along with the new improvements that Brid has packed into this release, I feel they are justified asking you to buy this App separately from the iPhone version as it is a whole different animal all together. A while ago when I bought the iPad version of beejive, I thought I was going to get ripped off because I had to part with ten dollars for the same App that could be found on my iPhone, an App that I already paid for no less, but I was happily mistaken. In both cases, I found that the paid upgrade, if you will, was well worth the price because they were not just buffing up the graphics and leaving it at that. Instead, in both cases, they took the time to really over haul the UI and give us some very thoughtful new features. In the case of Awesome Note, I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a better paid note taking App on the AppStore for the price. I give this App a 9 out of 10 this go round.

App receives a 9 on a 10 point scale.

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