QuickAdvice: The Old Pen And Paper Gets Modernized With Inkiness for iPad And iPhone
Inkiness for iPad ($3.99) by Fenrir Inc. is an app that brings back the old pen and paper in a more modernized form, right on your iPad or iPhone.
When you look at Inkiness, the first thing that will pop up into your mind is it looks exactly like a real legal writing pad on the iPad or a little notebook on your iPhone. You write on the screen with your fingers (or preferably a stylus), but there is one thing about Inkiness that sets it apart from other competing apps: an actual pen nib.
The nib will appear above wherever your finger or stylus point is, so it actually looks like you're writing with a pen. The nib can be adjusted for either right or left handers, and you can fine tune how far the nib appears from the touching point. Writing with this nib can take a bit of getting used to, but in the end it will feel natural and realistic. This is because of GyroSpot, which gives it the real pen-like feel and ink-flow.
The ink actually looks like smooth gel ink. On the iPad version, you have three sizes: fine, medium, and bold points. There are also four different ink colors to choose from, only on the iPad: navy, black, dark red, and olive. Unfortunately on the iPhone version, there is only one size of nib and only black ink. Hopefully the developer can change that in future updates.
On the iPad, notes can be written in either portrait or landscape, though the canvas doesn't rotate but the little menu bar options do. There is only one landscape orientation on the iPhone though. Unlimited undo/redo is on the iPad version, with Shake-to-undo on the iPhone (but no redo)
Images can be shared by email or sent to the photo album. In an email, the note will be sent as an image, complete with the ripped paper from a legal pad look. It's stylish and really gives it that traditional look that may impress friends or coworkers. When saved to the camera roll, it will also carry this distinguished look. On the iPad, notes can be sent to Twitter or Evernote as well.
If you need to delete a note on either version, you can do so right from the note. It does a nice little animation of ripping the page out and then it disappears. Unfortunately because of this 'throwing away', there's no way to recover something if you didn't mean to delete it.
The main screen where you view all of your notes will be a grid with a thumbnail of each note. Multiple notes can be shared or deleted from this screen as well by tapping the little icon that usually represents 'share.'
On the iPhone version, there's realistic paper and pen sounds. The iPad version also has sounds, but it doesn't seem to be working. I have had my volume up full and I cannot hear any sounds from the app. It seems to be a glitch.
If you are looking for an app that gives you a great pen-and-paper experience, the Inkiness for iPad/iPhone is worth checking out.
Though at this point I would have to recommend the iPad version only since the iPhone version is missing a lot of the features that are found in the iPad version, and I don't see why this is so. Hopefully future updates can make the iPhone version more useable.
Overall, I think there needs to be a way to recover 'trashed' notes just in case. I think I'd also like to see the legal pad canvas rotate with the device instead of just the menu buttons on the iPad. Having multi-touch support to zoom in and out of the canvas would be great too, since it is limited to screen size at the moment. Little changes like this could put this app over the top.
Lots of potential to be great, but also decent enough in the current state for you to check out. At least the iPad version.
