Turn Your iPhone Into A Notepad With Textpad
TextPad ($0.99 limited time sale) by Zombots is a note taking app that recreates the feeling of a spiral bound notepad and is complete with Dropbox support.
There certainly aren't enough note taking apps on the iPhone, are there? Well, I'm here to talk about another one, TextPad. While there are plenty of note taking apps that sync with Dropbox, I don't think I've come across another one out there that allows you to create multiple folders and even nest more subfolders in those new folders.
When you launch TextPad, you'll get a setup screen for linking your Dropbox account. There is an option to select another folder in your Dropbox to sync with, though I got errors when I attempted to do so. Thus, I created a "TextPad" folder for testing purposes and it worked fine.
From this point, you can create folders on this root folder and even create subfolders in your newly-made folders. This is great because all of these folders will get synced in the cloud via Dropbox. There are apps out there that let you create nested folders but not all of them will have Dropbox, which is icing on the cake.
There is no need to create a bunch of folders and nested folders if you wish, either. A single note can be created as well. These will be plain .txt files that will all be uploaded to the cloud. When creating new notes, TextPad will provide a line for entering a title (filename) and the rest will be the note itself. The notepad interface is clean, simple and minimal, which looking great at the same time. It's a nice design that goes well with the theme of "taking down notes."
While simplicity is good, I found myself wishing that the color of the text was just a tad bit darker when writing a note. Currently it's a light gray on white, which I found a bit too light. It would be nice if the developers could include various options for text, suchnas choosing background and text color to make the writing experience easier. The font is also a bit small, so it would be nice to have options to increase the font size, for those that have a problem with small text.
While the sync works when you hit "Done" or "Back" on a note, I found the lack of a manual sync or even automatic sync to be a bit disappointing. Since "Done" actually just takes you back to the list, I'm not sure what the difference is between both buttons if the function is the same. Hitting "Done" should sync and hide the keyboard, not take you back, since that's what the "Back" is for.
There is no automatic syncing either while writing a note, so you will have to remember to hit buttons to save your progress. This should be fixed as soon as possible, because automatic saving can be a lifesaver. At least multitasking is supported, because the app will remain in the same state when you return to it (as ling as you don't closely from the multitasking tray). Landscape support should be included as well for those users that prefer writing in that orientation.
Currently, TextPad is iPhone only and is on sale for $0.99. However, the developers are already working on an update and making the app into a universal app for the iPad. Despite current shortcomings, there is a lot of potential on this app and it's a good time to grab it before the price goes up with the impending update.
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