Organizer HD: It's A Digital Daytimer And A Time Waster!
Organizer HD ($9.99) by Aesthology Inc. pays homage to the Daytimer and the Filofax we remember fondly.
The app's structure mimics those two almost extinct, but beloved, tools of the super-organized. Its UI is a souped-up version of the iPad's native Calendar app which also supports photos, maps, emoticons, as well as sound notes and shape drawing.
Users can create calendar entries and view them by the day, week, month, or as a list. There are six fonts that can be changed to eight different colors. Users can add a start and end time to an entry as well.
Organizer HD syncs with the iOS standard Calendar and Google Calendar. Syncing to the iOS calendar is recommended; if a user chooses not to sync, any event created in Organizer HD will not show up in the app, it will only show up in the iOS calendar.
Adding maps and photos was easy. The map function links to the iOS maps, so the map in the entry will operate on any iPad with active Wi-Fi or 3G.
Organizer HD comes with 128 emoticons, but adding them to an entry was not simple. The shape function was tricky to use as well. It could take up to eight steps, or more if you needed to resize or move the object after placing it.
Because there was no way to lock emoticons or shapes to text entries, they had to be moved each time new entries were added. The shapes and emoticons were attractive and colorful, but ultimately not very useful.
Organizer HD also allows users to record voice memos, and import voice memos from a web browser.
It was easy to cut, copy, paste, and delete items using the edit menu bar near the bottom of the screen.
Organizer HD offers a number of ways to share calendar pages. A user can email a page as text or PDF, or save a page as a photo. Files can also be transferred via Wi-Fi, or printed to an AirPrint compatible printer.
The app has Twitter integration as well. It works in portrait or landscape mode, and there is a search function. Users have the option to set a passcode.
Unfortunately all of the app's settings have to be changed in the iOS Settings app. For example, the app lets the user customize background color, but it is necessary to leave Organizer HD, go to Settings, find the setting for background color, go back to Organizer HD, and see if it looks good. And the background setting is only good for one page.
The app supports bullets, check boxes, and dashes in front of text entries, but the user must go into iOS Settings to toggle between these options. There were numerous other times I was forced to pop back and forth between iOS Settings to change something.
For an app this convoluted, $9.99 is a lot to pay.
Organizer HD lets users make impressive calendar entries complete with photos and maps, but its clunky UI was frustrating at times, and made it hard to get the most out of the app.
