Most updates are rarely exciting these days. It seems most developers are just maintaining apps to keep them running smoothly. The surprising thing is: the update I’m excited about is not even a new feature, it’s an improvement to THE MOST BASIC FEATURE IN A NOTE-TAKING APP!
Noteful just released an update for its pen tools. At first glance, it’s a simple minor update on pen settings. But because of the course we’re doing on Paperless Humans, I had to check it to see if the changes meant we have to update the episode covering the pen tool. The location of the new settings is not ideal. Perhaps a settings icon would be better so we don’t assume it’s just some information explaining what the tool does. The app now adjusts three features for the pen tool:
- Writing Pressure
- Min Width
- Width Smoothing, which we don’t even know what it means.
For you to appreciate just how dramatic the change is, I am going to show you some notes that I already have in the app. This was the best writing I could get before.
Now, after playing around with the new settings: look what I am getting!
Handwriting experience, for me, is the main determining factor of whether or not I use an app. All other features follow after it. Before this update, I think the best handwriting in a note-taking app was in Notability. But this engine in Noteful surpasses that, which is impressive. It looks like I wrote these in two different apps.
Who would have thought that an update so basic could have such a huge impact? Here is our ranking of the best handwriting experience you’ll get on the iPad with the Apple Pencil (from the best to the worst):
- Noteful
- Notability
- Apple Notes
- Noteshelf
- ZoomNotes
- GoodNotes
