NEW Release: Moleskine (Quick Review)

Moleskine

FREE

Universal (iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad)

Version: 1.0

Tested on: iPad 2 & iPod Touch 4G (iOS 4.3.1)

Rating: 5 of 5

Moleskine notebooks are awesome products that a lot of people love to use. Now, they're coming to the iPhone and the iPad. And, they're coming in a big way. This official Moleskine app allows you to express your creativity and thought process through text, images and sketches. And if you're using an iPad 2 or any iOS devices with built-in cameras, this app really shines through. As what most Moleskine fan can expect, the app allows you to change the notebook paper style and use different font colors and sizes. 

The application comes with two built-in notes, i.e. one note describing the background history on Moleskine notebooks and another note to display the in-app help section. Both notes are helpful in getting you familiar with the app and Moleskine history, and the help note is very good in describing how you can access different features of the app.

At first, I was quite confused when I try to type in my texts. I find it easier to embed images, crop them and move them around, rather than writing texts. Then, I'm also able to sketch my way through the note, but was still unable to write any texts. I was beginning to think that I cannot write using the (virtual) keyboard in this app. Then, I just double tap anywhere on the screen (other than on the embedded images), then there it was, the keyboard showed up. Afterwards, it's just so intuitive to double tap anywhere and continue writing your texts, but it's not so clear during my first attempt. 

In addition to embedding images and having the chance to move them around inside your note, you can also embed built-in icons, which was great too. But, the problem with the icon was that you can't do anything with it. They will always come with the white on red color combination, and they have a fixed size too. Fortunately, they come in 28 choices to satisfy various needs.

One more thing that's cool about the app is the ability to geo-tag your current note. I guess this is becoming quite standard for modern note-taking apps, but it's still nice to see that the developers pay attention to this growing user needs. And it's also nice that the app has a social sharing feature integrated with Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. Unfortunately, I think the application still has a bug with tweeting, because it crashes every time I want to tweet from within the app. I tried this on both my iPad and iPod Touch, and both have the same crash problem.

Other than that bug, I really like the app. It seems very polished and works out very well for me. Here are some of the suggestions I have for the developers (that they may use to improve for future versions):

1. Support working in landscape mode
2. Make the icons resizable (to a certain limit) and allows the background color to be changed as well
3. Allows the font colors to be applied to selected texts, instead of all texts within the note
4. Ability to record audio (as a separate note or as an attachment to the note)
5. Provide cloud-based services to sync notes between devices
6. A Mac version would be great!

Finally, I'm also attaching some screenshots of how the app looks like from an iPhone/iPod Touch. They're very much the same with the iPad, except for some menu-related UI and the help section. 

So, the final verdict is I really enjoy using the app. I think this is one of the best note-taking app for the iOS devices, and it has some potential to become the major player (if they work on the cloud-based services and desktop platforms). I recommend you to try it for yourself and see how you'd like it. In the mean time, what kind of features would you like to see in a good note-taking app for the iPad? Please share them in the comment section.


Check out my other iPad app reviews here.