{"id":2922,"date":"2013-11-28T22:50:15","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T22:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2922"},"modified":"2013-12-03T20:36:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T20:36:45","slug":"making-handwritten-notes-on-an-ipad-mini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2922","title":{"rendered":"Making handwritten notes on an iPad mini"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve had a Bamboo stylus<\/a> for my iPad mini<\/a> for a while now. I\u2019ve used it for sketching and rough diagrams but only recently started using it for making handwritten notes. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not immediately obvious that it\u2019d really work. The iPad touchscreen is designed for use by pudgy human fingers, so that\u2019s what the stylus mimics. You don\u2019t get a fine point for precision drawing, you get a big fat rounded end. (As an aside, this is something that the Surface gets right – a proper active pressure-sensitive stylus is very cool. But anyway\u2026<\/em>) So your handwriting has to end up really big – like trying to make notes with a child\u2019s chunky crayon. <\/p>\n

And the iPad mini screen is so small that you don\u2019t have much room to write. <\/p>\n

I ended up carrying a Moleskine notebook<\/a> and pen around as well – making handwritten in notes in that and then taking photos of it with the iPad<\/a>. It\u2019s a bit of a kludgy and time-consuming workaround.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started using Penultimate<\/a> instead, and it\u2019s pretty neat. It makes up for the limitations of handwriting by giving you a zoomed-in view of a bit of the screen, and scrolling that view around for you automatically as you write – matching the speed of your handwriting. And it\u2019s reasonably good at knowing how how to ignore a wrist resting on the screen. <\/p>\n