Pad & Quill, maker of bookbindery-style covers for everything from the iPad thru the iPhone 4S to the Kindle Fire, has launched itself an app. As you might have guessed, it is a note-taking App for the iPad and iPhone, and it looks every bit as good as the cases themselves.
The app uses the metaphor of the Moleskine notebook. The collection of books is represented as a stack on a shelf. Tap any book to open it, and type your notes using the soft keyboard or the external keyboard of your choice. Pad & Quill isn't an app which allows you to write on screen with a pen (for that you should grab Penultimate or Noteshelf, both excellent apps).
The level of polish is high. To access the table of contents of a book, you can tap on the bookmark label, direct from the shelf view. Also, the first line of a page is auto-added as that page's title, and the top right page corner gets a date and time stamp as you start writing. This makes it a credible journal app, as these entries are added to the TOC automatically.
Bookmarking is done by tapping the top right corner (just like in the Kindle app), navigation is done by swiping and customization of a page is done by tapping the page number at the bottom. This brings up various style options as well as export (email) and navigation controls.
Syncing is via iCloud (automatic, and very handy as I have had a few crashes already).
There are a few oddities in the interface. To change the paper style or the font, for example, you have to cycle through the options by repeatedly pressing one button. As the styles aren't named, it's a little tedious. There should be a drop-down or other way to directly select these options.
Otherwise, it's a clean, easy-to-use app, and shows up the Moleskine app for the convoluted monstrosity it is. Add to this the $1 price point, and it's probably cheaper than a disposable ballpoint pen. Available now.
Pad & Quill [Pad & Quill]
