Hasta La Gadget!

The Moleskine iOS app ignores everything that is good about the original paper notebook

If the Moleskine notebook is simple, well made and very easy to use, then the Moleskine iOS app is the opposite: confusing, hard to fathom and almost impossible to use quickly.

The Moleskine app is a note-taking app, with a wealth of features. To get an idea of how it works, let me walk you through opening the app and creating a note.

Launch the app and you get a vertical splash screen that looks like a Moleskine notebook cover. This can not be viewed horizontally and you have to touch it to access your notes. Every. Time. You. Open. The. App. Next, you see a list of your “thoughts”. Touch the little plus sign to create a new one. You are prompted to give it a name. Do this.

Now, the screen darkens and a band covers it, like a paper barrier. Here you see buttons for “categories”, “new” and “assign”. New? didn’t we just create a new note? Worse, the first two of these words have arrows underneath. “categories” has a left-pointing arrow, and “new” has one which points down.

Touch “categories” and you come to a full, lined page surrounded by yet more cryptic icons. Could this be the actual note page? Then why did I tap the word “categories”?. You can insert images, change categories (via two more button presses, one of which duplicates the one you made to get to this section) and change the paper style. What you can’t do is start writing. Or can you?

Press the back button and you are sent to the beginning, the list of your “thoughts”. Let’s try again. Tap one of your “thoughts” and it opens. Maybe I should double-tap to start writing? It works! At last I am writing. Now, what was it I wanted to say?

There is plenty more here. You can, as mentioned above, insert images. You can also draw on the page, add your note to a map, and browse by those ever-important categories. You can also shop online from within the app and buy real stationery. But of course, all of this is as convoluted as just starting a note.

The app does have one big advantage over the expensive paper notebooks: it’s free. I’m sure it will be the perfect app for for some people, but it just frustrates me. Add to this that there has been a spiritual equivalent of the Moleskine in the app store for a long time. It’s called Penultimate, and it does one thing: lets you write on the page with a finger or stylus. It has the elegance of a real Moleskine, and is beautifully made. Better, it costs just $2. You should probably check it out.

Moleskine app [iTunes]

App for iPhone/iPad [Moleskine]

See Also:

• Bamboo Makes a Moleskine-Style Case for Your iPad
• The Case: Another Beautiful Moleskine-Like iPad Case
• Finally, Official iPad and iPhone Cases from Moleskine
• iPad Case Smackdown: Dodocase Vs. Pad & Quill