PinkElephant

Even if they fix each and any bug, it will be a far cry from any dedicated handwriting app I know. Notability, Noteshelf or my favorite GoodNotes 5, they are all far ahead of what Penultimate has to offer. Regarding GoodNotes 5, I just say one phrase: „Presentation Mode“ ! On the iPad ! Full Screen, window or just a selected part of it, while you have the information you want to present right beside it in split view. There it is visible only to yourself, not to the audience that follow on the large screen what you draw and write on your virtual white board. It has this WOW-appeal ! Penultimate for me is not even on my list if I would consider picking a handwriting solution. This does not mean to skip EN - once a note is taken and static, I export it as a pdf into EN (comes along with full OCR data, which means full searchability of my pretty individual handwriting in EN) and file it away there for future reference.

One more thing: I have set my ScannerPro in a way that every scan will be saved automatically to my OneDrive as well. I do not have an Office license, so I just have the 5 GB from the free account. There is not much you can do with that little cloud space, so I use it to save a copy of each scan I do. Once every X months I simply empty the folder, and set it back for the next cycle. The workflows have one issue at the moment: Once you have created a tag in them, you can not delete it. Since I tag everything with the year of creation, I have to delete and recreate the workflows currently when the new year starts. This does not take long, but I dislike any repetitive task I can avoid. In summer I had a nice Skype interview with the Product Manager for ScannerPro at readdle, and she promised me she will put this on her list. Maybe I get a Christmas present before the year ends this time. And one more hint: ScannerPro has its own OCR capability. Maybe check it out, how good it works on your docs. I found it pretty good for my mostly German language docs, and have set it to OCR right on my iPhone. Sometimes I have to wait a few seconds, before I can upload, but this is o.k. The advantage is that the OCR result is embedded into the Pdf file itself. When EN does the OCR, I believe it will put the result somewhere into the note, not into the pdf. I prefer to have the OCR data go along with the file. When the Pdf comes with OCR data, EN will use it instead of OCRing it again on the server.

You find the versions of the programs I use on top of my post. Because I could not resist to get myself a new iPhone 11 Pro Max, the installation is completely new. I just tried the complete workflow, and it saved a pdf into a new EN note in my „@ INBOX“ and a jpeg into my camera roll. However, this is why I usually don’t use Scanable at all. I usually use ScannerPro from readdle. It has an option to create workflows. I have several workflows, one for each regular document type. So if I scan a receipt, I pick the receipts-workflow, which automatically sends the scan into the receipts-notebook and tags it with some standard tags like the current year, the tag „receipt“ and the tag „ScannerPro“ for the source. It is weird that a 3rd parts app does this, which is not possible in Scanable itself. If I scan from an open note, I use the scanning ability build into EN itself. For me, there is no usecase for Scanable at all. I just happen to still have the app on my phone, copied to the new phone from the days when I tested it.

The first CD-based telephone book of Germany was created by a company that took all printed phone books, shipped them to China and had them typed by hand into a simple database. It was on several CDs. Reason was the companies selling the printed stuff did not want to canibalize their own business by an easy to copy CD edition. They even sued the guys who made the CDs for „copyright“ violation. Nobody was talking Internet at that time. In the company I was working for in these days they had a proprietary system for workshops with the spare part catalogue, as well on CD-ROMs. It was a customized tower with 11 drives, one above the other. Our department was somehow involved in testing, and they forgot to take the equipment back. So the spare parts stuff was taken out, the CDs with the complete German Phonebook went in. It was sort of a grey installation, running in the company network but not documented. For quite a while we leveraged the favor of getting access to the virtual phone book in the company dealings of that days against other „favors“. It was amazing what you could get for the chance to look up aunt Minnas phone number and address online. Good ol‘ days ...

Just gave it a try on my iPhone 11 with iOS 13.1 and Scanable 2.3.3: Open, scan Click on the picture preview below the live camera picture. You get this screen (sorry, all in German): Click on the left Option. Now you can save in the camera roll or NEW into the files app.

The Update was released yesterday, ver. 6.2.4, fixes for iPadOS. The basic functions seem to be the same as before. Since I use GoodNotes 5 for handwriting, I have not tested it. Good luck ...

Maybe you should start to learn Suomi (Finish language, as I read it) 😂 Alternatively you could open a support ticket, preferably in plain English.

There were more serious problems before, like a complete freezing of the EN app when apps were switched. This was optimized some month ago, leading to what we have today. During this short break EN makes sure everything will work as expected. Probably it could be optimized - if you have a real problem, issue a support ticket. If on the iPad, a good workaround is to use slide over when you just want to get something done fast in another app.

@Kevin O'Neill Just tried it under iPadOS 13.1 on my iPad Pro, EN ver. 8.24. Used the microphone symbol on the virtual keyboard. The first line of dictation came out good, beginning from the second and further lines mayor parts of the spoken text are missing from the transcription. The missing parts are always full words, often several of them in a row, so probably the conversion into full words is too slow to follow. This clearly is not what I would expect. My iPhone is locked by a syncing process, so I can’t try. And yes, it seems to be related to EN, because the same dictation in Apple notes worked like a charm. I do not use the dictation often (maybe I should ...). Could you issue a support ticket on this ?

Yes, I've got my stuff as well offline on the iPad. But if you have it downloaded or not makes no difference at all in the apps behavior: You can open one note at a time, you can work on it one note at a time, and once you open another one, the one before is saved away and no longer available. Operations like merging notes, tagging a group of notes in one go or move a bunch of selected notes around are not possible. This makes all organizational jobs on the iPad cumbersome or even impossible.

EN in this respect is a client executed on my Mac or PC. It executes without an internet connection. So I can always restore the database from a backup (if needed) and get access to it by the EN client. Where is the necessity to file it away in a format that other programs can read day by day, when this3rd-party access is nothing I do or need ? If EN as a company would go offline tomorrow, I would still have my local app and my local copy of my data. IMHO Enough time then to export and search for alternatives.

The optimist says "The glas is half full". The pessimist says "The glas is half empty" The engineer says "The glas was designed way too large for the content". For a long time our desires of what could and should be done on an iPad by far exceed the abilities of both the OS and the apps.The OS seems to be mostly fixed - I like what I see in iPadOS. Now it is time for the apps to pick up the new opportunities: I would be happy if EN on the iPad would allow to download and work on a complete copy of the relevant database, including the power to work on several notes at once.

@Ian Small Hello Ian, thanks for the information about penultimate. I believe it is better to release when ready instead of when forced to. Personally I do not think that Penultimate is up to any serious handwriting job. I am using GoodNotes 5 - they released in February 2019 with a redesigned core program lacking a lot of functions from GN4, but communicated this and gave the option to use both in parallel. They are moving out new features since. Of course, they are single platform iOS and rely on iCloud for the server side, which makes things easier to code, release and operate. Just a couple of days ago, they included the new presentation mode into GN5 - it works like a charm. This will ring a few bells with EN users from the old days, when there was a presentation mode in the EN mobile platforms as well. My dream team would be EN for the heavy data lifting plus GN5 with an option to file the handwritten notes directly into an EN note. It should be native GN file format, to be reopened and edited whenever needed. Having a viewer in EN would be enough. Today I need to export GN5 into a static pdf file (fully searchable even in the handwriting), and share this into EN. Once frozen, I can not reopen and edit the original file in EN, only use the tools for pdf editing. It is sort of a workflow, but unidirectional.

Just as my personal opinion: I do not understand why for backup purposes the ENEX export makes sense. A backup for me is a flat process that creates a file that can be used for restore. I do not need and do not want individual stuff as a backup - I just need a good restore process that allows a full rollback or if needed a selective pick of data to be restored. For me it serves my purpose well if I can decide about this in case I need to go to the backup - not when making the backup. The ENEX process is very useful if you want to move data from EN somewhere else, individually or as a full export of all your data.

For the Mac: It is Time machine to the NAS, plus Acronis True Image from there to the rotated, remote HDD, together with the PCs Backups. I am using iCloud for most of my active files, so I anyhow have another set of data there. But it does not grab the EN data from the Mac, so this is covered by the Time Machine process. To make sure the way back works, I am relying on the function of Time Machine. This I did not try. I have tried a restore from Acronis, this worked like a magic. One can go down on the folder and file level and pick what is missing, or make a complete roll-back. For me this was the decisive issue to pick Acronis over other backup programs.

Back to the topic: For my Win10 PC I’ve created a backup job to my NAS running on Acronis True Image. Since I use Acronis for most of my Backups, it was a natural choice. It saves only the EN data folder in an incremental job. I think it is enough to be able to restore the data, and have the chance to go back in time. The Backups from the NAS are then cumulatively backupped on single HDDs to create a second backup, stored remote and rotated. Because EN has an own and remote backup on its servers, this would probably not be necessary for the EN backup. But it is easier to grab everything under the BU user of the NAS, than try to sort it out.

From what I learned the forced upgrade of Safari was due to security issues. It seems Apple did not allow for a disabled mode on this. I got caught as well by having my Safari go to 13 without any interaction. @woodelph I would try to get the direct install if this chance exists. Apps from the Macs AppStore are executed in a sandboxed mode, even when they are identical to the app downloaded directly. I have solved some issues with the EN app by uninstalling the AppStore download and get the very same fresh from the EN website. How the situation is with extensions we will have to see. But at the moment we first need something to download at all ...

@JMichaelTX Just loaded iOS 13.1 to my iPhone 11. Went smooth, no problem. EN opened fine, first impression is everything is working as it should. Although I have to get used to the new phone and interface, until now I like what I see. P.S. Got myself a watch as well. I think I will use the EN app there a lot: Very simple, just speak, have it converted into written text and grab the moment with a minimum of overhead. The note is synced in a blink to the iPhone (have no SIM in the watch at the moment) and from there to the server and all other devices. Very sleek ! Next step: Upgrading my iPad to iPadOS.

@taden As I read it, EN got caught with their pants down when Apple released Safari 13 FOR THE MAC right when iOS 13 got released. Probably the timing at the dev team was set to have it ready on release of Catalina later in the year. I agree that this is a double disappointment: First dropping the ball like this, second to be surprised and not sending out a warning to the users. Since my Mac is set to automatic updates, I had Safari 13 on my MacBook Pro before I could react to the warning. So it will go without web clipper for a while, and with another browser (FF in my case) when I urgently need to clip something. At the moment the better workaround is to set the page to reader mode, then use „print“ and then „share pdf to EN“, because I can continue in Safari this way.

@JMichaelTX Just got my new iPhone 11 Pro Max up and running. All apps on actual, iOS still 13.0. Entered EN - well, tried to. On the account page, no virtual keyboard. OK, copied it from my PW manager. Then on 2FA still no keyboard. So I copied the code into the field. EN (8.24) open - but still no keyboard. Tried a new note: All functions like camera or audio were there and worked, but again no keyboard. This is close to useless, I thought. So I closed and reopened the app: Now the keyboard appears ! Works with full 13 functionality, like swoooshing a word instead of typing. Seems to need to be convinced ... so give it a second try ! Next step: Load 13.1 when available, retry. Will keep my other stuff on 12.4.1 for some days to see how things are going. Stay tuned - more on this channel soon ....

Reason for Things as task manager - WARNING: This is completely subjective, my very personal view. Follow on your own peril ... 1) Look and feel. If you dislike your task manager, it will not work for you. Things has the most reduced design, but works intuitively in even more complex operations. I simply like to use it ... 2) Functionality: Setting dates, even far in the future (like due date of ID papers, vaccinations etc.) is very easy, recurring reminders work with a lot of options (like repeat X month after setting it to DONE), the Apple calendar shows and is integrated etc. 3) I like to handle the tasks independently from the notes. The notes rest in their respective place (or may be moved out of information processing needs), the tasks flow independently from them in the Things GTD-style structure. The link between EN and the Things task is kept independently of the movements on both sides.

Originally I wanted to set something up in EN. But due to restrictions I moved on to Things 3 as task manager (iOS + Mac only). When I want to follow up on something I have in EN, I create an external link, and open a Things-task from the sharing function. The task rests in Things and can be handled there. A click on the link opens the EN note for reference. For me this works smoothly and makes sure I have tasks and reminders in only one place. If you want to get some advise and ideas, maybe check on David Allens GTD website. They have 2 brief manuals for setting up the GTD-method using Evernote (Windows-based, but it is possible to do so on any client) or Things. Each cost 10$, but are condensed information worth the price. For more background get the GTD book. https://gettingthingsdone.com/

Simply check in Safari-Menu on the Mac „About ...“. Most likely you are on 13, welcome to the club !

Have not tried, waiting for iOS 13.1. Release was set earlier than expected to Sept 24th. Currently I have a stable 12.4.1 running on all devices. I think I will wait a bit with installing until the noise from the web gives a better picture. Since a bunch of announced functions were withdrawn from both 13 and 13.1. by Apple on very short notice, I assume there will be developers thrown off balance with their new apps. Usually I upgrade fast - but maybe this time "late follower" is the better strategy.

In the very moment you install Safari 13, Webclipper is gone. This has nothing to do with any beta, but with the fact, that Apple does not support "Legacy Extensions" (= 32bit- browser extensions) any longer. Safari 13 is free of 32bit-code and does not support it. This move was announced quite a while ago. Thus it is hard to understand why EN does not have a 64bit-version of the WebClipper ready for download. IMHO it would be better to have ANY new web clipper available (even one with a reduced set of functions, that could be improved later) than NONE, which is the current situation. Not having a clipper is taking an important piece of the EN ecosystem away from many workflows. Instead EN support tells you to install another browser. Very weak argument ... Fortunately the "Share" functions still work on iOS.