PDF Expert 4 vs iAnnotate 2.1 vs Goodreader 3 – 2012 indepth review

I know it has been a long time coming, but here it is, a review on the most popular 3 PDF Editing programs for the iPad. I have been contemplating on how to compare the 3 apps for a few days now – how to set it out etc on wordpress, so this may be a bit messy if you are trying to read it; I will do my best to make it as legible and succinct as possible. The 3 apps being compared are all in their latest versions (PDF Expert just released version 4, iAnnotate released 2.1 a couple of weeks ago).

You can find them here:

PDF Expert 4 ($9.99 USD)

iAnnotate 2.1 ($9.99 USD)

GoodReader 3 ($4.99 USD)

NB: Price varies in different countries for the apps – I paid more in AUD for them.

The review is actually long and tedious – If you are after something quick, I suggest looking at the pictures and reading the conclusion down the bottom

Update: As requested, I have added examples of the export options of each app and what they look like on desktop. Currently using Adobe Acrobat Reader X

1. iAnnotate – Interface to move/rename/email files. You can drag & drop files to delete etc (as shown). Note: You can’t rename/move files that are synced to servers.

2. GoodReader – You can’t view/browse files whilst syncing is in progress. Backgound middle right in grey gives options to move/rename/email/zip files.

3. PDF Expert – Syncing (bottom left) & organising files in concert is possible. Its clean look with options to move/email/zip files are a lot easier on the eyes.

4. PDF Expert Thumb view & Drag n Drop are new in v4 (already available in iAnnotate, however) – but it makes organising/moving files easier.

5. iAnnotate – Syncing & executing other tasks is possible. Search is off to the side, but bulky highlighted term is a turn off. It also searches annotations.

6. PDF Expert – Search is similar to iAnnotate but is a popup menu, & annotated terms are also searched. The whole text edit option here is simple and neat.

7. Goodreader – a variety of text editing options to choose from. The preset font size is handy. Callout, fill, border & cloudy options are unique Goodreader.

8. Goodreader – Adding text is a major turn off! Text window takes up half the screen (usually the important half), and there is only 1 font!

9. iAnnotate – Font option overwhelms top right corner. Rotate & stamp features are unique. Note annotation (“eg counter offer is offeree…”) in blue is missing.

10. Goodreader Zoom in tool – Magnifies where you want to write & allows you to write as per usual. Palm rest included also (grey bar on bottom). Best of 3.

11. GoodReader handwriting toolbar – clean and simple. Has various useful adjustments you can make your handwritten or drawn notes/diagrams.

12. PDF Expert – Preset pens at the top very practical. You can also change & save the colour, brush size and opacity. Clean and simple.

13. iAnnotate – Handwriting Tool – can choose from a spectrum of colours, adjust opacity & brush sizes. Takes up 1/3 of the screen… Also has custom stamp tool!

14. iAnnotate customisable toolbar – have the option to preset your own tools – I’ve set some of mine (note the 5 different typewriters for 5 different size fonts).

15. iAnnotate Eg 1 iPad

16. iAnnotate Eg 1 Desktop

17. iAnnotate Eg 2 iPad

18. iAnnotate Eg 2 Deskotp

19. Goodreader Eg 1 iPad

20. Goodreader Eg 1 Desktop

21. Goodreader Eg 2 iPad

22. Goodreader Eg 2 Desktop

23. PDF Expert Eg 1 iPad

24. PDF Expert Eg 1 Desktop

25. PDF Expert Eg 2 iPad

26. PDF Expert Eg 2 Desktop

27. iAnnotate extracts & compiles full pages with annotations into pdf file

28. PDF Expert Email options

29. PDF Expert export options

30. PDF Expert extracts the annotations & creates a txt doc

31. Goodreader Export Options

32. Goodreader extracts the annotations & creates a pdf file

First Glance at Windows 8

Windows 8 Preview Desktop

As you may or may not already know, Microsoft released a preview of Windows 8 a couple of weeks ago (you can find it here). I finished installing it last night (whole process took about 1-1.5 hrs to complete) and was playing around with it today. They’ve added a few new cool features but ultimately, it’s a bit disappointing… it’s not anything we haven’t already seen before. It did not have the WOW factor to blow me away with!

These are the things I’ve noticed with Win 8 Preview:

Start Screen replaces start button

1. Replaced the famous Start button with the Start/Home Menu

The interface looks nice but it is very awkward to use – You can find things you use regularly here – like your music, video, calendar etc here. There’s also Windows App store – which is very minimal at the moment. I think it is trying to imitate Android and Apple’s OS, so if you know how to use Android or iOS, then you shouldn’t have a problem with Win 8. Because Android and Apple both rely on a touch interface, horizontal scrolling is easier on those machines – you can flick left or right when you want to look at your apps etc. Here, you have to use the good ol’ mouse and keyboard to move across the screen (and if you are like me and installed it on your laptop, touch pad it is!) which can be quite impractical.

All Apps Screen

2. Apps Screen

Boy, did I have a hard time locating this button! I would’ve assumed on the start screen, it would have an “All Apps” button or something, turns out you have to right click on the start screen then select “All Apps” to see it. Again, nothing we haven’t seen before – exactly like the Android’s All Apps screen. Again, horizontal scrolling makes it awkward with the mouse, especially with my touchpad.

Microsoft App store & Side bar

3. Side Panel

One of the cooler things I did notice was the cool on the side app – you can keep an app running on the side (be it messaging, news, etc or in my case, wordpress!) to keep in touch/up to date with those on the internet.

Search "any time" function

4. Search any time function

This search function has made the “All Apps” screen a bit obsolete. Before I found the “all apps” button, I was using this feature – when you are in the start/home screen, you can start typing in the name of any file, document, app, setting you want, and it will search it automatically for you. It does a good job in locating the documents quickly, so they must’ve indexed the files pretty well to find it within seconds of searching. Pretty neat.

5. Other things

Win 8 still maintains the aero transparent windows edge from Win 7 but it has become borderless around the left, right and bottom sides. The edges are straight and sharp, no longer round and curvy. Pretty much everything about Win 8 is squarish and straight. All the app icons are square, straight and flat – unlike iOS where it’s rounded and bevelled. Although win 8 does seem to use up more ram than win 7 did - I haven’t noticed any lagging or memory leaks with my laptop.Everything still seems to function at a good pace.

Overall, Microsoft has done a major uplift with their Win 8 – I assume they are aiming to make it more touch and user friendly, so that later down the track, with the release of new phones or tablets running win 8, it will be a seamless process syncing files from one machine to the next (it’s just a guess, but that is what I would aim for if I was working for Microsoft).

I guess they are also trying to win back their share of the market Android and Apple have dominated over the last few years, but it appears they are a bit too late jumping on the bandwagon. Even their app store is abysmal – guess we will wait and see. Android was like that when it first started out – now the Android Market is phenomenal.

Personally, I don’t think Win 8 is worth the upgrade – it isn’t that spectacular. As I said previously, there was no WOW Factor when my machine booted up to these little quirky squared fishes blowing bubbles on the start up screen as it was loading the interface. It is still in its early builds yet, so who knows, the finished product may actually blow me away. Highly doubtful though.

PDF Expert 3 or iAnnotate 2? A Review

Update 06/04/2012: For those looking, I have just recently compared PDF Expert, iAnnotate & Goodreader here. It’s more indepth than this review.

As promised, here is a comparison between the two infamous PDF Editing apps for the iPad – PDF Expert and iAnnotate. I also wrote about them briefly in my earlier post here.

iAnnotate Screenshot - Preview on the left side (Can be hidden), right side is toolbar (Customisable), multiple documents can be open at once (tabs up the top). Interface isn't as clean and nice as PDF Expert's.

PDF Expert Screenshot - Toolbar up the top. Interface is clean and nice. Small toolbar open appears above an annotation you select is very practical. Note: Thumbnail preview is not available while looking at main document, can't open multiple documents at once

I know it has been a while since I have last written – I feel as though I can unbiased-ly (couldn’t think of the correct term for this) compare PDF Expert with iAnnotate now, after having used iAnnotate and PDF Expert for an equal period of time. Let me quickly list the pros and cons of each so it’s not so tediously long for either of us!

How to use iAnnotate to your maximum potential as a student!

I have been going to uni for the last couple of weeks now, and have been taking my iPad with me everywhere I go for lectures, workshops and tutorials. I have been searching around the Internet forums to hunt for the perfect productivity tools to enable me to exceed in my classes, but eventually these are the apps that I have found which works best for me:
- iAnnotate app
- blackboard mobile
- Dropbox

The blackboard mobile is a free app for university students – if your school supports this program, or uses blackboard as their main method for students to access lecture notes, recordings, quizzes, tutorials etc, then you are in luck. The whole set up process takes less than 5 minutes – download, search for your uni, sign in with your student ID and password, then all the classes that your enrolled in will appear.

It is very easy to navigate through – its like a blackboard basically – with your enrolled subjects on the left, posted on a pin board, and announcements on your right (which you can swipe to hide). Clicking on each subject will open up the contents of that subject up on the main “blackboard” – from announcements, to topics, to grades, tools, contacts etc – basically anything you find in when logging into the computer normally, you will find it on the Blackboard Mobile app. The interface is very smooth and fluid. It has capabilities to read .pptx, .docx, .pdf files in the program – you can then export this via “open in” to your favourite editable document program.

Something I find I don’t like about blackboard is that in a normal web browser, be it safari, firefox, internet explorer or chrome etc, I am able to view everything on that whole webpage – ie all the content under all the subheadings and read everything at once. I am a practical person and prefer to do just that. Blackboard mobile allows for browsing one subheading at a time – so I have to click on each subheading to read each one, when instead I can view everything in a normal internet browser. However, Blackboard has found a way around this – they’ve included a “view in browser” option that opens up another window of what the whole page will actually look like if you were to view it in your favourite browser. There, you can see everything you are missing out on – I’m not saying it a bad thing – you can actually view all these things when you click on each individual subheading – but why do that when you should be able to view everything all at once. Like my economics lecturer said, Time is a major constraint for some people – I am one of them!

The other unappealing thing in Blackboard is that it suffers from recognising all those formatting you see in a normal browser – so no bold, italics, no underlining, no colour, no fancy formatting. Teaching should be fun – bright colours, bold writing, italics etc make an impact on student learning! Studies have shown people learn faster and are actively engaged when the brain sees bright, colourful images and words – It’s a pity Blackboard doesn’t though.

My last app, iAnnotate, is a PDF editor. I have written extensively about this and other comparable apps in the following posts. Please feel free to check them out!

I Love My iPad 2

Ok, so I must admit – I really do love my iPad 2 that I got for Christmas! I have been against the whole iPad thing for – well since the start, when the first gen came out! I looked at the product, like so many others, on the Apple site and went wow – that is the top of consumerism right there. It certainly looks nice, but it’s just another little entertainment device that you can’t do anything on – Apple’s iOS is notorious for limiting the functionality of their machines and the way you can (or should I say can’t) save and edit your data on. BUT 2 – 3 years on, after the production of thousands of apps, the refinement of iPad 2 (slimmer/thinner, dual core, better graphics or whatever else they have upgraded in their system), and the million of accessories available for the iPad (which I think all those people out there must be making a killing!!), it certainly starts to hold an appeal…

I am not one of those Apple lovers who would go out and buy everything that is Apple – no. I have an iPhone and an iPad. I am pretty tech savvy, have also a laptop and a desktop – so when the iPad came out, I immediately thought, the iPad can never replace the laptop, or the tablet pcs – functionality is so limited. You are restricted to running the only approved programs from the app store. You can’t transfer data unless through iTunes, and hell once you have set up all music/books/ whatever else you have autosynced to one laptop (like I do), you can’t sync apps/music/books etc from another machine (like my desktop) without deleting your whole library first! How frustrating!

Nevertheless, my mind has been, well you can say brainwashed if you will, into being pro-Apple and pro-iPad. As I mentioned earlier, all the major sharks in the market out there have embraced the electronic world – I mean how could you not? It’s the next step in our technological evolution – you have social media, social networking, the appearance of cloud/sky drives, evolution of seamless, wireless internet, smartphones etc – all the information you could ever need to get ahead is at your fingertips. And so we are going a little off track here but as I was saying, every major market leader out there has got their hands in the pie – the iPad has revolutionised technology, making pretty much everything else obsolete. Let me give you a few examples.