I’ve been using an iPad for about a year, and it’s proven more useful than I originally thought. For reading. The text of PDF’s and books is bright and sharp, and adding content adds no weight. After taking the iPad on the road, I also found its wifi and cell data plan workable. I’m able to use Westlaw easily, download cases into an emailed-PDF format and analyze from there.
I’ve taken the iPad to Europe a few times now, where wifi bandwidth has supported some hefty downloads without any problem. I offer as a contrast my old Dell laptop, which when I first exposed it to French wifi asked me three times whether I was sure that I wanted to connect, and after I responded “yes” three times refused to do so. That Dell is now rolling in the deep. (No, not literally).
My verdict on writing and editing on an iPad is less favorable. The lack of formatting capability is the largest drawback. Although some applications insist that they “support” footnotes, this notion of support is different than mine. There’s a difference between making a footnote readable, and providing the capability to make a footnote in the first instance. To law professors (and lawyers), that’s a significant difference.
I usually get my Word documents onto my iPad by emailing them to myself in Word format. There are other ways to do this, using clouds, lockers or the like. Here’s the first page of my document when I open it in my iPad email:
You might say that it looks a bit sparse, given that the footnotes are wiped out. Don’t worry, they didn’t disappear forever. You have a choice to transfer to document to another app. Here’s the same page opened in a “Pages,” an iPad app intended to support Microsoft Word documents:
Voila, the footnotes re-appear. I can edit the text, including footnote text, using Pages. But I can’t add new footnotes. There is no capability for large and small caps, and other commonly used formatting text. Outline format doesn’t hold true, and inserted images don’t always display.
Here’s the same page opened in Documents To Go Premium, which advertises “footnote support”-in this screen capture, I’ve highlighted the footnote text by clicking on a footnote number:
Unfortunately, the footnote text disappears when it isn’t selected. And although the documentation states you can edit footnotes, the feature wouldn’t work for me. However, outline format seems to hold true and image display is better than Pages. There are more formatting choices available, but not all that would be needed to make a work bluebook ready.
The application that I’ve used most is iAnnotate PDF. You can highlight and make notes on any PDF document. I can save a Word document to PDF, upload it to iAnnotate PDF, make sticky notes and edit, well, just like I would on paper. Which saves me from needing to find a printer, as well as some trees I suppose:
Also note that all of these images were made from the same Word document drafted in Times New Roman font. Each program puts its own spin on that font, and none of them seem to render it correctly.
I’ve found the iPad useful for lectures–you can make changes right up until you start, and the size is convenient. Still, it’s not a true substitute for a laptop. If you’ve found more helpful applications for word processing, please feel free to share in the comments.
Posted by Amy Landers on September 15, 2011 at 01:50 AM
Comments
Amy, thanks for showing the differences between Pages and Documents to Go. I agree with you — the iPad is wonderful for reading documents. It has significantly cut down on my consumption of paper. Also agree that the formatting power of common apps is less than optimal. I don’t even attempt to work on a document with footnotes on the iPad, although I have found it enormously useful to take notes in meetings and conferences, or to edit notes for my classes.
Another app that has maximized my use of the iPad is Dropbox. It is a free cloud program, and you can access your docs from any computer hooked up to the Internet, as well as mobile devices. I got frustrated with keeping track of various versions of documents on flash drives, and now use Dropbox exclusively.
I have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, so I was hesitant to purchase an iPad (strange, since I’m usually an early adopter). I just couldn’t figure out what it would be useful for. But after a year, I’ve found that I only use my iPhone for texting and e-mailing, and the MacBook stays in my office when I go on the road. The iPad has become my go-to device.
Posted by: Tanya Marsh | Sep 15, 2011 10:51:40 AM