Moleskine notebooks are known for their simple, elegant design, but neither of these qualities are present in the free iPad app that was released a few days ago. Instead, simplicity and elegance have been replaced by cryptic icons, arrows that point to nowhere in particular, and an interface that would have made Hemingway cry in Ernest.
The Moleskine app aims to do what its paper counterpart does: give you a space to draw and write in a little black book. There are different categories to throw your notes into, a virtually unlimited number of pages to hold your thoughts, but I found the whole affair a nightmare to navigate. In fact, I’d go a little further and say that the Moleskine app has an infuriatingly unforgiving UI, with menus that disappear too quickly, and settings that make no sense.
Here, let me try to explain.
CATEGORIES
Tapping on the + symbol at the top of the main screen prompts you to label a “new thought” but doesn’t take you straight to a new note. Instead, it summons a little strip of a menu right in the middle of the screen (an awkward location), and presents you with a riddle-like schema of three labels and two arrows.
Along the left side is a label for “categories”, which is not tappable. The left-facing arrow below it is, but that simply brings you right into the note without picking any sort of category (since when did “left arrow” mean Cancel in UI speak?).
The labels for “new” and “assign”, along the right side of the menu are actually buttons, but you can tell they’re only being paid part-time. Sometimes they’ll work when you tap on them, and other times they’ll simply blank out and leave you unable to assign or create categories. The downward facing arrow below “new” is even more useless. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but this arrow simply points towards nothing, and leads nowhere when tapped.
NOTES
If you somehow stumble through the categorisation menu, you’ll be presented with the note editing screen (which is locked in portrait mode). Double tapping on any part of the page will bring up a keyboard to let you write, but accessing the e-ink capabilities is a complete crap shoot. The bottom-right corner of the editing screen is curled upwards, and tapping in that corner will bring up a list of options to input with text, e-ink, or insert an image stored on your device.
Unfortunately, it’s next to impossible to tell which input mode you have selected, since tapping on “image”, “text”, or “sketch” will display a brief flash that has *nothing* to do with actual selection. To actually get the app into e-ink mode, you’ll have tap on “Sketch” and then pick a colour (even if it’s the colour that is already selected…) and then move back to the editing view. That’s like having to take two separate caps off of a pen to use it. It’s ridiculous.
CONCLUSION
I could go on and on about the app, but frankly, I don’t want to spend any more time using it, and I think I’ve probably made my point by now. Sure, there are sharing options for notes (no syncing, though) and geo-tagging goodness if you really want it, but those features simply don’t matter if this isn’t a good notebook to begin with.
I like the Moleskine brand and would love to see a decent digital representation of the brand on iOS, but this isn’t it.
This universal app may be free, but the time, patience, and hair that you will lose while trying to navigate this mess will be gone forever. If you really want to see what the Moleskine experience is about, pick up the good old-fashioned paper version, and spare yourself and your iPad some anguish.
[Note: there is also an iPhone version of this app, but I didn’t bother giving it a shot. It may be less infuriating, but the lack of sync and my experience with the tablet version already make it a non-candidate for me.]
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TAGS: note app
