alt Hacker NewsI'm curious about everyone's opinion on writing "by hand" with a stylus on tablets like the Remarkable, Kindle Scribe, iPad+Pencil, etc.
I like sketching and outlining with pencil and paper, but my handwritten notes are often illegible and disorganized. I know it's partly process and my poor penmanship, but digital surfaces compensate for this with built-in organization, searchability, and easier integration into projects and knowledge bases.
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I tried for years to make handwriting on the iPad work, but it never clicked for me. I randomly encountered a reMarkable Paper Pro Move recently, instantly purchased it. For the first time in my life, I no longer tote a paper notebook with me. The software, simplicity, low-latency, form factor, writing feel, everything is absolutely perfect for me.
My handwriting is roughly legible on paper (but getting worse). It is the same on an iPad+pencil with a Paperlike screen cover. It was impossible to read on my Remarkable 2 - the resolution just isn’t there for me.
I think it’s important to have that friction between the stylus and the screen. And if you have that, I am pretty happy with notes on either my iPad or paper.
I think tablet handwriting is fine. I had some six weeks of down time a while back and took advantage of it to go through the Getty-Dubay book Write Now: the Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success to improve my handwriting legibility. There's a website now https://handwritingsuccess.com/ and for your purposes even more relevant, there's a mobile app. I'm not affiliated, in case you're wondering.
As for disorganization, that's kind of the nature of early notes. There are ways to kind of organize them. One technique I use is writing them on notecards or notecard-sized paper, which I can later shuffle and organize.
I used an iPad + Apple Plencil for my last 2 years of University. I love the idea of digital notebooks, but for me writing 99% of the time in cursive zero friction between Pencil and glass was not a good combo. I find, at least for me, cursive needs that friction.
I tried some big name matte screen protector, I can’t remember now what it was called, and it was pretty good. It was like 70% of the way to feeling like paper. The Pencil tips would wear away but they still lasted much longer than the sticks for a mechanical pencil would. But the way the matte finish would diffuse light hurt the sharpness of the iPad display so I’ve been using these Pencil tip covers instead. It took some getting used to, and I still prefer actual pencil to actual paper but this at least saves me from buying and storing tens or hundreds of notebooks.