I use iBooks for most all my iPad reading activity, but what if you want to do more than just read on your iPad. An iPad app I checked out this week, called PDF Max, goes well beyond reading for iPad power users.
PDF Max Features
By and far, the number one feature is the ability to edit PDFs. Here’s some of what I found in PDF Max:
- Add, move, or delete pages
- Add notes
- Create and fill shapes
- Freehand draw
- Sign documents with your finger
- Add audio notes
- Add stamps like “Approved” or “Confidential”
- Create external links
- Create and edit a document outline
- Tabbed document viewing
- Search within the document
There’s actually a lot more to it, but that’s the stuff that really stood out to me. Of all those features, the ones I think I’ll use the most are the ability to sign documents and the page management. It’s pretty common for me to get a document emailed to me in PDF format and have to print, sign and scan before I can email it back. With PDF Max, I can send the PDF to PDF Max right from my email, sign it, and email it out right from the app. Of course, the ability to email out anything other than the original PDF (without your changes or signature) requires the Pro version of PDF Max. Luckily, it was only $1.99 and came as an in-app purchase, so I didn’t have to stop what I was doing to upgrade. This Pro requirement applies to some extended features like creating shapes in more colors, but the free version let me do everything I listed above without bugging me for an upgrade. There were no ads and the it fell short of being called “nagware” as it didn’t nag me about upgrading. They gave away everything but the one piece I’ll fork over the $1.99 for. Well played, Mobeera.
Shortcomings
I absolutely love free, so of course I didn’t like having to pay for the Pro version, but that also means I’m picky and only pay when I see value. Despite giving me nearly everything in the free version, I saw the value of the two dollar upgrade and went for it. As a paying customer, I have but one concern about this app, and that’s the bookmarks. Without adding much to the traditional bookmark model, PDF Max actually made it less user friendly than the iBooks way of bookmarking. In iBooks, I tap a bookmark icon and I’m done and when I look at my bookmarks, I get page previews. In PDF Max, I have to give my bookmark a name. It’s a nice option, but the little bit of work to pre-fill the Name field with “Page [x]” would make it so much better. And page previews would be a great update to the bookmark panel. That said, I really had no other complaints.
Conclusions
If you need to export your PDF with changes, drop the $1.99 for the Pro version of this robust app. Either way, this is a great addition to your iPad, even in the awfully function-rich free version. Both are easily worth every penny.
This was a sponsored review, but all opinions about this app are entirely mine and are a result of spending plenty of time using it.
I’ve reviewed several Android phones, but never owned one. I’ve been a loyal iPhone owner since the iPhone 2. Despite my moderate iPhone slant, I’ve watched a growing Android market evolve to inspire better hardware and more of it year by year. Below is an infographic that shows just how far Android has come in the mobile wars. Is IOS doomed or is this just going to push Apple to future innovations?
Like Apple’s WWDC event, Google I/O is always an event filled with announcements that they hope will keep us on the edge of our seats. While they’ve had some exciting announcements in the past, they’ve really brought their game this year. With announcements about the latest version of Android named Jelly Bean, new features for Google+, and the unveiling of their Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus Q social media player, the grand finale was really Sergey Brin’s special project, Google Glass skydiving in.
Google Glass
The presentation that really stole the show was Google Glass, but it was more for the presentation itself than the device’s current abilities. During a presentation on Google+ features, Google founder, Sergey Brin interrupts, wearing a Google Glass headset. He announces that he’s got a Glass device out on loan that’s being delivered and cuts to a Google+ Hangout with a bunch of skydivers in a plane, each also wearing a Google Glass headset. They skydive in, showing us their viewpoint from Glass’ embedded camera. This carries on to the package being then biked across a rooftop, scaled down the side of the building and then biked up to the stage. It was a new first for one of these events.
The video above shows Google Glass from the wearer’s point of view, using the device to get all kinds of information about things they see, in real time. When I first saw the promo video, I wondered if it was a spoof like the see-through iPhone 5 concept or just another example of Google’s sense of humor, but this thing is real. One thing I noticed during the real demonstration at I/O is that they gave a lot of attention to taking photos and participating in Google+ Hangouts with Glass, but didn’t once demonstrate any of the cooler augmented reality features we saw in the promo video. Google opened up a preview model for purchase to US attendees of the conference who would like to experiment and develop on it, so we’ll hopefully see more features before it’s handed over to the public. No word on when that might be.
Nexus 7 : Small In Size And Price
Tablets worth buying are often also priced around $400 and up. Google’s Nexus 7 tablet breaks the price mold coming in at $199. With that price, they decided to throw in a $25 Google Play marketplace credit to get started with some movies, TV, books, or magazines as well as a free copy of the latest Transformers movie. Not too bad for $200. The Nexus 7 will come with Android Jelly Bean and all the hackable possibilities it offers and it all runs on a quad core processor with a 12 core GPU. It looks incredibly fast and responsive, but it’s also pretty small. Easy to hold in one hand, it’s definitely big enough to not be compared to a phone, but still noticeably smaller than an iPad. Either way, it looks like a lot of fun.
Here’s Google’s introduction to the tablet:
Nexus Q : A Social Glowing Ball
Another product people got pretty excited about this year was the new Nexus Q, which seems a lot like the darker side of Apple’s Air Play. It’s a small, black, spherical computer that you connect up to your TV. The Q connects to Google’s cloud to sync up all your music and movies and your family and friends can even control it when they’re over. Google demonstrated at I/O 2012 how to tell it (via an interface on your phone or Nexus 7) to play your media in the living room or maybe in a bedroom. I assume that you’d need a device in each room for this to work. It looks like something from Star Wars and many have compared it to a bowling ball already on Twitter, but is it worth the $299 price tag? That’s yet to be seen. Below is Google’s promo video for Nexus Q.
Google presented some great hardware today, along with some pretty cool announcements about their software, including Events and new photo stream features for Google+ and Android Jelly Bean and it’s new smart “cards” that learn about the information that you want. It’ll be exciting to see what else they have in store for tomorrow and the year to come.
