My laptop just passed away. After an appropriate period of mourning I must replace the dear old girl and am toying with the idea of getting an iPad.
I don’t need a lot of text entry capability, but I do need to read all types of documents. In particular, a lot of what I get sent, and a lot of what I need to read, are PDF docs.
Is it even possible to read PDF docs on an iPad? If an app is required to do so, how difficult is it to use? Perhaps more importantly, will it be seamless every time I need to read a PDF file? Will it be a nuisance? Will it have any significant effect on the battery life (i.e. time to recharge)?
A note: If a laptop was your only computer, you might want to reconsider. Although you don’t strictly NEED another computer to use an iPad nowadays, the experience is much better if the iPad isn’t an “only device”, so to speak.
Yes, you can read PDF documents natively on an iPad through the iBooks application. Nothing to buy.
One thing to note, however, is if your PDF has embedded audio or video, they will not play on the iPad, nor will bookmarks to other pages in the document remain hot.
I use Goodreader as well. My only complaint is renaming files can be a bit tedious. I would prefer to be able to rename it while I had it open, so I didn’t have to memorize the title.
Thanks for all your responses - it looks like there’s no shortage of options.
In fact, the iPad will not be my only computer; I have a desktop, too. Basically, it would just be to allow me to “be productive” when on the fly and also to bring relevant documents to meetings and so forth.
One more question, please. With the apps mentioned above (e.g. Goodreader, iBooks, iAnnotate, etc), do they automatically open up when I click on a PDF doc or do I have to open the app each time (in other words, does the document “call” the right app automatically?)
It’s a little odd. The iPad does not ‘expose’ its file system directly. You don’t see a listing of files.
Instead, programs know what files they can handle, and what to do with them. If you get a PDF as an email attachment, the iOS Mail program will attempt to open it, and it also gives you the chance to try to open it in iBooks and other programs.
You can also sync files from your computer to specific programs using iTunes. These programs may be able to list the files associated with them, but that’s an internal matter, so to speak.
The pain with iPad PDF reading is- its a format that defines paper size. If you have a document sized for letter size on an iPad screen which is about half the size, then the type will be relatively small and hard to read. If you zoom, most readers need the page resized and recentered each page. Kindle app for one has limited zoom (unless it’s been updated) so its a pain either 100% and scroll or 50% and squint.
Just to expand on what Sunspace said, which was correct, there’s no way to poke around in your iPad and see “files” as such. When I want to read a paper on my iPad, I first import the .pdf to the iPad (there are various ways of doing this - Kindle just launched a feature where all you have to do is send a file to a kindle.com email address they give you, and it will automatically pop up in your Kindle app). I then turn on the iPad and launch Goodreader, where I will see a list of .pdfs that I’ve loaded into it, and select which I want. You can, of course, have quite a large library if you want, but files essentially only exist within applications in the iPad.
Or you can get an Android tablet, which will let you deal with your files directly and will play flash as well. I much prefer my Asus Transformer Prime to my iPad.
True. An Android tablet connected to a PC acts like an external drive, allowing you to copy files to it, make folders, etc. And there are file manager apps. You can download/save files in one app and access it with any other, just like on a PC. Clicking on a PDF file brings up a list of apps that can open it; or you can set one of them as the default, so it’ll open any time you click on a PDF file.
I decided I had better check things out first hand so went to the Apple store today. Interestingly, the iPads they had on display showed pdf docs just by clicking on them (and I was told that no apps had been loaded onto the iPads to allow that feature).
More importantly, one of the sites I go to a lot and absolutely must be able to access did not seem to work with the iPad. No one at the store could tell me why that was; I wondered if, perhaps, the site was Flash dependent (which is not supported on the iPad). The Apple guy wasn’t certain but pointed out that what seemed to be the stumbling block preventing the site from working was the iPad’s inability to work with drop down menus. In other words, he explained that a web site must be modified to be compatible with iPads* and, in particular, that means that they can’t use drop downs. Hearing that, and knowing that I seem to encounter drop down menus more than rarely while I “browse” was enough to turn me off the iPad. A shame, actually. It seemed like a wonderful machine.
*i.e. that any web site creator wanting to make his/her work accessible by iPad must create a modified version of the site in addition to the ‘usual’ one. Can that possibly be true? Seems like a major liability to me (i.e. many smaller sites probably don’t have the wherewithal to do so. If that’s the case, it means that they will be forever inaccessible by iPads)
That’s… just bizarre. I use an iPad for about 90% of my web browsing and use sites with drop down menus all the time. Not mobile versions, not iPad specific versions, just the regular site. The only thing I can think of that might be a problem is sites that use JavaScript rollovers, given that you’re not actively driving a cursor around.
ETA: on second read, maybe that’s what he was suggesting, that your specific site was using some code that was dependent on rollover triggers or something. Certainly there’s no general case that drop downs don’t work.
And once you’ve opened it with iBooks, it’ll stay on your bookshelf and you can go directly to iBooks next time and open it from there. So in a way, iBooks is your “folder” and contains two subfolders called “books” and “PDFs”.
For example, the forum jump at the bottom of the SDMB works just fine, as do the search and quick link buttons at the top. The whole POINT of the iPad’s web browser is that it doesn’t need special “mobile” sites, just the regular ones (plugins like Flash notwithstanding). I’ve never heard of a site having to make an “iPad specific” version – and I work in web apps.
Let me add my fondness for Dropbox. It works natively with PDF’s, and for all file formats that are supported by applications on your iThing, it will allow you to open them (if it’s not already something that it handles natively).
Oh, Dropbox on an iThing is merely consequential; it’s an awesome tool in general if you use more than one machine.
The iPad at the Apple store probably had iBooks open, which gives the user the option of showing all PDFs in thumbnail format (on the bookshelf), or as a vertical list of titles (in a very basic approximation of a folder structure), both of which can tapped on to open the PDF of your choice.