As one of the many smelly long-hairs who once set his American eyes upon the distant, wild lands of Europe and decided to explore it equipped with nothing but a festering ruck sack, a worn down copy of Don McLean’s American Pie (10 minute version) and a slim black journal filled with blank verse that would have made even late-career Jack Kerouac barf, I know the crawl opening every virgin Moleskine notebook by heart.
“The Moleskine notebook is the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin,” it reads.
Note that Moleskine does not claim to be the same company behind those notebooks. It isn’t, and in fact, the story of how Italian notebook makers Modo & Modo took one of their regular, unassuming notebooks and turned it into a multimillion dollar busines and the hipster’s preferred analogue writing companion is pretty fascinating.
In truth, there’s not really such a thing as a Moleskine notebook. Picasso and Chatwin certainly didn’t use one. A Moleskine notebook is essentially just a notebook with an impeccably composed page of marketing copy inserted before the first leaf.
So here’s the question: if Moleskine is just some copy rattling on about Hemingway and van Gogh attached to something that can take notes, is a note-taking iPad app which opens up for the first time to display that same copy just as much of a Moleskine notebook as the one you might carry around in your back pocket?
Moleskine seems ready to find out with their new iOS app. The bad news? It’s just awful. The good news? It’s free, unlike a “real” Moleskine, whatever that is.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Moleskine’s New iOS App Is The Perfect Companion For A Dodo Case”
I think the official Moleskine app is quite stylish and simplistic.
I think they started the app very well and I hope to see it updated to become a great note-taking app for the iPad and the iPhone.
I’ve posted a quick review with some screenshots showing differences of how the app would look like on both devices here: http://bit.ly/gqeJSj
I think this app is a solid note-taking app and surely would become a major contender to claim the best spot in this area.
this article makes no fucking sense……
John, I love how opinionated you are. I love notebooks. In fact, I have a penchant for red Moleskine notebooks with quadrille lining. But I couldn’t help but feel my love was taken for granted by that Moleskine app. How was I – the user – expected to figure out how to customize that thing? If I didn’t know better, I would have shut down my iPad and gone “write” back to paper.
Why Dodo? Why not a genuine Moleskine case for an ipad?
I’ve worked as a journalist in some capacity or another ever since graduating college. Reporter, editor, columnist, movie and book reviewer, copy editor — all of it.
And both professionally and privately, I’ve always used the standard Portage “Professional Reporter’s Notebook.”
http://store.jea.org/media/cat…
They’re slim enough to fit in a back pocket (which is needed as a reporter), but have high quality paper that doesn’t smudge. I always have two or more going at once. One for whatever story I’m working on for the newspaper, and a second to write notes in for personal projects.
It also doesn’t hurt that pretty much all newspapers buy these things by the friggin’ case, and they’re packaged by a dozen. So you just walk over to the supply closet and pull out a pack of a dozen.
And on a writer’s pay, a good free notebook beats a Moleskine any day. ;)
I didn’t think it was “just awful” but it could certainly stand some improvement. I’ve given feedback to the developer and given them some ideas for the future. How about you?