ZeptoPad review
ZeptoPad is billed as a vector-based drawing app for the iPhone.
Shapes are dropped into the work area and then modified using oversized handles. Lines have two handles, squares and circles four. If you want your shape to be very small then the handles will munge together, the solution is to simply zoom in but I’d like to see, instead, the handles stay distinct no matter the shape size.
Manipulating objects in the drawing area can be somewhat tricky but I found most of the issues were resolved by zooming into the object I wanted to change. You point and drag anywhere on an object and it moves. You use two fingers to zoom and rotate objects. You read that right, you can rotate any object on the page. The app offers some text functionality as well though you cannot change the typeface. You change the size of the of the text the same way you resize other objects and it works fairly well.
The app also gives the user a clipboard and full cut, copy, paste functionality making it one of the few graphic apps on the iPhone that does. Its editing features don’t stop there either. ZeptoPad also supports grouping and ungrouping as well as sending to back and bringing to front.
ZeptoPad does have a few features that really do shine and were added as a direct result of some previous reviews. Early in its lifecycle it referred to itself as a mind mapping tool but received some criticism for that claim as building a mind map with it involved far too much work. As a result the developer added shapes and what are called ‘connectors.’ These connectors are lines that automatically attach to objects when their endpoints are dragged to an shape. You can then move the shape around and the line moves with it, staying attached. The feature works relatively well and even supports detaching easily. You can assign an arrow tip attribute to the connector so you can have the line terminate in an arrowhead.
The feature list for ZeptoPad is nearly endless. Gradient fills, alpha blends, realtime display of drawings on your computer screen, P2P sharing of files without wifi…breathe. The program is vast and I thought I’d have a hard time saying this given its cost but, well, it justifies its price tag.
I like it when a developer builds a UI to suit his app and doesn’t try to shoehorn a huge list of features into Apple’s UI standards. I like it even better when it works well. I have to say that it works fairly well in ZeptoPad. Things are a bit small but with a careful finger mistakes will be quite few.
I’m finding very little to make issue of with ZeptoPad. Like any powerful tool on the iPhone it is going to have its quirks but after using it a while the quirks feel a little less annoying because you realize that no other app on the iPhone can do this very powerful task.I’m going to give ZeptoPad a huge recommend. This isn’t something I thought I’d say when I first started using it but given the response of the programmer to his users and the good times I’ve had with the app I think it’s warranted.
[Edit: The Help in this app is almost impossible to understand and in some cases out of synch with the features of the app. I put forward the offer of rewriting the help files if the author of this app is interested. I'll do the task for free.]
