Microsoft Whiteboard

Microsoft Whiteboard is one of my most favourite products from Microsoft - great features and excellent integration with the company’s other services. However, the iPad app is doomed with bugs and errors, which demonstrates the fact that the app was (and still is) an afterthought - a mere attempt to make the product cross-platform, but nothing more. The app sort of supports the Apple Pencil but also does not. When using my Pencil to draw something and then using my finger to move the canvas around, it (ingeniously) registers it as a pen-stroke. The double-tap to switch to eraser functionality (which is supported by many third-party apps made by right-minded people, let alone Apple’s first-party apps) is non-existent here. The app frequently freezes and crashes for no apparent reason. The list goes on and on. I had installed this app a year ago (coming from Windows and hoping to have a similar experience), but it was practically unusable. A few days ago, I installed it again, hoping Microsoft paid a little more attention (after all it has been a whole year!); it is a little bit better: it is somewhat usable - but things could have been much better. I understand that there is a great team behind this app working diligently to improve it, but I genuinely wish Microsoft had been a little more considerate and provided the necessary resources. Microsoft, please do not drag down your company image and user satisfaction with frustrating inconveniences like this! Overall, it is a good product, but just not so great on iPad. It is possible that things might get better over time, but until then, I will leave 3 stars on the App Store.

New review 1 year later (2020): So I decided to try this out again and it finally works! There are still small delays with the pens, but it’s not too annoying. There are pressure sensitivity for the pens and eraser (if you do not have 3D Touch or a stylus with a pressure sensitivity, then the eraser only has varying pressure by movement speed). The pens are no longer super blocky! It flows very well. Since I use an Apple Pencil first generation with my iPad 6th generation, I don’t have any complaints for the pens and eraser. But when I turned the pen connection off to try out with my finger, you must disable the drawing mode before you are able to move around and zoom in and out of the canvas. The text size of sticky notes are finally readable! But if it has too much text, you are only able to read the first section. It does not stretch down or change text size or have a scroll bar. A review during the launch (2018): A notes with collaboration?!?! Microsoft has OneNote, but OneNote takes too much OneDrive space. Solution? Microsoft Whiteboard. The whiteboard has zoom in and out function, giving you a whole lot of space to put down all the stuff in one page. The whiteboard background is customizable (color, grid, lines). The pen has fun color options like color gradient (different hues) and the view of twilight. The sticky notes are very flexible (rotation, size of sticky note). The app is however very laggy since I believe it is still in the new app stage. I would like pen pressure sensitivity by movement speed option. The pens feel really rough with blocky lines. Zooming into the canvas is kinda tough because the app thinks I’m trying to move around the canvas while I am trying to look at the whole picture. I would also like to be able to adjust the sticky note’s text size. It’s quite hard to see short texts. //had the wrong date

I draw on my iPad, and I wanted a very simple, yet functional space to keep my references in one place so that I could access them quickly and scribble on them if needed. There’s no ads to ignore, no subscriptions, no micro transactions. If I need to access the same resources on my computer, I can simply pull up the website. Being able to lock the images in place is helpful. My only peeve so far is that when I undo an action, it automatically selects the last image I inserted, which is kind of distracting, but it doesn’t appear to change the locked setting, so it’s not a huge deal. Also, the glitter pens? HUGE plus, lol. They’re so pretty!