The blind leading the blind

Question

Bear with me. I am an experienced Mac user (since 1980) and recently convinced a friend to switch from PCs. This friend, however, is a writer and self-described techno-luddite and relies on me for all things geek. He has bought a MacBook Pro, iPod and iPad (with an iPhone to follow, apparently when his current phone contract expires). I've got him pretty well squared away with the MBP, but need some advice on how to help him with the iPad.
Living in the extreme boonies, without cell phone service of any variety, I have no experience with "smart phones" or any such device. Enter the iPad. Just to give you an idea of how clueless I am, I did not know how to tell him to move his email contacts over to the iPad. iTunes? Really? Yup. To complicate matters, I am 1,000 miles away for the time being, and have never even seen an iPad and have played with an iPhone just a few times last year. So the entire format is foreign to me. Techno-luddite will arrive with his iPad next week, at which time I will hopefully have an idea of which apps he should have and how the darn thing works. I have downloaded the manual and am chewing on it now.
So ... You guys have bailed me out in the past on various forums,and I am hoping for help on some very fundamental suggestions and clarifications.
He wants to be able to jot handwritten notes on the iPad. It looks like "WritePad" will let him do that (I've bought him a Pogo Sketch Stylus). Either that, or "Sketchbook" or maybe "Draw for iPad" which could save his jottings as jpgs. Any other suggestions? I see "Notes" could be another option if he types them, but can they be saved as text or can they only be emailed?
How does one read email attachments such as PDFs? I see there is an app "PDF Word Excel File Viewer for iPad" -- is that what he needs or is there something better? The manual says all such attachments are readable already. Is that so? Then why all those other apps in the app store?
Although he has made the switch to Macs, he wants to stick with Microsoft Office on his MBP. It looks like iWork for iPad is the best solution, creating and sending documents back to his MBP via email or iWork.com as Word docs, correct? Is there a documents folder on the iPad or is everything saved on the desktop?
He's also going to use the iPad for books (iBooks). Is there any reason for him to download the Kindle app as well?
So, am I on the right track? Any other suggestions (or must-have apps)? I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible for him so that the creative juices aren't stymied by technical issues.
Thanks, as always, for patience and good humor!
Tina

Answer 1

What a good friend you are, Tina! Just a few comments. First, neither Numbers or Keynote will export in their MS file equivalents, Excel and Powerpoint, as someone said they would. Those are major drawbacks to both. Pages will, however, thankfully, export as MS Word but importing MS Word documents (easily done by e-mailing them to yourself or by using a third party app, like FileBrowser, if you have lots) will often lose formatting, especially if extensive formatting was done. Also won't support foot or endnotes. All documents are saved in a, so far, unchangeable default folder that, for instance, Pages always looks into. It's not really designed for holding, say, hundreds of files since navigating through them would get to be something of a pain, I would think. But there are third party apps that do let you create folders (usable only from within that app), again, like FileBrowser. I really like FileBrowser. Works great.
However, you mention that your friend doesn't want to learn a new word processor. He does realize that he'll have to learn Pages because it's currently the only real game in town on the iPad and it does take a bit of learning (though it's not a huge learning curve, by any means).
In the iTunes store's iPad app store (which, by the way, is a lousy setup so far- very clunky) there are always usually extensive user reviews of all applications at the bottom of the app's page. They are always informative even though often highly uneven (love/hate, it seems, is a real app user phenomenon!). Check out WritePad there 'cause there are varying opinions and it costs $10 and as far as my experience goes, there's no return from an App Store purchase. Ha! Thank you, Apple Store!
The Kindle app has been optimized, as they say, for iPad, but I find it buggy so far. But it does look real good. It's free and he can download all his already purchased Kindle books onto his iPad for free.
The reason for those third party apps for things like PDF files, is that although the iPad's email app reads them just fine, that's all it does. Can't manipulate them or store them on the iPad without a third party app.
Hope your friend appreciates you! BTW, you would probably love the iPad. I thinks it's really worth it. So if you've got the bucks, grab one!
Cheers!