Anyone whos gotten burned by Evernote failing to save an hours worth of meeting notes will appreciate that Projectbook saves your work automatically. And theres no saving to the cloud either; all data is saved directly on your iPad, so its available whether or not youve got a network connection. (When the Mac and iPhone versions of Pocketbook come out later this year, your data should be able to sync among all your devices.) This is welcome because it eliminates the need to pay annual fees to have your data available locally (as is required with Evernote). However, Evernotes cloud-based approach does have its advantages. For example, having your data stored on Evernotes servers means that information emailed to your Evernote account appears in your notebooks without any intervention on your part. Similarly, Evernotes API (application programming interface) allows other apps to push content directly into your Evernote-hosted notebooks. Plus, Evernotes Web interface is very handy when you dont have your usual devices available. Hopefully, with a little maturity, Projectbook will add similar capabilities.

So, despite Projectbooks unique features, if this were a real showdown, Evernote would still win. Evernote is a mature product with an ecosystem of apps that support it, while Projectbook is a new app thats still a little rough around the edges. Thats not unexpected in a version 1.0 product, so Im inclined to give the developer a pass on these shortcomings in anticipation of them getting ironed out in future versions. Additionally, Evernote is available on a variety of devices and platforms while Projectbook is currently available only for the iPad, which limits its usefulness. However, as I mentioned, versions of Projectbook for both the iPhone and the Mac are promised for a fall release, which should greatly enhance the apps value and help it give Evernote some much needed competition.