Yeah, I hate the term "roundup" as much as all of you do, but I've been playing quite a lot of "Red Dead Redemption", so sue me.  

Since Apple has now gone through the trouble of having someone come in on the weekend to amend the text of their iBooks 1.1 product page to eliminate the claim that you can highlight (and annotate? I don't think they explicitly mentioned that but the comparison to what is possible with epub books in the app is definitely there) your PDFs  and elegantly flip through it's pages, I guess it's time to look seriously at some third party apps that will do some of these things in it's stead. 

A little background, if you've stumbled onto this site for the first time: since the announcement of Apple's iPad, I was vey interested as to how this cool gadget could fit snugly into film production workflow, where so much paper is wasted on a daily basis it would make your teeth hurt. Plot development and screenwriting was my first step along the way. Corkulous (iTunes link) is a kind of freeform corkboard concept which perfectly fit my story plotting needs, very much mimicking the old style method of posting index cards for each main point of your story. I'm still really impressed with that app and use it nearly every day when I'm writing. 

Actual screenplay-wise, I tend to write for a bit, then print what I've written and sit back and read it over. Looking at words on the screen, no matter what software I am using has never done the trick that having a sheaf of papers in front of me does. You just kind of need to be relaxed and focussed, not hunched over waiting to be distracted by the next tweet or email or whatever. The iPad comes very close to this. Slouching in a chair in the patio, reading a script is an absolute joy. The fact that the current iPad OS doesn't allow multitasking is actually a benefit in this regard: no distractions, only the matter at hand. 

Which is why I was anxious to find some kind of PDF solution for the iPad that would allow me to completely replace the experience of having a bunch of physical script pages in front of me: I'd like to highlight sections that will require my attention during the next pass, I'd like to make some brief notes as to what those changes and corrections might be and it would be really great if I could visually flip through the pages, as if I was reading an actual script, not scrolling up and down or swiping side to side like I was on my laptop or looking at a photo slideshow. It seems like a really picky point, but when you're reading through what you've written, you're talking about looking at the birth of your pride and joy; if it's actual printed pages, you want them to be clean and white, you want the edges all lined-up, you want it to look as good as it can possibly look. On a computer interface, neat animated page turns are the icing on the cake as far as that goes. 

Week one with my iPad, I was disappointed to learn that PDF reading was not included. Sure, you could email yourself a document, and use Quicklook to open that up, but that's it. Once you close your email, you lose it, and have to reopen the attachment and find your spot again. Hardly elegant. So, a third party solution is required. 

I threw an awful lot of money away on PDF apps (and will apparently continue to do so), so hopefully this will help you from doing the same. This is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pretty lengthly, so, without further ado...

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