Creating Diagrams on Your iPad or iPhone

If you're a visual person, you realize the power of a diagram over prose for communicating a point. You've probably used either Visio on a PC or Omnigraffle on a Mac to create a-your picture-is-worth-1000-words diagrams. But what about on your iOS device. If you have an iPad, there is Omnigraffle for iPad.  It's very powerful but comes with a high price tag for an iPad app at $49.99.  Besides that, it will work only on your iPad, not on your iPhone. If you have an iPad and have to frequently create professional looking diagrams or charts, it may be your best option. What if, however, you only need to create occasional diagrams and want to do them easily?

This is where Grafio fits best. At $6.99 (or $4.99 on sale as I write this), it is much more affordable. Also, for the price you get a universal app, meaning that it works well on both the iPhone and the iPad. Grafio doesn't come with a big library of shapes (though that is supposed to be coming soon). Instead, you draw shapes freehand and it recognizes them and makes them smooth and professional-looking. Create an ugly rectangle, it turns it into a pretty one. Create an ugly circle, it turns it into a pretty one. Want to connect two shapes, simply draw a line between them and it creates a neat connector. Drawing with it is actually very easy.

Customization is easy in Grafio too. You can make your diagram look really really good by adding fill colors (or gradients), shadows, a background, etc. You can even use your own photo as a background and use Grafio to annotate it. For the price, Grafio can do a lot. If you're reading this on 07/31/2012, you can get it for a couple of dollars off. However, it's still a good deal at $6.99.