I think you mean, what the iPad isn't good for... if you try to use it as a notebook, you'll fail. It just isn't very good for that type of application.

I know some people that like to type notes (laptop or tablet), but most people I'm around still take notes with a regular pen and paper.

Then again, I'm a scientist and we are trained from the beginning to keep a good lab notebook. If it isn't in the notebook, it didn't happen!

Which iPad note-taking apps have you tried? There are definitely a lot of terrible ones out there.

Notability, however, is absolutely fantastic. I've been using it with a Cosmonaut stylus since late May and I haven't used a paper notebook since. Rather than failure, it's exceeded all my expectations.

The only missing feature is handwriting recognition, and well, I wouldn't have that with paper, either.

I take pictures of my notes and post them on Evernote. It has surprisingly good handwriting recognition.

I did try uploading my exported notes to Evernote, but it's handwriting recognition doesn't work on PDFs. I suppose I could try screenshots, though.