PDFpen for iPad is one of the most recent additions to an ever-growing list of iPad apps that let me leave my MacBook Air at home.

Today I was working with a PDF where the security was set to prohibit copying text. To fix the problem, I opened the PDF in PDFpen on my iPad and then emailed a printable (flattened) copy back to myself.1 The result was a copiable PDF.

It's amazing how much you can do with relatively inexpensive apps on the iPad—things that would have required really expensive, overkill PC software just a few short years ago.

  1. Yes, I had every legal right and need to be able to copy its contents. I’m not suggesting that you break the security on PDFs for malicious reasons.↩