I keep seeing apps like these, and what they almost never have is sharing notes between multiple people.
I use Apple Notes, and I constantly share notes with my wife — and entire folder structures, too. We use it for grocery lists, dinner planning, travel planning, and many other things. It's not quite as elegantly real-time as Google Docs, but we don't need that as much, since we tend to edit at different times.
I also like that Notes is rich text all the way. My heart sinks when a new note-taking app boasts of Markdown support, as if that's a good thing. I think Markdown is fine for technical docs, where no good standard for rich text editing exists. But Markdown is a compromise — things like asterisks and underlines are less legible than the bold and italics they represent (especially across more than one word), and links become nigh unreadable, not to mention things like inline images and tables.
I previously used Evernote, and I've tried Notion (slow, awful for organizing, "block model" gets in the way of writing). I've yet to find anything that matches Apple Notes.
Apple Notes takes the crown for being the most unobstructive when it comes to taking notes.
1. Drag and Drop images, screenshots, annotate them in place. I cannot live without this anymore. Forcing me to first upload an image somewhere, and then use ()[] syntax to correctly load the file in MarkDown is the opposite of what I want my Notes application to be.
2. Sync - I write my notes on my Mac while working. I needed to look something up while I am waiting in queue somewhere? iPhone provides an excellent interface with usable Search while on the Go. Had a thought while I am traveling, want to put it down? Notes on iPhone. This thing is super convenient.
3. Shared Notes. My wife and I share a few notes with purposes - "Things to Know" - for the important tidbits that we end up sharing via Messages/email. Now they are in one place and recorded forever. "To buy" is our commonly used shopping list. "Household todo" - is our shared todo list for stuff around the house.
Now, the con is that deep lock-in to the Apple ecosystem. I am still waiting for an alternative that gives me the ability and ease to do #1 and #2 above. So far, none met my needs.
My eager bet is on https://www.serenity.re/en/notes
The dev has image drag and drop support on the roadmap. If it comes out, I will give it a serious shot.
Evernote...? Windows support, and Linux support in the browser. The Linux apps are bad. But I hate the new design and still use the legacy version on macOS. I'm looking for a replacement, but I have thousands of notes in Evernote, and it won't be an easy move.
Moving off Apple's ecosystem. Their definition of privacy/surveillance falls short of "human rights" level privacy and only protects against advertisers and hackers.
Fair enough. I will point out there is no commercial entity that does better than Apple on any of these counts. Open source will only get you so far: every hardware vendor other than Apple has lower standards for labor rights and sustainability.
As sweet as their hardware and ecosystem is, an open ecosystem is better for users. I'd move off if I could get most of what I enjoy within Apple ecosystem.
Something open that beats Apple's ecosystem doesn't yet exist today. But you can help it get there by being a customer and telling companies what you want. Re-creating an E2E iCloud suite doesn't seem impossible. For example Standard Notes is close to beating Notes - but it's still too complicated but with focused work on the UI it could win.
One good reason to not use Apple’s software offerings is to be able to keep eggs in more than one basket. Treat Apple like the hardware seller they should be? They’re below average at best at software anyway. Other than the upper layer polish.
Apple is famously a forerunner of personal computing. They invented most of the mobile UI design language used today. Every OS they’ve built is extremely premium. Their natural language processing is best-in-class.
In all fairness what you say was correct for a long time. But recently quality has slipped according to many. I wouldn't make any type of bold claim to quantify it though.
Why I moved away from Apple notes: export options require AppleScript, or paid Mac app (lost some images). no Linux client (there’s a web client) Code has no syntax highlighting. Linking between notes wasn't possible, this might have changed since.
I use Apple Notes, and I constantly share notes with my wife — and entire folder structures, too. We use it for grocery lists, dinner planning, travel planning, and many other things. It's not quite as elegantly real-time as Google Docs, but we don't need that as much, since we tend to edit at different times.
I also like that Notes is rich text all the way. My heart sinks when a new note-taking app boasts of Markdown support, as if that's a good thing. I think Markdown is fine for technical docs, where no good standard for rich text editing exists. But Markdown is a compromise — things like asterisks and underlines are less legible than the bold and italics they represent (especially across more than one word), and links become nigh unreadable, not to mention things like inline images and tables.
I previously used Evernote, and I've tried Notion (slow, awful for organizing, "block model" gets in the way of writing). I've yet to find anything that matches Apple Notes.