Note Taking Apps All The Way Down

I feel, naively, that there are too many variations on note making apps. Am I alone in this?

Granted, I know that there’s always room for competition in a sector, that’s a great thing. But how much competition could there possibly be in note taking? Forgive my ignorance, I just figured this would be a solved field by now, with a declarative “winner” of sorts.

This question only arises because I’ve found that I, being the massive hypocrite that I am, realized that I’ve unwittingly installed three of the buggers: Bear, Notability, and Notion.

The value prop for Bear is easy: simple Markdown notes. I rarely, if ever, use Bear’s other features, the sole exception being its nice integrations with Apple Shortcuts.

Notability and Notion are the harder ones to justify. I haven’t used Notability outside of AP Statistics, and that was just so I could easily color code things. I didn’t even use their main gimmick — audio recording. Technically I could’ve used stock Apple Notes.

Technically I could use Apple Notes for everything, at least for the sake of consistency.

I’m actually writing this in Notion right now, just so I could see if the grass really is greener on the other side. So far, I don’t get the draw. It’s a really neat application, but I don’t feel an instant compulsion to use this, just like the rest of them. They all take in what I type. What more is there that I need? What’s that killer draw that I’m just not getting?

I’m genuinely a nomad of sorts. I have a bunch of random notes, things to remember, and thought snippets in Apple Notes, statistics notes in Notability, and blog posts in Bear. Really, the only steps left are to install and use Evernote, Obsidian, GoodNotes, Microsoft Loop, Ulysses, Google Keep… Notepad…

I’ve been a bit disingenuous, particularly about Notion: Believe it or not, I had a classmate who’s built an entire website in Notion, with a calendar, activity tracker, a MAP???? and some charts. Absolutely fascinating, like some weird Myspace reincarnation. Absolutely worthy of further inspection.