3 ms·

All notetaking apps are disappointing with the possibile exception of Obsidian that I haven't tried long enough to have an opinion on. There's no open source s

All notetaking apps are disappointing with the possibile exception of Obsidian that I haven't tried long enough to have an opinion on. There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking. They all only have a small subset of features one might want. And yet they are critical infrastructure for people's entire life. It's a pretty exciting space.

cryoz 5y ago
Logseq seems promising.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
I think all notetaking apps are a sort of function of their environment, too, because they all benefit enormously from ubiquity. So for me as a long-time Mac user (and rather less long-time iPhone/iPad user), the realistic benchmark is Apple Notes: it is simplistic, fast, well-integrated and ubiquitous. It has just enough features to be useful and not enough features to be opinionated. Absent the iPhone side of things, I'd likely use Simplenote.
akpa1 5y ago
> There's no open source standard. I hope, at some point, something akin to another enhanced subset of Markdown will become the de-facto standard.
greggsy 5y ago
The markdown-based apps like obsidian are probably on the right track, but there’s too much dogma associated with methodologies like zettelkasten today that it just it’s probably a deterrent for some people. For those who just want a generic and easy to use app like OneNote, they’re not going to find it in Obsidian.
- realfeel78 5y ago
  > For those who just want a generic and easy to use app like OneNote, they’re not going to find it in Obsidian. That's not an accurate statement. Obsidian can literally be as simple as one wants it to be, or as sophisticated in virtually any direction. The culty "Zettelkasten" emphasis is entirely coming from the community and can be totally ignored (as I do).
kragen 5y ago
> There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking. There's UTF-8 and JPEG.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  That's more like the vim or nano of notetaking!
  - kragen 5y ago
    Vim is the Vim of notetaking.

cryoz 5y ago

Logseq seems promising.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

I think all notetaking apps are a sort of function of their environment, too, because they all benefit enormously from ubiquity. So for me as a long-time Mac user (and rather less long-time iPhone/iPad user), the realistic benchmark is Apple Notes: it is simplistic, fast, well-integrated and ubiquitous. It has just enough features to be useful and not enough features to be opinionated. Absent the iPhone side of things, I'd likely use Simplenote.

akpa1 5y ago

> There's no open source standard. I hope, at some point, something akin to another enhanced subset of Markdown will become the de-facto standard.

greggsy 5y ago

The markdown-based apps like obsidian are probably on the right track, but there’s too much dogma associated with methodologies like zettelkasten today that it just it’s probably a deterrent for some people. For those who just want a generic and easy to use app like OneNote, they’re not going to find it in Obsidian.

realfeel78 5y ago
> For those who just want a generic and easy to use app like OneNote, they’re not going to find it in Obsidian. That's not an accurate statement. Obsidian can literally be as simple as one wants it to be, or as sophisticated in virtually any direction. The culty "Zettelkasten" emphasis is entirely coming from the community and can be totally ignored (as I do).

kragen 5y ago

> There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking. There's UTF-8 and JPEG.

eternityforest 5y ago
That's more like the vim or nano of notetaking!
- kragen 5y ago
  Vim is the Vim of notetaking.