[apsurd]

Another anecdote added to the "I don't get notion" pile.

I just don't get notion. I use Apple Notes for everything id use notion for + scratch.txt on every project folder root. (i've used notion, quip, gdocs, dropbox paper)

Notion lives rent free in my mind because while im indifferent to it, people seem to LOVE it. and that's so fascinating.

even this article, I upvoted it because the conversation about notion is interesting, the article itself is a dud after reading it.

we live in a world where Notion is a multi billion dollar company and i have no idea why—now that's interesting!

[BadHumans]

Notion is popular because it is infinitely customizable. Want to draw in your Notion database? Done. Want to do Kanban? Easy. Gantt Charts? Child's play. Whatever you want Notion to do it likely can be and it is available on any device you want and you can share it with your team so working with other people is not a pain in the ass like it is with most plain text note taking.

[dboreham]

Speaking as someone who tried quite hard to make it do the thing I wanted, not sure that's true.

[pants2]

Just don't try to center text on the page!

[JojoFatsani]

God I hate notion. The way it splits columns until you have like two horizontal inches to type in, the rubber-band linking of documents, just the total lack of opinionation outside of templates..

I might be strange but I just really vibed with Confluence and I’d be happy with it if people would commit to it.

[apsurd]

lol you reminded me when i very first onboarded to notion i kept trying to write something and the magic paragraph thing kept popping up and im like WTF can i just… i'm trying to… wtf… and i wanted to try to use it, so i looked up the magic and i kept trying to magic and it just went zero to a million i guess in my understanding. no idea how to get collapsible sections.

I felt very dumb. Like i just want to write this thing and it wants me to be more magical about what i'm trying to write and fuck it's just text, get the fuck out of my way.

i think it's just there are notion users and then there's everyone else. I recovered in my self love again. I use txt files in my ancient sublime editor :)

[iforgotmysocks]

Apple Notes is underrated. There is no flashy features to distract you. Just you and your notes.

[luckman212]

I strongly disagree for these reasons:

- note data stored in a proprietary format

- no way to access note data from other apps/api

- no way to export in bulk, or in any other format than PDF (a terrible format for notes)

- iCloud sync is a mildly terrifying thing to entrust important data to

I use Apple Notes for the occasional quick grocery list but that's about it.

[015a]

I don't get the "note data is stored in a proprietary format" hate. There's a dozen different open source tools you can find which will one-shot export your Apple Notes to markdown, when you want to leave the ecosystem. Its not like Notion where the exports are messy, non-bulk, and destructive; they're proprietary, but parseable and sitting in a file on your MacOS filesystem.

I've never had iCloud Sync display any weird behavior in Apple Notes, and I've got thousands in there. I have, absolutely, seen Obsidian Sync delete notes I did not delete, and fail to upload notes; both of these were generally remediable via their recycle bin, but still very concerning.

All of these complaints are of the nature of "I don't actually have anything valuable to write down so I'd rather worry about the nature of the tool than what I'm writing". And, to be clear, I think this is why Notion is so popular, just for different reasons than your's; it looks great, and makes you feel productive because you've got amazing cross-referenced tables and hyperbacklinks and h1h2h3s and then wait where's the content?

[vunderba]

Counterpoint, I have seen sync issues on very popular large note, cloud-based solutions that use proprietary formats - Evernote comes to mind.

When you have tens of thousands of notes, it's hard to even know if at some point, the note has been suddenly changed, reverted, or modified in a way that you didn't even realize occurred.

With an open format, specifically a text based one like Markdown, I can sync all my notes to a git repository in a diffable manner that I can quickly review.

[threeseed]

Notes data is stored in an open SQLite3 database as Protocol Buffer data:

sqlite3 "~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/NoteStore.sqlite"

This is because it needs to support CRDT style syncing.

But the schemas have been decoded so you can access it using pretty much any language.

[LizPoggi]

Agee with you! I use a shortcut to send voice notes directly into Notion. I only use apple notes when I'm in a location I can't speak, and move them to Notion the next time I'm on my mac.

[jazzyjackson]

If you sync your notes to icloud you can bulk export to flat text files via https://privacy.apple.com/ > "request a copy of your data"

I've never experienced data loss due to icloud sync YMMV

[apsurd]

Great points i also agree with. That's Apple being Apple. I'd want an open format for sure.

Thing about Apple Notes is in spite of the open ideals, if you're in the apple ecosystem, it's just easily there, on all devices, very unassuming and simply, and that's so so very valuable.

It's the long view that gets me. Over the last 20 years, if i'm in the Apple ecosystem, notes are there, synced across everything, and it's just text. and it's simple.

[jen729w]

#tag support across shared Notes is also abysmal. The new tag doesn’t appear as an actual tag in person 2’s system until they ‘initiate’ it.

I tried really hard to love Notes. I wanted to. For the reasons you note, and this one, and many others, I couldn’t.

[personjerry]

There's ways to export the notes btw, for example https://github.com/storizzi/notes-exporter

[pbh101]

Agree on all the above except that iCloud sync seems to have been rock-solid for years now.

[antifa]

iCloud notes really needs a markdown mode or a non-WYSIWYG mode.

[easeout]

You say that, but there are tons of features in Notes. They're just successfully kept out of your way until you go looking for them, so when you just want a note that's what you get. This is progressive disclosure, a longtime tenet of Apple GUI design.

A relevant and somewhat meta example: This year they added disclosable sections, which were previously a differentiator for Notion. That's in addition to handwriting selection and editing, voice memos, collaborative editing… Not to mention it's still a regular app and you can have as many note windows as you want.

[DavidPiper]

I'm in the process of moving all (~2000) of my Apple Notes to Logseq. I still think Apple Notes is excellent, and I'll still be using it for Inbox-style notes.

But it just needs to be a bit more open and extendable. Give me good tables, proper linking between notes and a graph view (or at least an API so I can build that myself) and I'll be back forever.

[atombender]

I like Apple Notes, but collaborative editing is completely broken. I use it for sharing things like shopping lists with my wife. If I edit something while she's also editing, it gets mangled. Whatever Notes uses for collaborative syncing, it's not OT or CRDTs.

Notes is also quite terrible at many things:

* Embedded photos cannot be resized or placed next to text

* Table support is incredibly limited, to the point of being unusable except as a rudimentary grid

* No support for multiple columns

* No table of contents view

* No linking between notes (I think?)

* No way to change the font or change out the dreary yellow background colour

* No syntax highlighting of embedded code fragment

* No support for equations

* No support for shorthands (e.g. # to get a level 1 headline)

Notion, for all its flaws, has all of the above. And its collaborative editing is solid, if maybe not as good as Google Docs.

[two_cents]

Apple Notes is pretty close to perfect for me - it's just missing Markdown support and backlinks. I did just figure out how to link notes together with the '>>' shortcut, which is a game-changer. I've tried a bunch of other apps, but I always come back to Notes.

[apsurd]

https://www.pronotes.app/ gives you markdown and back links on mac. I've been pretty happy with it since i use notes so often.

[jaynate]

Totally agree. Use it for everything. Even replaced my handwritten notebooks since I got new iPad Pro w pencil.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Humans naturally love to twiddle knobs and move things around. Notion attaches that behavior with money making through an affiliate program. Result is a billion dollar company.

[tucnak]

thia is the best assay i read on notion ever

[rchaud]

Notion is popular with college/university students, which is why there are a billion "Notion Template" videos online. Many have productized their templates and turned them into something to sell -- sort of like selling notebooks with Cornell note-taking method pattern built in, back in the old days.

I see it at similar to Figma in the sense that both tools are cloud-based and free, and their users love yapping about it.

[richardlblair]

I was thinking about a super simple app I wanted to whip together today... Then I realized I can just do what I want in Notion with almost 0 effort.

[apsurd]

do tell?

[curious-tech-12]

cant agree more, I initially used to think I am using it wrong but seriously I cant get notion.