Evernote versus Apple Notes

I need to get away from Evernote. It’s not as good as it used to be. It’s certainly not worth paying for. I wish Bear or Apple Notes would be a better solution. – Me

I have been struggling with a decision on a note-taking and management app for quite awhile. I’ve been an Evernote user for a long time and have been paying for it for at least five years. It has served me well over the years for the most part. But things change. My needs and workflows have changed.

  • I used to put pdf attachments into Evernote. But I found that inefficient, mainly when I wanted to get those documents out. When I got a real scanner and started scanning a lot of files, I switched over to having my files in a simple folder structure on my laptop.
  • A lot of my notes were very short, text-based notes. Some were even temporary. Evernote was overkill.

On top of that, I didn’t feel the need to pay for a Premium subscription as I wasn’t getting the value. A few months ago, I decided to go down to the basic free version. The issue with going that route was that I could only have Evernote on two devices. I opted to keep Evernote on my laptop and my iPhone.

Over the last year or so, I looked at several different options as a replacement. I can’t say I was overly thrilled with any of them so I just stuck with Evernote.

Bear was the new kid on the block that was/is getting a lot of fanfare but something about it just didn’t work for me. Although I liked the concept of tags, I just didn’t like the interface at all and it was still a subscription, albeit a little lighter on the wallet.

Ulysses, which I was using for a few months for writing blog posts was a possible option. I liked the UI and the folder structure but it never felt like I could get in and out of it easily for a quick note. I will admit that I didn’t give it a big try. And then they went to a subscription model.

DevonThink is another one that people rave about but I didn’t even download a trial. That interface is a show-stopper for me.

Apple Notes had been improving over the last few years but I still feel it isn’t where I want my note-taking app to be. It seems absurd that I can’t create subfolders on an iOS device. This bugs me to no end. I do like that it’s built into the OS so notes stay in sync and that it’s free compared to all the aforementioned apps.

Well, today that all changed. I just said screw it and exported all my Evernote notes into Apple Notes. One issue is that for me to have Evernote on my iPad, I would either have had to pay for a subscription or take it off my laptop or iPhone. I need them on both of them but I wanted to rid myself of that subscription.

This decision could ultimately suck putting me back into Evernote. We shall see.

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