Apple Notes Update...

John_P

Hi and hello, I have been a silent reader until now, but I would like to change that in the future and participate in the forum. I will introduce myself shortly but later. After Apple Notes received an update and some functions that also benefit a Zettelkasten system, a question: To what extent would Notes be suitable for a ZKS? Is there anyone who organizes themselves exclusively with Notes? Thank you and thank you for the opportunity to choose here.

Jackhansonc

@John_P said:
Hi and hello, I have been a silent reader until now, but I would like to change that in the future and participate in the forum. I will introduce myself shortly but later. After Apple Notes received an update and some functions that also benefit a Zettelkasten system, a question: To what extent would Notes be suitable for a ZKS? Is there anyone who organizes themselves exclusively with Notes? Thank you and thank you for the opportunity to choose here.

Hi, John Connor. Sorry, just kidding.

I'm actually using Apple Notes as my Zettel since the release of iOS17 beta 4 and macOS Sonoma Beta.

My UID is time-based and in a form similar to my file naming convention. I have two type of top level groups in my Apple Notes.

1. Quick Notes: I use Apple Shortcuts to generate a daily note everyday, with weather, calendar and the entry of Things 3 Today view. This daily note thing has a title like "2023年10月20日 快速备忘录" (Translation: 20231020 Quick Notes). This Quick Notes is actually nothing like a Zettel. I use it as the default inbox to write down my thoughts, notes during the day and ideas. I also include web clipping to it. This is where I disagree with Zettel (kinda), I don't think writing a lot of fleeting notes is a good idea.
2. Notes. I use Text Expander to automatically generate a UID with custom date and time (Example: 202310201110 Flux Seed Bread Recipe). I don't have a very strict separation between permanent notes and literature notes. I just expand notes I gathered during the day, make them into a self-sustained note. When I need, I will add links to the note.
   Now, in terms of how I retrieve a note I want. Most of the time, I use Spotlight to search a keyword. Sometimes, I use the tags on the sidebar of Apple Notes to do temporary "Smart Group". I rely heavily on searching and tagging. I also have a storage of smart folders that used as a "Table of Content".

As I'm also a DevonThink user, quite often, I write notes on my work file directly with custom data thing.

So, I think my approach is more like a hybrid, not pure Zettel. But I do hope I can help you.

ctietze

@John_P Did the note linking feature tip the scales in favor of Apple Notes?
From screenshots at https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-17-notes-reminders/ it looks like you need to do this with a dialog, selecting the target note from a list.

I wonder how that scales once you have a metric crapton (~10k) of notes. I wouldn't expect it to be performant, then, because some of the more recent Apple apps are, well, just sub-par to be honest.

If anyone's curious, there's a 10000 Markdown files collection to check out if an app can still do its thing: https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/10000-markdown-files

Jackhansonc

@ctietze said:
@John_P Did the note linking feature tip the scales in favor of Apple Notes?
From screenshots at https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-17-notes-reminders/ it looks like you need to do this with a dialog, selecting the target note from a list.

I wonder how that scales once you have a metric crapton (~10k) of notes. I wouldn't expect it to be performant, then, because some of the more recent Apple apps are, well, just sub-par to be honest.

If anyone's curious, there's a 10000 Markdown files collection to check out if an app can still do its thing: https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/10000-markdown-files

Hi, ctizetze,

Actually, I rarely use the link feature. I use tags and smart folders quite a lot. Link used is limited in "Permanent Structured Notes". I use Smart Folders or even just clicking different tags as a MOC

rwrobinson

@Jackhansonc said:

Actually, I rarely use the link feature.

I recommend checking this out if you haven't: https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

I think you will see that linking is quite foundational in this text file/software agnostic approach (It's different than Milo and Ahren's workflow).

rwrobinson

@John_P said:
To what extent would Notes be suitable for a ZKS? Is there anyone who organizes themselves exclusively with Notes? Thank you and thank you for the opportunity to choose here.

Hey John.

I haven't seen the updates Apple notes. But, I think getting things out of Apple Notes could be a big pain. So, I haven't considered it as an option myself.

A question I ask myself is: Do I want to have to be using Apple Notes 20 years from now to interact with my ZK?

That question scares me!

One thing I pay attention too though also is working in industries that are highly protective of data on their machines, but wanting to have access to my ZK. I might end up having to use windows in the future, so I try to say away from only Apple applications. Text files are generally the safest bet for me.

Whether Apple Notes is suitable is always going to be contextual. But, for me, in light of the information above, I would say it's not.

ctietze

A question I ask myself is: Do I want to have to be using Apple Notes 20 years from now to interact with my ZK?

@rwrobinson Since Apple is Apple, a runner-up question should be if it's likely that Apple's Notes app will still be around and/or not more broken

Andy

Some people (not me) think that Apple Notes is the pinnacle of all note-making. Exhibit A meme: "The bell curve of note apps". (Exhibit A, by the way, is on a website served by Montaigne, a service that serves a website from Apple Notes.)

But I suspect most of us here (including me) are going to affirm that plain-text files in your computer's filesystem are the best choice for a long-term note system because they are most likely to survive over decades of technology changes. Here's a relevant quote from Douglas Barone's classic blog post "File System Infobase Manager" (August 2009):

I've been keeping notes and journals for as long as I can remember. [...] Technology over this time period has been about as fickle as a saloon girl after a roundup, so I've used almost every type of system that's been rolled out since the green screen VAX I played with in 1983. The result was a pile of notes that collected then collapsed into a mish-mash of various file types, in different formats, with incompatible structures, all strewn about various locations on multiple generations of mediums. [...] Now I'm using a system that is stable, and sustainable, and scalable; one that seems to fall into the background while I work; one that is as future proof as can be. It allows me to refer to my notes, do my writing, create new ideas, synthesize old ones and not wrestle with an application while I'm doing it. I think it's a long term solution that is platform neutral and vastly extensible. It's called the "file system". Yep, the files system, that's all. The very thing we use to run our computer every day. Shocking huh? After all those applications and proprietary file structures who would'a thunk that the best answer to electronic note taking would be the good old file system?

erikh

I use Apple notes daily as my main GTD app (just lists and tasks) and as my Zettelkasten inbox. I find it practical to interact with ongoing notes (buffer notes) through an app that syncs with phone, pad, etc.

It had its issues in the past, but I found the app to be very reliable in the past years.

Like others, I’m not sure it will keep on working smoothly with thousands of notes, or that it will stay around with the current set of features. Linking and tagging, e.g., will not work with my older iphone. This is annoying (planned obsolescence!), and it makes me worry that one day Apple will stop supporting a feature that I absolutely need.

By the way, there is a nice free app on the App Store, appropriately named “exporter”, that exports Apple notes in html and md format with a few limited options. So the txt format is not really a problem.

GeoEng51

@erikh said:

By the way, there is a nice free app on the App Store, appropriately named “exporter”, that exports Apple notes in html and md format with a few limited options. So the txt format is not really a problem.

Thanks for the useful hint!

Andy

@erikh said:

By the way, there is a nice free app on the App Store, appropriately named “exporter”, that exports Apple notes in html and md format with a few limited options. So the txt format is not really a problem.

@erikh's comment seems to refute my statement above "that plain-text files in your computer's filesystem are the best choice for a long-term note system because they are most likely to survive over decades of technology changes". And indeed, soon after I wrote that sentence, I regretted not saying "most likely to survive with minimal migration effort over decades". Even if there were not an already existing exporter for Apple Notes, it probably wouldn't be too difficult for a programmer to make one. So I agree that the convertibility of Apple Notes is not really a problem because data migration is not likely to be difficult.

However, there is still a major advantage to a simple filesystem-based note system instead of a proprietary app like Apple Notes—aside from the scalability issue (performance as quantity of notes increases) about which we seem to agree. The advantage is summarized in Douglas Barone's words, quoted above, "vastly extensible". When you use text files in your computer's filesystem, you have access to a vast array of software tools for manipulating those files: various interoperable ZK apps, text editors, command-line tools, scripting, etc.

I occasionally use Apple Notes but wouldn't use it for my main note system for these reasons.