Maybe it’s adequate for your use, but not for mine. I used the app for almost nine years, but never for extended text entry because it was so clunky compared to available alternatives.
I am also underwhelmed by nvUltra in its current beta form – and I doubt by now it is going to suddenly be different. I assume it has been under development for so long (seems that it was first hinted at back when we all used abacuses) that the state of the art in note taking software and techniques passed it by. Probably passed it by multiple times, actually. There’s nothing compelling about nvUltra as it is today that would make me consider using it. It’s OK. But it’s also so 1990s.
1 Like
I own Marked/Marked2 (not used much these days, though) and I regularly use one of Terpstra’s PopClip conversion extensions. Between him and Penney they’ve made some very useful, geeky tools over the years, emphasis on geeky. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with but from what I’ve seen so far (and from quietness from beta testers) there aren’t going to be any surprises (eg backlinks) beyond what’s been shown. I assume we’ll see speed and well-implemented searching/tagging but aside from that I’m not sure the hype I’ve seen from Mac technoscenti will be justified.
Terpstra’s nvALT fork of Notational Velocity supported MultiMarkdown, tags, and a 3rd-party browser-clipping extension. I am unsure what is new that is unique in this upcoming app, especially compared to apps already offering nvALT features plus additional ones like better or user-created themes, or WYSIWYG, or cross-platform, or attachments. Not really sure what it’ll offer compared to something out for years like open-source FSNotes aside possibly from including some existing Terpstrian Markdown tools. It’ll be interesting to see.
The documentation is publicly available as well as a feature overview. I’ve been a beta tester since the testing began. Nice but not compelling. The long delays in coming to market might be a concern for some with regard to long-term support. Good devs of course; seemingly not giving priority to this project.
1 Like
I’m late to the party listening to this episode, but want to add two other note apps to the list.
The first is Growly Notes https://growlybird.com/notes/ which is free and works very much like Microsoft One Note.
I was a big One Note user in Windows, and basically “settled” for Circus Ponies Notebook for the Mac. I was overjoyed when One Note came out for the Mac until I tried it and found it had fewer features than the Windows version and the files could not be shared between them. Also it was incapable of saving locally and I couldn’t save to the cloud because of corporate security. Then I was underjoyed when Circus Ponies closed.
I did a search and found Growly Notes, which at the time cost some money but is now free. It’s actually a closer substitute for One Note.
Now I used Circus Ponies Notebook when I needed to have notes for writing. But then Notebook broke with a new Mac OS version. I moved my notes into Scrivener, which since I write in Scrivener was always the obvious place to keep them.
I cannot recommend Scrivener for a general note taking app, but it is fantastic when making notes for a document being written in Scrivener!
Circus Ponies Notebook is the classic case of abandonware. It was however a great product. Much better, IMO, than Aquaminds NoteTaker. But, alas, no more CPN.
Ulysses and Drafts cover my needs when markdown friendly tasks are on my agenda. I’ve tried many other apps such as IAwriter didn’t experience any urge to change.
Still use Notes when simple collaboration is needed.
1 Like
A great app I found that exports out of Notes.app to Markdown is “Exporter” http://falcon.star-lord.me/exporter @MacSparky
3 Likes
I’m using iA Writter too. I think plain text is the way to go for most notes. Extremely small and portable.
2 Likes
Thanks for that. That’s a good discovery.
Another +1 for iA Writer but wish they provide more themes & colors like Ulysses
2 Likes
IA waited seven years before offering a non-monospace font inside the app, so don’t hold your breath on getting colors or themes (or choice of fonts installed on the system). This is an important philosophical issue for them, to the extent that their restriction of user choice is to them a selling point.
I own the Mac and iOS apps and like them, but I prefer to use other fonts (Quattro is a great idea in theory but looks clunky onscreen), and my choice of text/background colors, so I’ve come to use IA Writer less and less. Ulysses gets most of my time cross-platform, although I use a couple of additional apps depending on what I’m doing. (Mostly Drafts, Apple Notes, and BBEdit.).
1 Like
It’s the Henry Ford design philosophy. You can have your Model T in any color you want, as long as it’s black.
2 Likes
I keep reading about Ulysses as a notes app, but I thought it was meant for writing long form text, like a book or research paper. My notes aren’t that sophisticated, usually things like meeting notes or jotting down ideas. Is Ulysses good for that kind of thing too?
Unfortunately you’re right. iA Writer believes in doing things their way. Thought I like their simplicity yet functional aspects but frustrated by lack of themes. Dark mode is just too plain.
Can’t agree more on that statement 
1 Like
Probably not worth the subscription price for you then. There are lots of good Mac/iOS options for basic note taking, starting with Apple Notes which is surprisingly capable. Free apps I like include FSNotes and Google Keep (or the very similar Zoho Notebook), but font choice and theming is limited or nonexistent.
And of course there are many pay/subscription apps out there.
Earlier this year I spent $7.98 to unlock the pro/synced versions of SnipNotes for Mac and iOS (iOS app is a free download), and although I like it a lot and was hoping to use it as an Apple Notes replacement (it has some nice features like document-counts for folders and an Inbox - so I can see which docs are currently unfiled) I didn’t realize that the app doesn’t yet take attachments like PDFs, only jpegs. Aside from that it’s a great app: it has an Apple Watch app, a Today widget in iOS, a Mac menubar quick-note facility, dictate/transcribe, and more.
1 Like
I’ll stick with iA Writer then. One of the most important things for me is the Markdown support. I like the idea of this simple, future proof technology that can be read by any basic app that can read plain text. I’m also using Goodnotes for handwritten notes and Apple Notes for things that can’t be done in Markdown, such as a photo with some annotations that I want to keep. One insight from this show is that you don’t have to use a single tool for everything, use the right tool for the job!
BTW, I’m also using a shortcut that someone else shared in these forums awhile back to actually download the text of a webpage as Markdown. It’s the perfect read-later technology. Plus I can also save the article in a 10 KB file, instead of printing the page to PDF, which is what I used to do.
2 Likes
Wow! FSNotes is awesome. Really like it. I wish it was more open to multiple directories. (That’s one of the killer features of iA Writer for me. They’re not opinionated about where I save my files)
1 Like