Interesting idea! Don’t know if I have the chops to do that successfully
NoteTaker 4 is definitely the closest design to CPN, with a notebook frame and an outline structure. Just not as elegant. It feels old but works. NoteTaker 5 moved to a subscription model, $20 per year. I haven’t tried it.
Curio is more like a canvas that can contain many kinds of content-structures in many different layouts. It’s super-powerful, but for my brain too powerful. I find it dizzying.
Looks like emulators like UTM won’t run MacOS’s for Intel-based Macs on Apple Silicon Macs. So the only way to keep running CPN is on an older Mac.
I still suggest looking at Growly Notes . It’s free so worth a look before paying for something. I did use CPN for years and greatly miss it. CPN and NoteTaker share the same DNA, and possibly even some code, from back in the NeXT days., so NoteTaker will feel most similar to former CPN users, but is is a lesser program.
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Curio is probably the best equivalent (zengobi.net). Aquaminds Notetaker misses some graphical components - it’s more like a multi page outliner, images on CPN still work better.
Last OS to run CPN (v4 or v3) without crashing seems to be macOS 10.12 Sierra. 10.13 and 10.14 CPN opens, but it will just randomly close at some point! Which either means keeping an old Mac available (2017 iMac, is seemingly the newest machine that will run Sierra natively) and indeed one that runs 10.12 or earlier via Parallels 18 or 19. Had issues with my 2020 iMac on Tahoe and Parallels 20 and the latest parallels 26, neither will run macOS as guest machines that wouldn’t run natively on that Mac; so an older Mac seems to be best solution even for Parallels. Not tested with VM ware. Running 10.12 or earlier as the main OS, means iCloud won’t work… nor dropbox…
To keep CPN running I am using a 2017 i5 21.5" iMac, running Ventura macOS13 and then hosting an OSX 10.11 virtual machine inside Parallels 18. Upgraded the RAM to 32GB upgraded from Fusion to higher capacity pcie, this iMac seems to run my virtual machine fine and speed is good.
I did DM the developer of CPN on Facebook to see if he’d update it and distribute on the App Store, message was read but no reply.
So another reason to not ditch your intel Mac’s yet…
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If you’re still out there looking for a good CPN replacement (and Growly, Curio, etc. don’t do it for you), try Bike. I just found this and it is very promising. It actually has the feel of CPN (early stages).