Fixed but How? 🤷🏼‍♂️ Jan 16 '23 Needing Serious Advice re: Losing Faith in Apple Notes

[Bmosbacker]

@OogieM

What I can’t tell by your description of how you use the task manager is if there is a sequential or dependent requirement for your tasks for your projects. By that I mean do you not want to see any other tasks until certain ones are finished?

Also, how do your define seamlessly getting emails into a task manager? Dragging, a hot key or shortcut or what?

@OogieM my projects are a mix of parallel and sequential. Most of my projects are parallel meaning the associated tasks can be completed in any order. Others, e.g., developing a 5 year strategic plan involves surveys, focus groups, research, SWOT assessments, data analysis and projections, long-range financial forecasts and more. This type of project is sequential with most of the associated tasks needing to be completed in a particular order: research–> data compilation–> surveys–> Focus groups–> SWOT …

Also, how do your define seamlessly getting emails into a task manager? Dragging, a hot key or shortcut or what?

I define it as being able to send the email to my task manager with minimal friction in any number of ways , e.g., emailing the message to my task manager, selecting the relevant text and sharing to a task manager, dragging it to the task manager, etc.

I would look for other apps.

Given my experience and still unresolved problems with Apple Notes, I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I may indeed need to change my apps, thus my request for suggestions. There is a wealth of expertise and experience in this forum. I’m grateful for any advice that is offered based on my described needs.

Thanks much!

[adamashlock]

Same issue. I want to use AN but the sync reliability is just not there. iCloud seems to do a good job everywhere else except AN.

[karlnyhus]

@adamashlock

iCloud seems to do a good job everywhere else except AN.

In my experience, and as documented in many posts on this forum, iCloud can fail anywhere and at anytime. (In other words, iCloud is not just picking on you, @Bmosbacker )

I avoid use of iCloud Drive as much as possible.

I make use of, but don’t depend on, apps like NotePlan and Books that will sync from my Mac to my iPhone magically in the background using Apple’s CloudKit. I’m always grateful and foolishly pleased when CloudKit works in a timely fashion. But I try not to be frustrated when it makes me wait.

[bowsertune]

OmniFocus and Craft seems like a great combo. Craft’s syncing is so fast, and OmniFocus is rock-solid with its sync. While I have used other apps, I’ve come back to OmniFocus for the past 10 years. Craft has a monetization plan, so they have the impetus to do good work and stick around.

[Bmosbacker]

This is how I’m leaning. Some of the advantages of Craft as a replacement for AN are:

• Good share sheet to get stuff in and out
• Excellent integration with both OF and Things
• Easy to add tables and documents to a note
• Multiple export options
• Less friction and fiddling than a program like Obsidian
• Uses markown
• Great tools like insertion templates, todo lists, datas, and more
• Manual reordering of folders and files
• Beautiful experience on both the Mac and mobile devices
• Collaboration
• Multiple spaces to divide work and personal documents
• AI Assistant

I’ll add that one of the things I dislike about Craft are blocks. I find them tedious.

I’m still thinking carefully through this because I don’t want to change more than once. I’m considering NotePlan, DT, and Obsidian in addition to Craft.

[bowsertune]

Downsides, though:

1. No OCR
2. Not end-to-end encrypted. You may want to see their privacy policy.

[bowsertune]

However, I do feel that it is a great competitor to both Apple Notes and Evernote. I like that it is not necessarily marketed as a writing app, like Bear is - I have Ulysses for that.

[jmanko16]

Don’t forget you export AN to markdown. I would pick an app (whatever you already own so either obsidian or DT likely before paying more), and try it for a month. They all have issues but at least you can quickly move them being markdown. With obsidian just know some plugins lock you in (dataview) and won’t be “usable” in DT. At least in DT you can use smart folders on mac to essentially make “dataview” style searches without needing to know dataview syntax.

[Bmosbacker]

I like DT and I don’t find it intimidating so that is an option. My friction points with DT are listed below. I’d be tempted to use DT for a lot reasons if I could get over these issues:

• Unless I’m doing something wrong, the mobile app is not suitable for taking notes in a meeting using my iPad–my preferred approach. I could, of course use my MBP but the iPad is less “intrusive” in a meeting.
• I may be missing this but I haven’t seen a way to select a list of todo’s in a DT meeting note and send those to my task manager. Is that possible on both the Mac and mobile versions?
• One can’t add a document directly to a note as I describe above. The document becomes a separate file, which of course I can link to.

Any thoughts on these issues, correction to my understanding?

I’ll add that one of the things I dislike about Craft are blocks. I find them tedious.

[OogieM]

@Bmosbacker

my projects are a mix of parallel and sequential. Most of my projects are parallel meaning the associated tasks can be completed in any order.

Omnifocus has the best implementation of a task management that includes both parallel and sequential apps. It has been my go to app for tasks for years. I have mine set to sync to my phone and iPad using my own server which means I do NOT have sync when out and about but it has been sufficient for me. It has easy ways to link emails back and forth and it good solid and full featured. So much so that you can spend days/months getting it set to your liking. If you do go with Onmifocus then take the time to set up custom perspectives that you need and move things slowly into it not dump everything at once.

I am testing using Obsidian as a task manager using the tasks and dataview plug-ins. I am rather surprised that is it working well for the vast majority of my projects. It is more set-up to make it handle sequential ones and I am testing several of the suggested workarounds. So far none are ideal. I might have more info on how to make it work easily in another 2-3 months. In my case my sequential projects are like templates that I reuse on a regular basis. I fire off the weekly, or monthly projects and then Omnifocus automatically resets each one when I finish the next action. Duplicating that feature combination in Obsidian is proving challenging. It may not even be necessary though and that is an option I am exploring.

For “normal” projects where there is a clear project that ends but does not repeat I am finding that Obsidian is actually easier and better for me. I don’t have everything in it yet, but all new projects have been moving into Obsidian over the last 3 months. I am still playing with my ideal project note template that sets things up and I expect to tinker with it through another few project cycles. When I am working I have a simple note my GTD_Dashboard with all not done by tag. I use tags as my GTD contexts. I find that my email links dragged in are easier to attach to the project in Obsidian than they were for me in Omnifocus but I never invested much time in automating that which would have made it simpler. For me emails are more like project support material and much prefer how Obsidian deals with it compared to DEVONThink, my previous support material holder and note app.

Big advantage for me is that much of the work and much of the interaction with my projects that does not involve outside stuff (like sheep or a skid steer) already has most of the work being done in Obsidian. Blogs, newsletters, coding designs, all database queries, and more all start in Obsidian. So having a master Project note that has my tasks with links to the other material is much easier to use than my old system of having to switch apps to add a tasks. I use the drag method to get links to whole emails into Obsidian and the cut and paste of pieces and it works well enough for me.

For sync I am using Obsidian sync. It’s a testament to how valuable it is that I have not only added a subscription but broken my long standing rule about owning my own data. Not cheap but I’ve never had any problems syncing between mac, iPhone and iPad. The cross platform nature of Obsidian also allows me to share specific folders with other people by making a folder in Obsidian its own Git repo and then sharing that via GitLab. That is proving incredibly useful with people working on AnimalTrakker spread across the country and into the UK no matter their operating system. Because Obsidian works in Mac, Windows and Linux and on both iOS and Android mobiles it’s ideal for this sort of cross system collaboration.

I also use Obsidian Publish to publish the user manual and info from AnimalTrakker directly out of my vault.

Obsidian is free for single person companies and i would technically qualify under that but I have decided after using it as a Catalyst person to go ahead and buy a commercial license. In the context of the time it’s saved me it’s well worth the not insignificant expense for the subscriptions to the app, sync and publish options but YMMV. There are steep discounts for educational purposes which I believe you would qualify for.

Craft has never worked for me and I’m not sure why. I’ve tried it several times and always went back, originally to DEVONThink and now to Obsidian. If it does work for you then that is a good choice. Craft combined with Omnifocus would be hard to beat for sheer power with less fiddling. Not cheap but again, look at your time and energy and wanting to use the tool not play with the tool.

PS as an example this post started out in Obsidian and when I finished it I copied and pasted it to post to the forum. It’s now also linked into my general PKM system in Obsidian as a note about how mine is configured.

[DannyR]

Do you take notes with the Pencil? I found that too painful an experience in Craft

[Bmosbacker]

No, my handwriting is too bad and I type much faster than I can write. Typing also gives me more flexibility for what I do with the text afterward.

[rms]

Do all your note taking in your favorite note-taking tool. No need to use built-in DEVONthink ToGo editor which I am aware you dislike, although that would work, of course. Use what you want that conforms to iOS norms for app interchange.

I just tried doing your three points using Apple Pages (Microsoft Word also would work, as would so many other editors), achieving all of the above.

• Created a new Pages document in DEVONthink ToGO Group. That was a test Group, but for you could be a Group for your Project, for the Meeting, or whatever. I used the “blank” template, but any template in the Pages (or Word) app could be used.

• I pasted a PDF document into the Pages Document (Pages built to do that sort of thing).

• Wrote some random notes of a mythical meeting

• Any paragraphs that were ToDos, I selected in Pages, copied to clipboard, and then pasted into Things. While I don’t use Reminders, can paste there also but results not as good as three paragraphs selected go into Reminders not as three items, but one item with two sub items. Reminders, of course, not as sophisticated as Things. I did a quick test of copy/paste into Omnifocus, but it did not seem to do anything. Perhaps there is a way, but did not pursue as I stopped using OmniFocus a few years ago and no longer have interest. Explore if you want this option.

• So that I could see Things and Pages on the same screen, I put them side by side. In a meeting could then tweek both minutes/notes and the ToDo app–although that would take attention away from the meeting while fiddling with software

After closing the document, it safely resides in DEVONthinkToGo, and since I was using Bonjour for syncing, it appeared on DEVONthink on both my Macs pretty quickly. I could continue working on it on the Mac or the iPad.

[OogieM]

@Bmosbacker

my handwriting is too bad and I type much faster than I can write.

FYI I’ve found that even my terrible handwriting is understood pretty well by Goodnotes on the iPad. So I hand write all my meeting notes (I write faster than I can type on an iPad) and have a shortcut that puts them in text format into my Obsidian Inbox folder for further processing if needed. Then I delete the note out of Goodnotes and Obsidian becomes the place it’s expanded upon or attached as support material for a project.

[ibuys]

@Bmosbacker

I’m still working to resolve the issue. After hours on the phone with a senior engineer and reinstalling Ventura on the MBP and not installing any third party apps, Notes is still not syncing from the MBP to iCloud. Notes on the iOS devices sync fine.

Man… I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. How frustrating. I imagine you are finding the rough edges that the majority of Apple’s customers will never reach, but it’s very possible that a lot of us here, me included, could.

I too would recommend bailing, but I’d also recommend keeping data portability in mind for your next choice. Not only in terms of ease of export/import, but workflows, and how much using a different application would impact your day-to-day work while you transition.

I’m thinking through some of the same things. DEVONthink + OmniFocus is probably where I’ll end up with everything.

[Bmosbacker]

@OogieM, I have to say how much I appreciate such a thoughtful and thorough response. Given how busy I know you are, for you to take the time to be so helpful is humbling and appreciated–thank you!

Your technical skills are way above mine. Though I suspect I could learn to deal with data views and Git repo, etc., I have neither the time nor inclination.

I have used Omnifocus for several years, so I know how to use it well and how to set up detailed perspectives. Moving to OF would be easy for me. However, would I ideally like to have my notes and tasks in one app.? Yes, but the friction and tradeoffs, given my technical skills, or lack thereof, would be counterproductive for me.

My rub is the writing and the notes.

I’m currently using Ulysses for my book (I reverted after trying Scrivener again. Scrivener is a great app, but I don’t want Dropbox deeply embedded in my OS). I decided to move back to Ulysses after Apple tech support had me nuke, pave my MBP, and reinstall Ventura fresh this week. No point in gumming up my system again with Dropbox.

But I’m unsure where to take all my meeting and project notes and short-form writing (blog articles, presentation notes, reports, and the like). Ulysses is great for writing but not for meetings and project notes. Ideally, I’d like one app for meeting notes and short-form writing.

Obsidian is potentially suitable for meeting and project notes, but there is no easy way to take a list of tasks from a meeting note a send them to my task manager. Instead, I would have to manually copy/paste each one. That is inefficient. It is also clunkier when dealing with tables, embedded PDFs, and other documents.

I don’t know about short-form writing. Obsidian may work fine for that, but it would be just as easy to have all of my writing in Ulysses. However, there are two disadvantages to leaving all writing in Ulysses. First, I’d be stuck with the subscription indefinitely even after the book is finished, or I’d have to move all of my short-form writing to another app after I finish the book if I want to eliminate the subscription eventually. Second, I’d still have a separate app for writing and another for meeting and project notes.

I may have to conclude that I can’t have my cake and eat it too. I may well end up with this group of apps:

Craft: Meeting and Project Notes
Ulysses: Book, when finished, unsubscribe
Obsidian: Short-form writing and my research and PKM work
OF: task management

PLEASE, let me know if my reasoning if wrong on the above.

Thanks again!

[Bmosbacker]

@ibuys

I’m thinking through some of the same things. DEVONthink + OmniFocus is probably where I’ll end up with everything.

It its indeed frustrating but one of the silver linings is that contrary to my previous held opinion, this experience is making data portability essential to me.

How would you deal with taking notes on a mobile device with DT? The DTG editor is not even full screen.

[OogieM]

@Bmosbacker

Given how busy I know you are, for you to take the time to be so helpful is humbling and appreciated–thank you!

There was an ulterior motive, your post acted as my “Rubber Duck” for my nascent PKM/Task Management/Project Management musings. That’s why it started in Obsidian. Answering your questions forced me to clearly state my system and what gets used where and why and how. I already found a few thinings to modify based on writing that post that will make the whole thing work better for me.

[Bmosbacker]

I’m glad I could be of help!

[Nick_Fulgham]

I am curious what app ecosystem you use as you try to avoid iCloud and iCloud Drive?