+1 for UpNote. Tons of positives with very few draw backs.
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I have a problem with the primary flag as well. Nearly all my out and about capture is on pen and paper in a small notebook. But thatās a very tiny portion of my note taking activities. Another small bit is when I use Goodnote to write on my iPad.
The vast majority is in Obsidian either directly or by typing in my hand written notes or by sharing via a send to Obsidian action in goodnotes after Iāve done tet conversionon the note.
All work in the notes is in Obsidian now.
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I was thinking about how Obsidian, being a non-mac-assed, Electron based application captures the mindshare of this forum, being in second position after a much simpler app which is already built-in in macOS. This recognition here at MPU is a testament to Obsidianās power and deep extensibility.
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I thought about it this way: if I were only allowed to use only one app for note-making, which is the one my workflow would be absolutely broken without? For me, the answer is Obsidian. I might use other apps (e.g., Devonthink or Notebooks) for some tasks where I use my notes, but Obsidian is where they are born and live.
Well, I use Notenik, of course, for almost everything!
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So many over the yearsā¦ Iāve often attempted to default to different ones for different purposes, but Iāve found that leads me to fragmented note stores, lots of pointless searching in the wrong store, and needless friction when I go to write a note and wonder which to use.
And Drafts, whose whole point, of course, is to solve that last problem, has never really clicked for me.
But since January, Iāve used Notebooks for absolutely everything. Iāve never been so productive or satisfied that Iām using the ābestā app for my purposes!
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This was something I wrote in answer to a complaint about why Obsidian seems to have so many plug-ins rather than lots of built-in functions compared to other note-taking apps on another forum. It seems appropriate here as well.
Obsidian can be expanded and do far more than any of the other apps. Itās a toolbox you can adapt to you.
I think of most of those apps as a house, with all the quirks and ideas the developers thought were important. Some are one room shacks with everything visible. Some are mansions with thousands of secret passages and rooms that only the experts know how to navigate, Most are bland middle of the road suburban cookie cutter houses with limited ways to distinguish them and make them your own, maybe you can change the paint or the landscaping but the structure is locked in.
Obsidian is more like a panel truck filled with tools. It has all the saws, hammers and basic tools you need to build almost anything already in it. People also lend you their specialty tools for custom needs, like a special jig to make a moulding that is unique to you via the plug-ins. You have access to tools from all the other builders and can borrow (use) them anytime or stick with a vanilla set of basic tools. There is some work you need to do in deciding what kind of house to build. What is your own personal vision? Simple, elaborate or in-between? It takes developing some skills and learning how to use the tools on offer to achieve your vision. But you can build anything you can imagine using the Obsidian toolbox.
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Itās a nice way of thinking about it. I think for me then it would be DT. I use the in-app Markdown editor and itās where my permanent notes end up. Other apps can come and go, but if I could no longer interact with my Markdown notes in DT, Iād be well and truly up a creek.
Having said that, Iād be seriously annoyed if Apple discontinued Apple Notes and it wasnāt just there on any device whenever I needed it. Iād immediately replace it with another app for taking quick notes, but Iād complain a lot. 
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I can only come up with Emacs (perhaps vim or even Visual Studio Code) as software tools with such level of extensibility supported by a strong community. Also, like in Emacs, itās easy to go overboard with Obsidian so that you have to declare bankruptcy and begin from scratch 
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@OogieM, thank you for your post. It helps me realize what a poor excuse for a Mac Power User I have become. I have succumbed to an emphasis on security and the protection afforded by the Mac App Store. Iām less willing to use a selection of tools and more demanding that an app be finely polished. I realize I have become less accepting of apps that look different from other Mac apps. Also, I have become timid. When considering, for example, whether or not I would install the AlDente battery app, I realized I was afraid to.
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Oh I couldnāt do without DT either, although I donāt use it to create and store notes. Rather, I use it as a tool to search them along with my other research materials.
Thereās really nothing that is 51%. For really short notes, I see one here that just says ā13.6%ā, I use a cube of āPostItā notes and a pen*. There are also small notes in Reminders and Calendar. Probably 51% by count in these but not 51% by volume of words.
Apple Notes for anything more than a couple of sentences. But my heftiest, most extensive notes are in Scrivener which doesnāt even appear on the list.
- Iām known for using a keyboard I bought in 1989, but my pen is older than that! Iāve taken notes with that for probably 40 years.
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FSNotes. At least on my Mac.
Thatās because I consider Scrivener to be a writing app, not a note app, even though I know each project has a research section and one can add notes to a section or project. 
Although I appreciate @OogieM excellent description of Obsidian, this only really works if youāre a coder. It also means thereās a lot of faffing around as the tools are constantly changing or deprecated, or need setting up, updating, or other dependencies need to be added. And this has to be done on every platform you use Obsidian.
I want pkm baked in not DIY. Thereās a massive temptation to do everything in Obsidian even if itās done poorly just because someone has created that possibility.
Iāve recently returned to Bear because everything is baked in and it works out of the box. No setup required. Bear 2 has added all the functionality that I need.
Obsidian also has the thorny issue of sync. iCloud is just too unreliable for real work, unless youāre willing to pay a fairly hefty fee for Obsidianās sync.
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Sync was also one of my biggest problem with Obsidian. Bear is not ideal too, because itās still an iCloud with it limitations, but it way more reliable. Iāve tried other apps, but one of the biggest problem always was a markdown, I so much used to it, that using app without proper markdown support is very inconvenient for me now. And many other apps (like Craft, UpNote, Notion) just bad at markdown, or does not have it at all (like Apple Notes).
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@svsmailus Indeed! One of the frustrations in using Obsidian is that many plugins donāt work on mobile, including Pandoc. If one uses an iPad for writing, research, etc., and needs or desires to use plugins, Obsidian is a poor option, in my opinion.
My solution is to store my research articles in DEVONThink and use an external folder in Ulysses to access all of my book notes, highlights, and atomic notes, all of which are in markdown. This works seamlessly across my devices. I can also create links to and from DT <ā> Ulysses if and as desired. Although I donāt get the backlinking capabilities of Obsidian, Iāve discovered that I seldom need them. Manually setting up the links between Ulysses and DT works well enough. This approach results in one less application and less friction and fiddling.
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As a programmer I guess I qualify but I do think that itās far more stable and trouble free than you describe. Yes itās taken me a long time of playing around to get the set of stuff I use tuned. But it all works now easily. I have the sync of plug-ins to mobile set up so for all that I use that work there itās simple. I havenāt had to change any settings until I decide to change ohow I work. I did play with options but have settled on the same way now so things just run.
I would say that is true of everything that depends on iCloud. It has never worked for me.
True that pandoc does not yet work on Mobile. I still use it a lot but I donāt do writing on my iPad so donāt run into issues there. However, Iām wondering what other plug-ins you used that didnāt work on mobile? Iāve got a rather full set of plug-ins added and pandoc is the only one that doesnāt run on mobile in my suite of stuff.
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Many (most?) of the plugins do work on mobile, but several donāt. Because I use my iPad a lot, especially when traveling, having components of my application not work on mobile is a show-stopper. Iāll give three examples of plugins that donāt work:
- Pandoc
- Kindle Highlights
- Better Footnote
There are others I donāt recall because I deleted Obsidian from my devices. There may be alternative plugins for one or more of those listed above (and others I donāt remember), but for my workflow, dealing with plugins is not worth my time when I can use Ulysses and DT to accomplish what I need. 
I should also add that Iāve had multiple instances of Obsidian refusing to open a vault on my iPad, forcing me to close it and or reboot my iPad. Iāve even had to delete and reinstall Obsidian on the iPad to get to work consistently. This ends up being a waste of my time that could be better spent.
Not really, I mean iCloud of course has a lot of problems, but Obsidian sync definitely worse than Bear or Apple Notes and especially Drafts. Drafts, in my experience, is the best iCloud sync note taking app.