In the beginning, there was Notes, and it was
well, it was pretty awful, actually. No sync, no password protection, and mandatory Marker Felt. But then Apple created the App Store, and it was good. Its been just over a year since the App Store opened, and plenty of notes apps have appeared, so we thought it was about time to round up some of the top suspects and see which one came out on top.
Before we dive into the assessments, a couple of notes:
John Gruber has
written a
bit on this subject already. We did our best to ignore everything he said and come to our own conclusions, but in the interest of full disclosure, we did read both of those articles.
We excluded Evernote from this roundup for a couple of reasons: it does one too many things for a simple notes app, and it doesnt actually store most of your notes on the iPhone itselfexcept for manually chosen favorites, theyre all stored onlineso if you dont have internet access, you dont have your notes. All the apps we included in this roundup keep a copy of your notes on the device itself, whether or not they also include a sync feature.
How scoring works
First, I made a detailed analysis of each app based on its features, icon, and general user interface experience. I weighed in on ease of use and simplicity, and frowned upon unnecessary navigation to get things started. I like syncing features, judging the webapp or desktop sync client. I personally dont need password protection for individual notes, but added that to the overall tally. Then I went ahead and assigned a totally subjective score out of 10 based on how much I enjoyed using it. This is an Apple blog, after all.
Note that the review is riddled with linked screenshots of features. Just clicking it will make it spring out like a daisy right inside this window. There are of course more screenshots in the iTunes pages of the apps in question.
And without further ado, the contestants
Notes
Awesome Note
Notebooks
NoteMaster
Notespark
WriteRoom
Simplenote
Honorable mention: gNotes
Final
::cough::
Notes