Think I may have finally found how Apple Notes could fit into my world.
My notes typically take two forms: Evernote and Nebo.
Pretty much if it’s important it will be in my Evernote, behind 2FA and such. While it doesn’t take as free form a view as OneNote or Apple Notes, so much as a Word processor like one, I have found that Evernote makes a great backbone for collection and organizing notes regardless of source. It’s also pretty affordable in terms of large, long term storage compared to a cloud drive full of regular files.
One of the sore spots however is the handwriting support. The magic for that is better suited to bar coaster length diagrams and the occasional sketch than being a notebook. Plus unlike Android there of a tendency to erase the drawing area content when multitasking between Evernote and other iOS apps.
If it’s something that I want to do by handwriting , I’ll usually use Nebo, which lets me readily convert handwritten text to typed text, as well as sharing individual pages. So great at collecting random shit for thinking or having a document with fairly simple structure (headings, lists, images, etc). But you probably won’t want to write a novel or thesis in Nebo.
Apple Notes offers a kind of nice canvas approach, much like OneNote but without being forced to store the data in cloud drives. Is able to store notes on my iPad, much like Nebo; where the cloud sync is purely optional. The difference is Apple Notes lends itself to generating a PDF for printing or clipping to Evernote, for when handwriting or highly free form is the desired format. So in cases where I want to preserve rather than convert, I think it’ll work.
Where with Nebo, unless it’s pretty fancy: you may as well export to text, or be generating a PDF of a diagram. Stuff like the HTML and Word export is more useful for work stuff than home stuff, and Evernote collects all eventually.