Half-baked features

Posted by Luhmann
May 4, 2021 at 06:28 AM

This is a bit of a followup on my post about task management in note taking apps. What I really wanted to say was that it really bothers me how many apps these days add a whole bunch of features without bothering to fully support or implement them. Add the ability to have a check list in a note, without having a way to see all unchecked items across your notebook was just one example, but there are others:

- Tags without any way to rename or organize your tags
- Backlinks without the ability to filter the list of backlinks
- Collaborative editing without any way to see a history of what changes others have made
- Import but no export

I’m sure there are more, but these are the first that come to mind. With so many new apps entering the market these days, it often feels like they rush to add a bunch of features so that they can list them on their website, but don’t do the work to make sure that these features actually function in a useful way. While it is true that some apps might improve these features later on, in my experience many of these features are never properly implemented if they aren’t done well right at the beginning.