A ramble about various note-taking applications

Posted by Paul Korm
Jun 21, 2023 at 03:22 PM

Interesting analysis. I’m not sure how it plays out in reality—at least in my experience. (I am always grateful that I only have my own experience to deal with.) Of the top five apps that I use almost continually during the day (ignoring calendars which are a necessary evil), three of them have been pegged “ugly” in many forums over the years, but I still really enjoy using them: Tinderbox (wins the ugly award according to some popular forums), DEVONthink (ugliness runner up), and Tana (too new to have many users, but their own forums and developers agree: “ugly”). But all of these I really delight in using and so I return to them over and over. But they are not enjoyable because they are easy to use—none of the three is easy to use at all. Tinderbox seems like it dropped into our dimension from a Klingon class project. DEVONthink has more features than any software should be entitled to have. And Tana is a blank page with no clues as to what to do next. Yet, I’ve used at least DEVONthink and Tinderbox for thousands of hours over the past couple of decades, wrestling away with them, and I get back my investment ten-fold every time.

If I had just dismissed each of these as “ugly, stay away”, my work would be greatly diminished.

I think I’ve gone off topic on this, however.

MadaboutDana wrote:
Hm. This is an interesting question, and I’ve mused on it for many
>years. I think the answer is actually quite simple. You’re using
>software that’s genuinely useful to you every day, for large parts of
>the day. That means it has to be enjoyable to use. Not just functional,
>not just “efficient”, but actively enjoyable. This means a couple for
>things:
> >a) it needs to do what it does in straightforward, uncomplicated ways
>that are easy to fathom and quick to turn into user habits
>b) it needs to look nice, so you smile when you open it and keep smiling
>as you come back to it – over and over again.