Have you checked Simplenote? Think that starts as fast as the Apple notes. Then a couple of more I don't remember, though it's indeed not very common

You cannot insert images (or any other non-text object like a PDF) in Simplenote as you can in Apple Notes. Simplenote can only link external images.

You also can't edit Apple Notes outside of Apple and the whole export/import/interoperability story is bad.

But then we were talking about startup times...

Obsidian opens in sub 0.5 seconds on my iPhone 12 mini, I have about 500 notes in my Obsidian vault. Seems to be the same speed as Apple Notes.

Google Keep opens in about a second on my phone, so seems to be the slowest of them all.

But I'm sure there are plenty of notes apps out there that also opens in sub 0.5 seconds, right?

Check cold and hot starts to the first typed symbol (not just seeing the screen), then it's easier to notice the difference

I was counting until I see the last opened document, which is also when the document is ready to be written to. So it's still 0.5 seconds, the same as for Apple Notes.

> until I see the last opened document, which is also when the document is ready to be written to

This is not true, many apps (or maybe it's an OS thing) retain an image that is not functional, you should count until you actually type any symbol and see it appear in the app. This also differs between switching to a recently opened app (hot) and an app that's been closed/unloaded from memory, both of which matter for instant note taking.

No, I'm not switching between apps. I'm closing it properly, lock the phone, unlock it and reopen the app. There is a ~0.2 seconds sync in the beginning, then the document appear and if I tap in the document then write a character, it appears in the document. About half a second before I can tap in the document and get a cursor after cold start.

If I wait ~3 seconds after typing I can see that the change has been persisted to the sync servers and it appears in my Obsidian desktop application.

The locking is not relevant, it doesn't change whether your app remains hot/in memory or offloaded (maybe after a while, but not in itself), neither is switching between apps or opening an app from your home screen, so not sure what you mean by closing "properly"

And for hot start you shouldn't even need to tap in the document if you edited it before, the keyboard will already be opened, so the measurement is "time start, tap the app icon, tap any key, see a character appear, time end". This is a common workflow for app switching and copy&pasting from/to note app/other apps, so here even half-second delays are noticeable, and where Apple Notes shines (and only very few apps match that, but not Obsidian)

Then the cold start is where using other apps forced note app to be unloaded (or after a phone restart or "force swiping up closing" the app (think it has the same effect), here the performance difference between Notes and Obsidian is even more noticeable

Are you using Obsidian's native sync?

Yup

Obsidian + syncthing seems to work fast and reliable enough

Not really, as much as I like the app, the app start up time both on mobile and desktop is pretty bad, probably around 10 seconds, or more.

Earlier versions of Obsidian seemed faster. I've started using Markor for on the go note taking, and setting the obsidian folder as the save destination.

Does Apple notes have good performance on Linux?

light as a feather, you won't even know it's there /s

There is, it's called Markor. Absolutely light-speed app for Markdown notes as well as support for custom templates, Emacs style todo.txt formats, and a button for entering timestamps (very useful for me, as I prefer to have one note file for each week, and timestamp my entries.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/

I built Plume (currently pre-beta) which outperforms Apple Notes at loading large files 4x.

You can see a comparison chart here: get-plume.com