I don't get the "note data is stored in a proprietary format" hate. There's a dozen different open source tools you can find which will one-shot export your Apple Notes to markdown, when you want to leave the ecosystem. Its not like Notion where the exports are messy, non-bulk, and destructive; they're proprietary, but parseable and sitting in a file on your MacOS filesystem.

I've never had iCloud Sync display any weird behavior in Apple Notes, and I've got thousands in there. I have, absolutely, seen Obsidian Sync delete notes I did not delete, and fail to upload notes; both of these were generally remediable via their recycle bin, but still very concerning.

All of these complaints are of the nature of "I don't actually have anything valuable to write down so I'd rather worry about the nature of the tool than what I'm writing". And, to be clear, I think this is why Notion is so popular, just for different reasons than your's; it looks great, and makes you feel productive because you've got amazing cross-referenced tables and hyperbacklinks and h1h2h3s and then wait where's the content?

Counterpoint, I have seen sync issues on very popular large note, cloud-based solutions that use proprietary formats - Evernote comes to mind.

When you have tens of thousands of notes, it's hard to even know if at some point, the note has been suddenly changed, reverted, or modified in a way that you didn't even realize occurred.

With an open format, specifically a text based one like Markdown, I can sync all my notes to a git repository in a diffable manner that I can quickly review.

There's ways to export the notes btw, for example https://github.com/storizzi/notes-exporter

If you sync your notes to icloud you can bulk export to flat text files via https://privacy.apple.com/ > "request a copy of your data"

I've never experienced data loss due to icloud sync YMMV

Great points i also agree with. That's Apple being Apple. I'd want an open format for sure.

Thing about Apple Notes is in spite of the open ideals, if you're in the apple ecosystem, it's just easily there, on all devices, very unassuming and simply, and that's so so very valuable.

It's the long view that gets me. Over the last 20 years, if i'm in the Apple ecosystem, notes are there, synced across everything, and it's just text. and it's simple.

#tag support across shared Notes is also abysmal. The new tag doesn’t appear as an actual tag in person 2’s system until they ‘initiate’ it.

I tried really hard to love Notes. I wanted to. For the reasons you note, and this one, and many others, I couldn’t.

Agree on all the above except that iCloud sync seems to have been rock-solid for years now.

Notes data is stored in an open SQLite3 database as Protocol Buffer data:

sqlite3 "~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/NoteStore.sqlite"

This is because it needs to support CRDT style syncing.

But the schemas have been decoded so you can access it using pretty much any language.

iCloud notes really needs a markdown mode or a non-WYSIWYG mode.

Agee with you! I use a shortcut to send voice notes directly into Notion. I only use apple notes when I'm in a location I can't speak, and move them to Notion the next time I'm on my mac.