Simple, but effective...

I recently switched to Mac, and unfortunately Zim desktop wiki, the program I’d been using for writing, didn’t work well on Mac, so I had to start looking for another program. I do a lot of writing, so I tried a lot of apps to see what fit — as a good fit was very important to me. It might sound funny that I tried Scrivener — an app that gets a lot of hype for being a professional writing tool — and actually liked Notebooks better. Maybe I’m just one of those people who prefers simplicity? I do think the biggest strength of Notebooks is that it only shows what’s relevant, at any given time. That makes it low on distractions and big on productivity. Comparing what I’ve written on Notebooks versus what I’ve written on Scrivener (and I purchased them at about the same time), there’s no contest. I’ve written probably 20x the amount with Notebooks. If I had to guess why, I’d say it’s because of how content-focused this app is. There’s no formatting unless you want it. You can create notes that are plain text, but then add markup for bold and italic text later if you want — but either way, no toolbar to take up the screen, just use asterisks or press the shortcut keys. All the features are pretty self-explanatory so it took me maybe a minute or two to get oriented, and then I just got to writing. This is very different from the steep learning curve involved with using Scrivener. I’ve watched video tutorials and there are still features I don’t really understand how to use — and they’re not immediately obvious from looking at them, either. The great thing about Notebooks is that things pretty much do what they look like they’re going to do. There’s really no guesswork, no learning curve, no unnecessary bells and whistles, just writing. — And for me, that’s just perfect! :)

hiru mirin about Notebooks - All Your Documents, Files and Tasks