Is Apple Notes Finally the BEST Note-Taking App for iPad?

0:00 [Music] notet taking apps are everywhere and if you're an iPad User like me you probably sat there wondering of Apple notes is actually worth your time at all when you have so many other options well as somebody that's spent years working with apps like notability using things like notion and of course good notes and Apple notes obviously I've got a few thoughts to share as to why I think Apple notes could be a bit of the underdog and if you like what you see consider subscribing stick around we'd love to see you next time anyway let's get into to it okay so let's start with what Apple notes do best it's free so it's already there and because of the ecosystem that it's part of the Apple ecosystem the most dominant ecosystem on the planet you can switch from your iPhone to your iPad to your Mac boom you've got your notes right there so

0:46 that's a massive tick in the Apple Camp if you want to quickly jot something down simply swipe up on any of your devices and you can access the quick notes feature that again saves to the cloud anywhere you need really really simple really powerful and now Apple notes supports tagging collaborative notes and even handwriting recognition so the notes that you were taking that didn't really mean anything to you after you've written them tell you what bit of AI it's going to start making a bit more sense of what you've written down and what you can do on top of that is also search for your notes again a really helpful feature when you're on the Run Apple notes has also had a lot of upgrades so we've just mentioned the AI stuff but also the audio recordings the side by side views and General Integrations for things like math notes

1:32 make this a lot more functional than what it used to be which was just very much a to be honest I just use it for to-do lists the latest OS update from Apple even introduces the magic wand simply Circle a handdrawn image or highlight text and generative AI brings it to life I was really surprised at how accurate it was although I really have no idea when I'll actually use it comment below if you think you will but is it better than competition well I think to understand if it's better than competition I like to look at it through the very simple lens of how does it feel to actually write on your iPad so we haven't got any fancy you know overlays here we don't have your paper like screen we haven't got any of that we're not sponsored yet so we're not going to be doing those but does it feel native

2:17 does it feel intuitive and I don't think Apple notes feels the best what's great about Apple notes and writing with it is of course that it is nely integrated with the apple pencil you get access to the entire Suite of ability that that pencil offers you like barrel roll like double clicking such a you to get to your eraser it allows you to of course select many different styluses rulers and it's really really diverse that is second to none that is the best but actually writing and the feeling of the digital ink coming out onto the page I think a couple of other apps do it better I I personally believe that notability is the best feeling when it comes to actually writing on your iPad there's just some somehow they've integrated that technology in a way that just was

3:03 really really natural I think good notes is equally as good as notability I'd also like to touch upon PDFs so I love annotating my PDFs on my iPad and I've been using noteability to do that for for years cuz I personally feel that it has the best combination of full screen PDF reading and the ability to Overlay the apple pencil and just mark up the notes you know highlight certain features right in the margins all that kind of stuff all that really good stuff you can do that really nicely on notability Apple notes the way they've integrated PDFs uh I I still find it really clunky it's not just it's all part of a note so you have to go into your note open up your note and it doesn't just sit there whereas if you go into notability it is itself an entire PDF which you open up it's not just part

3:50 of a note within a note so that feeling of actually just picking up a piece of paper and annotating is much better in other apps than Apple I've actually slowly transitioned away from notability and that's because I'm a little bit worried about the future of my notes is this app going to be around and supported for a really long time I worry that the notes that I make will be lost in The Ether one day I'll never get them back whereas what I can trust with Apple notes is it is backed by Apple it is natively integrated by a huge corporation that makes a trillion dollars these notes are going to last and they're saved in an iCloud situation where I've already paid for that kind of storage you know you know with notability what I have to use is either a Dropbox um or in my case a Google Drive which is slowly filling up with

4:36 complicated notes so Apple notes I can trust to be around for the Long Haul now if you're into not taking whatsoever you know that folder design is so important with these applications now Apple notes is not the best but it has some pretty good features so this is an example that I've set up I've actually moved a lot of things around so that's why it looks pretty empty but I've got my things set up here so I've got my professional I've got my YouTube channel my ideas um I have my general notes and I can create new folders add them here let's just call that new folder yeah and then we can just drag that and stick that underneath you can create either this is a whole new folder or I can open up another folder and Nest

5:23 it with in there so that helps create the hierarchy so what keeps me coming back to Apple notes on ly and I'm sorry to say it's the Apple ecosystem the fact that I can transfer my notes into iMessage just by asking Siri to do it Siri send a screen grab of this to me I can share a shopping list I can create a shared note with someone else with an iPhone which by the way is 60% of the world's population so there's many people that you can share these notes with you know you can feel the ease of the interoperability when you take a picture that you've just drawn and transfer that through into say a keynote or into um an APPL Pages where you might be writing a document you know you can really feel that integration and over time I've I've started to move into

6:09 that ecosystem just because it it allows me to do work slightly more quickly whereas before I felt like I was copy and pasting taking screenshots moving things over and there's just not that that speed response when we're all working to really difficult deadlines we need those little moments those little edges that we can get so yeah I definitely feel that the ecosystem is a is is a is a high level point there for the Apple notes I think if you're looking for really in-depth features and you know customization you're going to want to go with something like good notes like that is a note taking application that has an obscene amount of customization like it's got tape that you can put over things you can make things look beautiful it's really geared towards students notability the same I find that if you're just looking for a note taking device something that is an

6:56 application that will allow you to store your notes forever in multiple locations and have the future Integrations of AI and take advantage of all the features and development knowing they're going to be around thanks to Apple I think Apple notes is actually that device and secretly even though I don't like to admit it I have actually transferred all of my notet taking to Apple notes but what about you let me know in the comments what you use and why I'm really interested to know and if you like this video please drop a like and a subscribe if you haven't already and for everything else Tech Apple you name it stay tuned to Future simplified we will see you next time we've got a ton of videos somewhere here that you can also see I think it's down there now it's a new thing we'll see you next time on the future simplified anyway thanks

7:42 for watching see you later