[Note: Notesy is currently being offered for free this week, courtesy of the Appvent Calendar.]
Here’s the way the last two weeks of note taking on my iPhone have gone: Notesy ($1.99) and Dropbox syncing in, Simplenote out. Here’s why.
PROBLEM WITH SIMPLENOTE?
I really, really like the cloud app, cloud syncing service, and the iPhone app, and I’ve been using all three for the last 10 months for all of my notes. However, something about the latest version of Simplenote isn’t quite as speedy as I’d like it to be, so I’ve been looking around for some alternatives. I looked around for some Dropbox-based solutions, and eventually found Notesy thanks to an ad on Shawn Blanc’s website (http://shawnblanc.net/2010/11/notesy/). To be clear: I have nothing against Simplenote (just like how I still really love Evernote), but the time seems to have come to move on to another platform, and that platform looks to be Dropbox.
DROPBOX SYNC
Quite a few apps have jumped on the Dropbox bandwagon recently, and although I’m not sure how early or late Notesy joined the party, it does feature some very flexible syncing with your Dropbox. Syncing in Notesy is fast and reliable, multi-tasking enabled, and even allows you to choose which folder within Dropbox you’d like to sync with. There’s also a sync button right on the main list view. That may seem like a mundane thing, but some other apps (*cough*, Simplenote) require you to navigate to the Settings menu just to trigger a manual sync.
One quick warning I’d have for prospective Notesy users is to watch out for filenames. If your files have any of the following characters
\ / : ? * < > | .
then Notesy will automatically remove them from file names in an effort to stay Windows friendly.
The current App Store version (1.3) will also only auto-sync on loading up or when returning to list view, but I am currently using a beta version of Notesy that syncs whenever you press the Done button (which dismisses the keyboard). The beta I’m using also provides an option to turn Windows Friendliness off and get back with your good friend, the period-in-your-filenames.
A QUICK NOTE ABOUT NOTATIONAL VELOCITY
One reason I started to use Simplenote was because Notational Velocity, the incredibly zippy text editor and manager for Mac OS X, syncs so nicely with it. As it turns out, NV also syncs quite well with Dropbox folders, so long as you tell it which one to watch, and have your library set to store as .txt files (here’s a step-by-step tutorial on the Notesy blog if you need it: http://notesy-app.com/weblog/files/2010_10_nv.html).
The last thing to note, however, is that NV will only reflect external changes (iPhone -> Mac syncs) if you shift focus away from the window, and then shift back. I accomplish this by simply Cmd-Tabbing away from, and then back to, Notational Velocity. It certainly isn’t the best solution, but it’s working out so far.
NOTESY SEARCH
The first thing I had to get used to when I first found Notesy was its search. Searches in Notesy tend to run like most other apps: straight searches for strings of text. This rendered my old note tagging system (simply adding -jaib, -food, etc. as the first line of every note) obsolete. I’ve learned to work around this by integrating tags right into the title of each note (this review is called “-jaib Notesy”), so that if I type “-jaib”, I’ll see a list of all my blog-related notes, but typing -jaib Notesy will bring me only to the Notesy review. I also realize full well that our site is now called iSource, but old tagging systems die hard.
Overall, Notesy’s search tends to work quite quickly, (especially when you use the “notes from the past week only” filter), but it does tend to lag for half a second when parsing my library of nearly 700 notes on my iPhone 3GS (Simplenote had no problem there). However, whatever slight sluggishness Notesy may suffer from in the searching category, it more than makes up for with its lightning-fast operation in all other areas.
DZZZZT
Creating new notes, opening notes, and syncing notes — everything happens pretty darn quickly in Notesy, and that, in and of itself, is a selling point for me. I was especially impressed with the fact that I could open and edit notes when I first loaded the app up, given that the app was simultaneously downloading my 700-note library in the background.
NOTE LISTS
Speaking of notes, Notesy does a pretty good job of displaying all of mine. By default, the list view shows note names, a two-line preview, the last modified date or time, and an icon to symbolize whether the note is synced, or still syncing. The view is simple and clean, and I like how a tally of my total number of notes is always shown at the top.
TAKING OF NOTES a.ka. OF NOTES AND TAKING
The note view in Notesy 1.3 is alright, but based on what I’ve seen in the beta, it’s going to get a lot better.
The current top bar is your standard “Back” and “New Note” affair, but the bottom is a little different from other note iOS apps. The bottom bar in 1.3 has a menu button with options to duplicate, e-mail, rename, print, and activate fixed width font — wait, Fixed Width Font?
Yes, one of Notesy’s quirky-but-useful features is the ability to switch, on a per-note basis, between fixed and non-fixed width fonts. I have almost no use for fixed width fonts myself, but I’m sure coders will appreciate the option.
Moving right along then. The final two visible buttons on the toolbar are info (for word counts, character counts, etc.) and the delete button (for de-l337ing).
At first glance, it may seem like these are all the functions available along the bottom bar, but there is actually one more quirky little feature: the tappable timestamp.
A quick tap on this timestamp will quickly scroll to the end of a note and bring the keyboard up so that you’re ready to append text to a note within a second of loading it up. This has quickly become one of my favourite features in Notesy, second only to…
FULLSCREEN [COMING SOON]
This really strikes me as one of those dream user-developer stories: a very picky Canadian user (let’s call him Patrick Jordan) e-mails the developer of an iPhone notes app (let’s call it Notesy) and inquires, merely out of curiousity, about any plans for a fullscreen mode. Imagine the very picky Canadian user’s surprise, then, when the developer of said app sends him a beta the next morning with a fantastic and fully functional fullscreen mode.
Alright, pointless subjunctive aside, Notesy has really nailed fullscreen mode in the current beta, and, with any luck, it should be making it into the next official update. You can activate it with one tap, exit it with one tap, and dismiss the keyboard *without* fullscreen mode. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it just works — which is what I could probably say of Notesy as a whole.
CONCLUSION
Don’t let Notesy’s cutesy little pencil icon fool you: underneath the extra-wide exterior of an icon lies a beast of a note app that can be unleashed on your iPhone (and iPad — soon enough) for the ridiculously low price of $1.99.
Notesy is pretty sparse in terms of graphical flourish, but it’s packed with all sorts of interesting and very well thought-out features that make typing out, reading, and managing your notes a lot more enjoyable. The developer also provides some of the best e-support I’ve ever seen for any app or service, making Notesy bar-none the best two dollars I’ve ever spent on software.
It’s for these reasons that I now switch my App Review Gun from Recommend to Urge, point it at you, and conveniently provide you with this link to buy (or freely download during the Appvent Calendar special) Notesy right now.
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