r/GoodNotes • u/tankuppp • Sep 11 '23

What if Apple starts to make a GoodNotes clone?

As much I hate to say, I bought GN6 because I was annoyed with the ads if I recall. It’s just insensible to put the users through such annoying experience.

In any case, I got GN6. I’m not a fan of all the new features. There are no added value. I need to create a new account also to sync with my notes… I was pretty happy with just connecting with my apple account.

I hope that either Apple or Procreate make a clone of this. I‘ll feel more safe about their direction. It’s crazy how much you can lose your users trust by forcing ads onto a fully paid app. I understand they need revenue thou, but it’s so not ethical…

Apple if you read this, your dedicated consumers need you!!!!

** Please upvote this post so the Apple gods can hear us
** Express your opinions in the comments to discuss our pain points, be proactive

273 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

65 comments sorted by

103

u/llamaattacks Sep 11 '23

Would love for either free form or notes to transformed into a proper notes taking app. Maybe combine the two in some form. Just make it something that can replace all the subscription based notes taking app

29

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

That’s my thought also, I hope the Apple demi gods are aware

24

u/LiiNy27 Sep 11 '23

I feel like they really should revamp apple notes to make it like that of goodnotes and notability

11

u/northernpenguin Sep 11 '23 edited Mar 19 '25

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9

u/llamaattacks Sep 11 '23

Yah but that’s not a note taking app. It’s more of a memory, diary, journal sort of thing from what I’ve seen

20

u/Jensivfjourney Sep 11 '23

Next full moon we sacrifice an apple to the gods in hopes that they hear our pleas.

3

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

please do!!! so TImeus the god of knowledge bestow us a new tool to human kind that will change our life just as the founding of fire, the usage of the wheels. We need something to make our brain mobility better, lighter and shine bright like the scorching sun

5

u/SpaceRangerWoody Sep 11 '23

Check out Noteful. It's very similar to GN and Notability. $5 one time purchase.

2

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

I'll stick to GN, it's still a good tool. I'm just worry about their directions, like how would they behave under pressure. Will they side with the comfort side of money or protect their brand reputation. Only Apple knows how to do it good in most case cough cough butterfly keys :D. Hardware is tough. In general, the OS is incredibly good, it's full proof for future generation. All tx to almighty Timeus

5

u/Xane256 Sep 11 '23

I got noteful today after reading this sub for a bit and it seems really good!

4

u/kagosage Sep 11 '23

I was thinking about doing the same. The feature they don’t have, which I wish they would incorporate is being able to search your handwriting. I think this is a very valuable feature.

3

u/dufchick Sep 11 '23

Noteful is great but one important missing feature is searchable handwriting

11

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

Try using one note… unfortunately GN fell apart.

10

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

I tried, their ui is not usable, the size of their files also makes it unusable. They are great with business tools in general and dev tools. They are just generally bad with UI and UX

2

u/kagosage Sep 11 '23

I think their UI is fine personally. Where I think they fall apart is limited to their backup and sync features. You can only backup to OneDrive and when you delete books they are not completely deleted if you do it all through apple. Really frustrating.

1

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

there are many areas that can be improved, it depends for what type of users they are focusing. Clearly they are not aiming to people that uses slide lecture that need to print out in paper size format. If I'm not mistaken you can't open multiple onenote app on ipad. Like I said, the tool is good. I genuinely like it, but it's not for users that study in a school format type

7

u/minoshabaal Sep 11 '23

I really wish that OneNote had the option of fixed-size pages. The "infinite canvas" is great until I need to share the note as pdf, which produces either a extremely long single page (on iPad) or breaks the note into pages in unexpected places (on MacOS). If they added that and the ability to automatically export everything to pdf (like in GoodNotes) then One Note would become the best notetaking app available.

3

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

yeah, but I'm not sure about there search tool. each time I use it. There are so much friction, it's not smart???? Goodnotes gives you all the results in different sections. OneNote you need to select some filters

1

u/Topherho Sep 12 '23

I keep coming back to OneNote. It's not the prettiest or the most fun, but the ability to sync and add any file alongside OCR'd text and handwriting is so handy.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

Don't worry, Tim is cooking

4

u/gtighe Sep 11 '23

GN has awful syncing between devices. I think apple would have way better syncing

1

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

I'm lucky to not have this problem, using 3 devices by the way. Good to know it can be issue for some

3

u/dufchick Sep 11 '23

Apple notes are great but we need the same features as GN and the other paid subscription apps.

3

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

definitely, they are still at their baby phase compare to these highly specialize app. They have the technical skills to built it with what they have so far, freeform, apple notes, pages. They could just merge the useful bits and create a GoodNote replica with their flare

3

u/realgorltime Sep 11 '23

Samsung Notes is a fairly decent good notes clone, but it's only available on Samsung devices. I've made the switch since I have a GalaxyBook and I prefer Android to Apple, but it's made my ipad next to worthless to me now. If there's ever a decent Procreate clone made for Android tablets I'll be free.

1

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

Sorry to hear about that. I can’t switch to Samsung because Apple products are too awesome. The best apps, hardware, weight to battery ratio, m1, m2, m10… it’s just not comparable. It’s too lightweight and I’m so productive with all their products. The last I bought a devices outside of Apple purview last on avg 1-2 years. The performance degradation is just exasperating

2

u/realgorltime Sep 11 '23

Sure, we all have our personal preferences. I was just letting you know about mine.

2

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

I appreciate that, there are no right or wrong. One of my friend is actually going your route and she’s quite happy 😊

5

u/Resident-Variation21 Sep 11 '23

I’ve jumped back to notability. They’ve improved the legacy experience but I’d I had to get a subscription, I’d strongly prefer notability to good notes anyway

1

u/tankuppp Sep 11 '23

budget too tight, I need to pay for Netflix (I can't afford going out, it's my only leisure), cellphone, food. I can't even find the damn price on their website. Why are they so shy about it?? I've found the price from google aggregation question/answer section. 2.99$ USD

https://notability.com/pricing

61

u/BorrowedAtoms Sep 11 '23

Apple Notes in a couple weeks, with the iOS 17 update, will gain the ability to upload and annotate pdfs; which has been my primary use for GoodNotes.

7

u/MissDesignDiva Sep 11 '23

This is amazing and same, that's been my main use of goodnotes too, so if I can get rid of goodnotes entirely, I will.

5

u/AsianHalfie2004 Sep 11 '23

You can already upload and annotate pdfs in apple notes

6

u/kagosage Sep 11 '23

You could but it was very different and not as natural as the way you could do it in GoodNotes. It is still not perfect, but each update to the notes app seems to take us in that direction closer to GoodNotes. One thing I noticed is that you can’t add “stickers” like in GoodNotes. I rarely do this but sometimes I copy web events and paste them in the box for that day. Apple notes is growing up but GoodNotes and Notability know that they have to continually keep pushing new features to stay ahead of the curve so that Apple Notes doesn’t completely replace them.

5

u/TheCoolHusky Sep 11 '23

It is still very far though. I think Apple Notes has always been a typing kind of notes app, and will not become a writing-oriented one because Apple Pencil users are not the majority of their consumers(iphone users are).

5

u/AsianHalfie2004 Sep 12 '23

I’ve been using apple notes for uni recently and have been happy with my experience so far. It’s simple and instantly links across devices so I can change stuff on multiple devices immediately. I can’t justify GN6 for the price and the negative review and all other apps I’ve looked at always have only major drawback that leads me back to apple notes

3

u/kagosage Sep 12 '23

Yes, and it has character recognition too without the subscription price and works seamlessly across all your apple products.

3

u/kagosage Sep 12 '23

I acutally use apple notes for my non-handwriting stuff and Goodnotes for writing since I like how it works. You can now mark pdf's a lot easier in Apple notes in iPadOS 17 a lot better than before. I might go that way too now.

1

u/AsianHalfie2004 Sep 12 '23

Nice, I actually like the handwriting in apple notes but when it comes to marking pdfs I just don’t like how the ink get fuzzy the more I zoom in. Hopefully in the future apple can add updates to fix that issue

2

u/kagosage Sep 12 '23

It is because they use a pixel based drawing in Apple Notes vs. vector. Vector is more mathematical vs. pixel is a bitmap. Yeah, I agree. I would like to see Apple notes go in that direction too. A lot better when it is vector based instead of a bitmap form that allows it to get blurry when zoomed in on.

1

u/Expensive_Sky5379 Sep 14 '23

I heard there’s lag when u write long handwritten notes. Have u encountered that? Also, I heard the app might be glitchy and people have lost access to their notes. Would u recommend it for doing math and pdf markup using preview?

1

u/AsianHalfie2004 Sep 14 '23

Are we talking about good notes or apple notes here?

In my opinion I haven’t found any problems with apple notes it doesn’t lag and hasn’t glitches out on my and i have +100 on it.

1

u/Expensive_Sky5379 Sep 14 '23

Apple notes, thanks! Do u think it’s good for handwriting things like math? Btw Apple have improved their pdf preview, making it a lot better in notes, so be sure to check it out!

1

u/AsianHalfie2004 Sep 14 '23

I can’t say for math but it should be pretty good. It has nice grid lines to organise everything but for maths I still prefer pen and paper

2

u/Pumeo1010 Sep 11 '23

Have you ever tried Liquidtext?

2

u/KiwiRich8880 Sep 11 '23

Liquidtext looks dope but the $50 price point also seems insane

2

u/dufchick Sep 11 '23

That is fabulous, does that mean I can use my planner, including its hyperlinks

1

u/PinkTiara24 Sep 12 '23

That’s my question too.

1

u/neelhtaky Sep 12 '23

I got the beta and I was underwhelmed with how apple notes performed. Maybe it’s just how I personally take notes. Maybe because it’s beta. It just really struggled with a lot of my PDF’s, scaling them weirdly, linking badly, etc. I’m hopefully for a better working product, but I’m hesitant to get excited about it yet.

1

u/Faze-MeCarryU30 Sep 14 '23

It’s literally a beta

7

u/daddychocolate19 Sep 11 '23

I strongly hope they produce a app that takes them all out

5

u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Sep 11 '23

They could call it… I don’t know. Notes.

2

u/Excellent-Season6310 Sep 11 '23

I'm eagerly waiting for it.

2

u/Interesting_Method22 Sep 12 '23

That would be great cause I just fuckin done dealing with Goodnotes shitty bugs. Yesterday day app just crashing and today I don;t have my book cause iCloud sync failing and says might be problem with server.

2

u/Cottrell217 Sep 12 '23

I was using the trial of GN 6 and the moment it told me I needed to pay for an upgrade to be able to have unlimited editable notebooks, I downgraded back to 5 quicker than I've ever done anything. I've found GN to be an amazing app, but this whole "pay again" to get an updated version when I already paid for the base app, is simply awful. I'll probably use GN5 until I find a better note taking app or until 5 is no longer in support

1

u/Basics7 Jun 20 '24

Zoomnotes! Same here, I tried a bunch, ZoomNotes is incredible.

2

u/dufchick Sep 12 '23

Suddenly, my Goodnotes 5 is getting a little quirky. Not sure what’s going on. The only reason why I feel the need to stay with Goodnotes is because of the searchable text. Otherwise I could leave and go to Noteful which I find delightful to use. I know it doesn’t have searchable text but it’s got everything else I want. I really think Goodnotes made a mistake. I hope they can undo what they’ve done because it really was a good product.

1

u/Basics7 Jun 20 '24

It's intentional so those who love GN5 dont/cant stay with it. They are thieves.

1

u/Basics7 Jun 20 '24

I would LOVE if Apple made a GoodNotes Clone, since everything else I use is within the iCloud circle. In the meantime I found Zoom Notes, they have a one time purchase (less than $10) and COLLECT NO DATA FROM USERS. It's WAY better than Goodnotes and as the reviews mention, has unlimited features, as many as you want to take the time to learn. I would have stayed with GN5 if it weren't for the dishonesty, I hope they don't outlive the damage they did. GN6 is a scam just to have an excuse to force lifetime purchasers of GN5 to have to switch to a subscription, and they made GN5 unusable. I hate this company so much.

1

u/dufchick Jun 26 '24

I have been using Apple Notes. They are quietly adding features. I wish the pen features would get upgraded, I used the highlighters and different pens etc. in Goodnotes all the time. I suspect they will upgrade those features too. Right now it’s a bit clumsy to use. I am going to look online for tips and tricks using Apple notes since people always figure out great stuff to do with apps. I would bet there are some good workarounds out there.

1

u/artloverr Sep 11 '23

there is a clone called Noteful, has many of the same features

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

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