When comparing Simplenote vs Google Calendar, the Slant community recommends Simplenote for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Simplenote is ranked 39th while Google Calendar is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose Simplenote is:
Simplenote takes a minimalist approach to its interface. There are no toolbars full of formatting options or extra features like notebooks to group notes. The entire desktop interface consists solely of a sidebar with your tags and trash filters, the list of existing notes with search, a button to add a new note and a simple view for looking an existing note or writing a new one.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Very simple and clean interface
Simplenote takes a minimalist approach to its interface. There are no toolbars full of formatting options or extra features like notebooks to group notes. The entire desktop interface consists solely of a sidebar with your tags and trash filters, the list of existing notes with search, a button to add a new note and a simple view for looking an existing note or writing a new one.
Pro Geared towards fast usage
Unlike alternatives (such as Evernote) that are laden with features, Simplenote is fast to use and sync. Reviews from the Verge, Lifehacker, and a variety of other sources all describe using the Simplenote apps as very fast. While it may not be as feature-rich as other apps, the responsiveness of the app and simple interface keep it easy to use while never slowing down the user when they need to quickly take a note.
Pro Works offline
Users can edit and create documents offline, can then sync their content the next time they are online. This way a user can work even when there's no data connection without the worry of losing work.
Pro Desktop app is open source
The desktop version of Simplenote is hosted on the GitHub and since it is open source, it can allow developers to fork the code in order to improve the app.
Pro Can export your data
The program enables exporting of notes as text documents.
Pro Collaborative features
Notes can be shared with others or worked on collaboratively.
Pro Open Source
All of the Simplenote apps are open source and ready for your contributions! You can find the source on GitHub:
iOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-ios
Android: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-android
macOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-macos
Electron (Windows and Linux): https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-electron
Pro "Time machine" style revision control on the notes
Each edit of a note is saved in order to allow the user to go back to a previous version of a document. This way, if mistakes are made or something is deleted, you can go back to the previous version without any hassle.
Pro Wide range of great clients with great sync
Official native apps are available on popular platforms such as Android, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, OS X, Windows and Linux. Open-source clients extend this support even more widely to various other platforms, such as webOS and the BlackBerry PlayBook. These apps embody the core philosophy of Simplenote: minimalism and focus on the note taking.
There are multiple unofficial clients (including the excellent Notational Velocity and NValt, a fork of the app with markdown support and other goodies.)
Pro Markdown support via web interface
There is support for Markdown when using the web app. This can be convenient for those who want to use Markdown in a particular note.
Pro Linux client available
Pro Excellent iOS app
Pro Excellent desktop client in the form of nvAlt
Pro Integrates with Google Maps for directions
The app leverages Google Maps when adding location for an event by offering suggestions as well as offers opening Maps to help get directions to an event via shortcut on a reminder notification.
Pro Comes pre-installed on most Android devices
Google Calendar is a free Android calendar app without ads that comes already installed on Android devices that have stock support for Google Services.
Pro Clean design with 5 different views including an excellent schedule view
Google Calendar has a monochrome base design that's accented with colored-coded events and image banners that separate months in schedule view.
The app has 5 different views - schedule, day, 3-day, week and month.
Day, 3-day and week views split up the days horizontally and hours vertically. Month view lays out all days in a grid and displays up to 3 events in a day.
Schedule view displays an agenda view that allows browsing all events by swiping vertically. Additionally, the way events are displayed in the agenda view is context-aware. For example, adding an event called "gym" will display the event on a background with a dumbbell.
All views except for month view can be split horizontally to display a condensed month view at the top that can be navigated by swiping horizontally.
Events can be added from any view by clicking the red plus button that's available at the bottom-right corner of the screen.
Pro Offers creating events from e-mail messages based on content
Google Calendar integrates with e-mail for quickly creating events from e-mails that contain the word "meeting" or dates or times, or any other information about events or plans that it can understand.
Pro Can set on-screen and e-mail reminder notifications
Google calendar allows setting how many reminders are needed with each having the ability to set how long before the event the notification should remind and if it should be done via on-screen or e-mail notification.
Pro Integrates well with other Google services
Google Calendar is part of the Google ecosystem, it integrates with services like Google Now for creating events, Google Maps for directions and Gmail for pulling information about planned flights.
Pro Color-coding for events and calendars
The app will color-code different calendars in different colors as well as allow selecting a different color for each event.
Pro Straightforward event creation with autocomplete
All views have an option of adding a new event by tapping the plus sign at the lower right corner of the screen. This opens up a form and allows the user to add a location, start/end times, guests, description, color-code as well as choosing if it's an all day event, how often it repeats, how many and what kind of reminders are needed and setting the users availability and privacy settings.
Pro Awesome flairs / images view inside the agenda view / event page
Whenever you enter agenda / event title with the keywords (when available), the event will show up interesting flairs whenever the keyword inside the agenda / title you typed matches the flairs that are available inside the system, examples such as haircut, cycling, swimming, coffee, movie etc.
Pro Allows subscribing to public calendars through web client
Through the Google Calendar's web client, it is possible to subscribe to any public calendar. Google also maintains a list of public calendars for various sports events and holidays in different countries and for different religions.
Pro Supports non-Google calendars (requires accessing web client)
Google Calendar can be integrated with any calendar that support iCalendar format, including Exchange and iCloud, via URL, but it has to be done using the web client.
Pro Lots of third-party widgets
Google Calendar comes with a home screen widget, and there are also many third party widgets developed for this calendar app.
Pro Advanced functionality available through IFTTT
IFTTT offers over 198 channels to plug into the users Google Calendar.
Cons
Con No note encryption at rest
Notes are encrypted in transit, but remain unencrypted on Simplenote's servers.
Con Limited ways to reorder notes
You are able to sort your notes alphabetically, date modified, or by last created. There is no way to drag and drop the notes to create a custom order.
Con No reminders
You cannot set reminders to revisit a specific note or complete a task.
Con No support for file attachments
Simplenote doesn't provide support for embedded attachments. This can limit the use for some as many other note-taking apps do support this type of feature.
Con Search is limited to one tag
There seems to be no way to find notes that have both tag X and tag Y. This isn't a big deal until you have a large library of notes, and want to cross-search for two things at the same time to vastly narrow down your search.
Con No way to import notes from anywhere
Con Web access only for updated browsers
They recently removed support for older browsers, and it's not working on the latest version of Waterfox. You need an updated version of a well-known browser.
Con No 32-bit version
Con The search function doesn't see tags
If you search for 'foo' you won't find notes with tag foo. In that regard, tags are completely isolated from the search.
Con No way to bulk-apply a tag
This is a typical workflow action in other apps: Do a search, multi-select notes among the matches, then apply or de-apply one or more tags to all these notes at once.
There's no way to do this in Simplenote. The only bulk operations are Delete and Pin-to-top.
Con No notification when changes made on a shared note
Currently, there is no way to be alerted when a change is made by another contributor on a shared note.
Con Save-to-disk feature is poor
The only way to download your data off Simplenote is via a "download zip" feature that unfortunately loses all the semantic structure of your data (tags, for instance).
Con No integrated social media sharing
The only way you can share notes with others is with a link you're given when you publish your note. There is no integrated social media sharing if you directly want to post your note to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Con Lack of color impacts usability
There are two themes available, the default theme and a dark theme.
Both use only the single solid color (either white or black) for the background, so there is a lack of visual cues to separate what you're looking at.
Con No vertical scroll
Like iOS and outlook for Android.
Con Privacy concerns
Google integrate all their services to connect and mine information on an individual to better profile and target advertising.
Con Google tasks do not show on Google Calendar
You can create tasks in your desktop Google Calendar but they will not sync nor show up in your android Google Calendar
Con Setting up non-Google calendars requires accessing web client
There is no ability in the Android app to access other calendars. This limits the usefulness for people that use more than one calendar, such as OSX and iOS users.
Con No weather forecast
The Android app version of Google Calendar does not show any weather forcast information, even if it is added as an extra calendar in the web application. Being that weather is tied into Google Now, the absence is surprising.
Con Setting up CalDAV or iCAL from other sources is not working or not working well
A lot of people share events between different sources: professional, private, family or friends.
Not everybody is on Google and of course a lot of corporations.
Con Month view shows limited information about the event
Month view does not show how many events there are in each given day or color-code them in any way, only informs of their existence.
Con Does not work well with Apple / iCloud Calendar
Apple and Google calendars have syncing issues, which is annoying if you want to have shared calendars with friends / family.
Con Some recurrence options not available
If you want to add a recurring event based on quirky (but normal) calendar rules, it's not supported by Google Calendar. For example, if you set up a financial calendar in Google Calendar and an event falls on a weekend or bank holiday, Google Calendar cannot schedule the occurrence properly. Worse yet, if you submit those calendar occurences via VEVENT details, Google Calendar displays different information if you use the mobile calendar vs. the desktop web calendar.
Con Once you create a event on a Calendar, you can't move to a different Calendar
Con Horizontal Scroll
Does not vertically scroll like ios calendars on outlook calendar.
Con Slow syncing of external calendars
Google Calendar is known to sync external calendars very slowly, takes hours if not a full day before the updated events are reflected.
Con No natural language input support
The Android app has no natural language input support, while it's available using the web client and in a limited capacity using Google Now.
Con Weak default view
Even if month is set as default view, as soon as you touch a day or an event, you have to carefully select twice to get back to month view.
Con Time zone is incorrect no matter what's done
Con Timezone for Moscow is incorrect
Timezone for Moscow is 1 hour off. This makes the calendar unusable in Russia.