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Add to SafariWhen comparing Emacs Org-mode vs Apple Notes, the Slant community recommends Apple Notes for most people. In the question“What is the best note taking app for Mac?” Apple Notes is ranked 8th while Emacs Org-mode is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Apple Notes is:
It syncs with iCloud, and surprisingly, also with Gmail and possibly other services too.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Ultimate flexibility
This app's flexibility is based on its minimalist approach, giving the user near-infinite freedom.
Pro Absolutely free
Emacs with Org-mode is free as in beer and free as in speech – that is, it costs nothing and it’s totally open source.
Pro Files are usable anywhere at anytime
Users are not tied to one service provider, program, platform, or database engine.
Pro Incredibly extensible
There are many plug-ins for Org-mode, including Org-habits and Org-notify. If Org-mode lacks some piece of functionality, it is very easy to add it.
Pro Agenda views
Pro Excellent unofficial Android app (orgzly)
Pro Offline support
Pro Efficient features for deadline organization
Pro Supports plaintext spreadsheets
Pro There are a lot of extensions, for exporting to html, bootstrap, js-reveal and much more
Pro Quickly add rich text
Pro Sync with other Apple devices via iCloud, other cloud/email services
It syncs with iCloud, and surprisingly, also with Gmail and possibly other services too.
Pro Built-in
It's a default system app, making it easy to find and use since it is already installed.
Pro Rich-text editing
Allows for simple text formatting and making TODO lists with checkboxes.
Pro Attachments
You can add files to notes and then filter notes by attachment types.
Pro Supports sharing
Pro It's fast, and syncing is very dependable
The app launches quickly on both Mac and iOS, it also syncs quickly (in seconds) and very dependably across different Apple devices.
Pro It remains simple to use with a gentle learning curve
Despite the significant new updates in iOS 9 and iOS 10, you can start using Notes immediately, then try/master new features with ease — definitely a gentle learning curve.
Cons
Con Unintuitive user interface
The key combinations are unintuitive and difficult to remember. This is probably because there are a lot of hidden "modes" depending on where the cursor is. Actions aren't paired with reversing actions like in other todo apps. For example, hitting shift-tab does NOT reverse the effect of hitting tab.
Con Android app isn't very good
There are several user-created apps for Android, but none seem to offer the same level of functionality as other to-do apps.
Con Not really cross platform
Although it is possible to get a lot of it working, no all in one, sync included, out of the box solution is available for mobile devices.
Con By default, a hard-to-read display
The default way of writing an outline or checklist creates a very messy wall of text that's difficult to read with no vertical spacing. You can manually add vertical spacing, but the Org operations don't preserve it. There are pretty-display modes, but you need to remember how to enable them, etc. etc.
Con Cannot export to a format that can be imported again
This makes it obscure and cumbersome to back up your notes as files that could be managed by your backup system. You can export to PDF, but not in bulk; and this isn't the native format that you can easily recover with.
Apple compounds the problem by using some undocumented format for notes. You can, however, back them all up by backing up the files found in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes
