"A fresh take on documents" that's limited to Apple devices seems like a problem. People usually make documents to share. I suppose there are embubbled Apple users who don't even know anyone who uses something else and who they'd want to share or collaborate with. But that must be an exception.
Love the word embubbled. Never seen that. Nice. Weirdly I would have gone with enbubbled. I'm not sure why. I know Jebediah Springfield would have preferred the em- to en-. But for some weird, unknowable linguistic reason I would go with the en-. Anyway (and apologies for the offtopicallity), I reckon we should now include embubbled as a key factor in startupland. We have Inadequacy Analysis, Exploitability Analysis and Low Hanging Fruit Analysis. I think it's time for Embubblability Analysis. Phew - whole lotta red underlines in that!
I spent a few years on iOS and the number of notetaking apps that only use iCloud or Dropbox was infuriating. There was very rarely a WebDav or NextCloud option.
This is why I require any app to be able to use a hierarchical folder of markdown documents as its store, even if the app is single platform. Currently using Obsidian on the desktop and MWeb on my iPhone, but the docs are just such a collection of markdown so easy to share and no lock-in.
The "cross platform app" ecosystem seems fractured in a way that you must either add 2x to 5x the effort to achieve it, or sacrifice performance and UX.
Also "Frictionless sharing and collaboration" seems not valid at all when it exists in the closed ecosystem that is Apple. Probably the decision is to follow with Android and web [windows+linux].
The sharing links send people to a website where they can see a read-only view of the notes which seems pretty good for an app which isn’t cross platform. If you want to collaborate with people in an office then it is likely that either no one has macs or most people have access to them. If you want to collaborate with people outside of an office then there can be similar problems (what if your collaborator doesn’t have MS office?), or I guess you could use LATEX with git or google docs, but they come with their own issues.
I've played with Craft a bit and it's been a joy to use so far.
Conceptually it sits between Apple Notes and Notion. You get native apps that work offline, support fast capture, and are satisfying to use. You also get the wiki-style support and block-level editing of Notion, along with lots of other nice Notion visual flourishes (page-level icons, cover images, etc.)
One area Craft really shines, is the way that it supports interactive, sharable documents. If I have text, images, files, and want to combine them all into a single page/starting point, Craft makes this super simple.
Here are some examples (which you could design on your own):
The app seems really amazing so far after trying it out on my iPhone. Everything that I have tried so far works like a charm, ez searching, indentation, nice styling, intuitive controls.
But the one thing that is missing for me to use it, is a web app. It doesn't need to be as flashy as the native apps, or it does not need feature parity. But I don't like the idea that all my notes are trapped inside my Apple devices, and that I have no way to even look through them when I am on my pc.
It looks lovely, but charging a subscription for spell check, in-document search, and printing -- table stakes for a text editor -- is surely going to rub people the wrong way.[1]
While much of the blame still falls on Apple for pushing developers toward subscriptions in the absence of a straightforward paid-upgrade mechanism, requiring a subscription for an app with no cloud dependencies remains an instant disqualification for me.
It's buying into a promise that your monthly payments are going toward continuous improvement of the product – a promise that might be kept, or might not – and even if it is, for how long? If updates stall out after awhile, or if the new features don't solve anything for you, it's not like you can choose to skip an upgrade. And the more you use the product, the higher the barrier to switching away. I agree, Craft looks lovely, but there's no way I'm locking myself into its business model.
I say this every time, but this is a solved problem. Developers of software like Sketch and Bitwig Studio have the right kind of subscription model, where you subscribe to updates, not access. If you don't care for the latest version, you can let your subscription lapse and keep using the last version you're licensed for. Apple has all the pieces necessary to simply gate App Store updates via subscription, but they apparently have no motivation to do so.
I don't believe printing is table stakes for an editor any more. Quality export to a printable format, yes. Directly sending an application document to the system print queue via some printing language (PostScript, PCL, DVI, PDF..), though, I don't see that as being a big thing anymore.
I'm not saying the paperless office is here, but with everyone WFH and no access to the office color laser printer, who is generating much paper any more?
I think they confuse things by calling it a “writing app”. It can be used for that, but it’s more of a note taking app. It competes with Notion and Roam, not iA Writer really.
Honestly, I find this kind of comment not useful at all. Considering how internet / tech / security savvy the HN crowd is, I'm sure we don't give our personal / work email addresses willy nilly.
There are a huge number of anonymous email services available. I came across this list from a basic search [0].
In fact, recently, there was submission for https://33mail.com on ShowHN also.
So, my question is, why don't we do this and add comments about the application itself.
I agree there are many ways to persist data even without a login. But that in turn means wasting a huge amount of resources for anonymous users with hardly any return at all. Why should developers do that?
In my opinion, what I find worse, is this expectation of getting something for nothing. Facebook, Google and others have grown to this size because of this sense of enlightenment. And we complain about them all the time.
So, in short, my suggestion is - if you don't find use of a service without submitting an anonymous email, don't use it. There's really no point in adding a comment which does nothing towards the understanding or increasing our knowledge.
It’s fascinating to me how block-based editors have been gaining traction recently. It’s a great balance between modeling semantics the computer can understand and offering a WYSIWYG UI for users. I built an in-browser editor for a client project that worked this way back in 2014, and open-sourced the core[1]. It worked really well. However, at the time our users (professors) had difficulty understanding what was going on when it didn’t work identically to MS Word. Specifically, to them, Word was “correct” and anything that worked differently was “wrong.”
I quit using that model in future projects as I just assumed that block-based editing would always be too “programmery” for users trained on and anchored to Word. I guess I was wrong :)
Considering it's possible to generate a web link with this, I would love to see an 'export to HTML' feature so that I could use Craft to write a personal website/blog.
My first thought as well. Increasingly I dont want a Web App, Blog, CMS, or whatever it is. I think all of that should just live on my computer as a simple App. Upload the HTML and we are good to go.
Craft seems to be build with Catalyst. Apple only introduced it in 10.15. It is technically impossible to support anything below 10.15. Now, it would be possible to write two Craft apps (one iOS and one macOS) instead of a shared one, but that’s much more work and only adds a minority of users (those still below 10.15), so it is understandable they chose not to support it.
Typically being 3 or 4 major versions behind the current version is under %0.5 of the market, it's really not worth it to maintain compatibility that low unless your already old app doesn't need to stop supporting old versions.
I'm estimating because the app is newer, is the reason why they didnt' put special effort in support very old versions like that.
I guess the block-based document editor field is heating up. With this tool's native iOS and macOS apps, I hope they either unseat Notion, or launch Notion into making native tools. Their web-based UI has extremely poor performance.
One significant difference is automatic back linking (bi-directional linking). Craft looks a bit like Notion but it has some of the functionality of Roam and Obsidian. Plus, decent native apps, which Notion and the others lack.
You know what is ridiculous? That in 2020 we don't have an electronic document format which has modern animation support:
- WTF happened to .mhtml/.eml ?!?
- .odt : the least bad I guess, but is still a bit heavy, clunky, and uses discrete pages without reflow by default. Also, the underlying language isn't designed to be tinkered with, which is a critical shortcoming in many situations.
Looks great, I love the UI and the whole native approach. I wish there was an option to use iCloud for storage or even full offline mode. I would also prefer the one-time payment, even if it is high (like https://culturedcode.com/things/ does). Also please copy "Daily Notes" from Roam :-)
I don't have an Apple device, so I can not try Craft, but I suggest OrgPad (at https://orgpad.com) is more suited for note taking than Craft since there is also focus on the Big Picture? What do you think?
[+] [-] hirundo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrischapman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgebcrawford|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geekraver|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchook|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodsignature|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dan-robertson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minouye|5 years ago|reply
Conceptually it sits between Apple Notes and Notion. You get native apps that work offline, support fast capture, and are satisfying to use. You also get the wiki-style support and block-level editing of Notion, along with lots of other nice Notion visual flourishes (page-level icons, cover images, etc.)
One area Craft really shines, is the way that it supports interactive, sharable documents. If I have text, images, files, and want to combine them all into a single page/starting point, Craft makes this super simple.
Here are some examples (which you could design on your own):
https://www.craft.do/s/VIAC9BTTJWdCxp
https://www.craft.do/s/09fqwC5rGqErmB/b/F19F87F2-0F04-49F9-9...
https://www.craft.do/s/09fqwC5rGqErmB/b/9041969E-127C-4439-A...
[+] [-] the_arun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srimukh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipsum2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shortformblog|5 years ago|reply
https://craftcms.com/
[+] [-] crooked-v|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azangru|5 years ago|reply
https://i.imgur.com/nLLFnSr.png
[+] [-] glitchc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisstanchak|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] murermader|5 years ago|reply
But the one thing that is missing for me to use it, is a web app. It doesn't need to be as flashy as the native apps, or it does not need feature parity. But I don't like the idea that all my notes are trapped inside my Apple devices, and that I have no way to even look through them when I am on my pc.
[+] [-] runlevel1|5 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.craft.do/pricing#Features
[+] [-] mortenjorck|5 years ago|reply
It's buying into a promise that your monthly payments are going toward continuous improvement of the product – a promise that might be kept, or might not – and even if it is, for how long? If updates stall out after awhile, or if the new features don't solve anything for you, it's not like you can choose to skip an upgrade. And the more you use the product, the higher the barrier to switching away. I agree, Craft looks lovely, but there's no way I'm locking myself into its business model.
I say this every time, but this is a solved problem. Developers of software like Sketch and Bitwig Studio have the right kind of subscription model, where you subscribe to updates, not access. If you don't care for the latest version, you can let your subscription lapse and keep using the last version you're licensed for. Apple has all the pieces necessary to simply gate App Store updates via subscription, but they apparently have no motivation to do so.
[+] [-] monkin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|5 years ago|reply
I'm not saying the paperless office is here, but with everyone WFH and no access to the office color laser printer, who is generating much paper any more?
You know what would be better? A feature to generate an epub or kindle document. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/epub-kindle-and-mult...
[+] [-] monkin|5 years ago|reply
Is it better than iA Writer? If so, why?
[+] [-] Veen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiriro|5 years ago|reply
"Let's get started!"
"Please enter your email"
:-o What?
Uninstall
[+] [-] thunderbong|5 years ago|reply
There are a huge number of anonymous email services available. I came across this list from a basic search [0].
In fact, recently, there was submission for https://33mail.com on ShowHN also.
So, my question is, why don't we do this and add comments about the application itself.
I agree there are many ways to persist data even without a login. But that in turn means wasting a huge amount of resources for anonymous users with hardly any return at all. Why should developers do that?
In my opinion, what I find worse, is this expectation of getting something for nothing. Facebook, Google and others have grown to this size because of this sense of enlightenment. And we complain about them all the time.
So, in short, my suggestion is - if you don't find use of a service without submitting an anonymous email, don't use it. There's really no point in adding a comment which does nothing towards the understanding or increasing our knowledge.
[0]: https://www.techuntold.com/mailinator-alternatives/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25434753
[+] [-] velvetz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
I quit using that model in future projects as I just assumed that block-based editing would always be too “programmery” for users trained on and anchored to Word. I guess I was wrong :)
1: https://github.com/burlesona/nib
[+] [-] tornato7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
Basically going back to Front Page.
[+] [-] inakarmacoma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boraoztunc|5 years ago|reply
:/ I'm still on High Sierra, 10.13.6. Next time Craft, I'll keep using Dropbox Paper, Obsidian, Notion, Evernote and Airtable.
[+] [-] terhechte|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novok|5 years ago|reply
I'm estimating because the app is newer, is the reason why they didnt' put special effort in support very old versions like that.
[+] [-] Starmina|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StevePerkins|5 years ago|reply
Good luck. It does look pretty, perhaps that's enough to reach the target audience.
[+] [-] sam0x17|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayrag|5 years ago|reply
https://obsidian.md
https://zenkit.com/en
[+] [-] micpalmia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phrz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlueTemplar|5 years ago|reply
- WTF happened to .mhtml/.eml ?!?
- .odt : the least bad I guess, but is still a bit heavy, clunky, and uses discrete pages without reflow by default. Also, the underlying language isn't designed to be tinkered with, which is a critical shortcoming in many situations.
- .pdf : inconsistent .mp4 reader support, discrete pages with fixed layout.
- .epub : no .mp4 support
I guess the patents associated with .mp4 might be to blame? I can't wait for AV1 then! (And bring mhtml back!!)
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
Also, what did happen to .eml? Isn't that just a well known extension for raw email format? So in a sense it's used.. billions of times a day?
[+] [-] gigel82|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recovery-mode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonmc12|5 years ago|reply
"Mac Catalyst is a technology that enables you to run iOS code on macOS.."
[+] [-] vitkalisz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply