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submitted 11 months ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

Bear 2 is a major update to the popular note-taking app Bear, which was an immediate hit when it launched in 2016. The new version has taken a long time to build, over 5 years, as the developers decided to completely rewrite the underlying text editor to enable features like tables, GIFs, and footnotes. The developer says building a great text editing system proved more difficult than expected due to edge cases and complications. While Bear 2 has many new features, the developer wants to stay focused on the needs of average users rather than power users, and is skeptical of AI assistants in note-taking apps for now. Based on my experience with the beta, Bear 2 still captures what made the original great - it's simple and fast like Apple Notes but with more powerful features.

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[-] sin_free_for_00_days@lemmy.one 38 points 11 months ago

If anyone cares, this is an Apple thing.

[-] SemioticStandard@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago

I really love Bear, and I’m immensely relieved they’re not trying to bake AI garbage into it.

[-] lckdscl@whiskers.bim.boats 7 points 11 months ago

Typical Verge headline..."A terrific notes app [for the Apple ecosystem]". FTFY.

Also, I wouldn't call it simple. A simple notes "app" is a plain text or markdown editor.

[-] thatonedude1210@beehaw.org 6 points 11 months ago

Bear was phenomenal when I had an all Apple ecosystem. I don’t anymore, so I’m trying to replicate it with notion. Works out pretty well.

[-] kuchaibee@beehaw.org 6 points 11 months ago

I love Bear and used to use it a lot, but don't want to be locked into just apple stuff. Still I am glad to see they're still going strong and I'm really happy they aren't forcing AI integration (which is something Notion has done/is currently doing and monetizing...).

[-] albsen@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago

Looks nice, but I moved to Joplin from my ancient evernote account recently. Joplin (fully #FOSS) and syncs via nextcloud, Dropbox or others and is fully end to end encrypted.

[-] Jagget@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Though it’s without web app, but I owe all my notes in Obsidian + Logseq. Sync over iCloud on all 3 my devices (Windows, MacBook, iPhone)

[-] trashhalo@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

logseq is amazing. I love that tool. I made the graph analysis plugin. have you ever tried it?

[-] Jagget@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Not yet. I discovered Logseq just about a week ago, so there is no much of a graph to analyze. But I sure will!

this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
28 points (100.0% liked)

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