Is there a good reason for one's Apple Notes to be turned into a "website"? (NB: there's something more meant here than notes-as-a-website, since that implies little more than than "your notes, but with URLs". "Website" is being used here as a euphemism for something else—something more than that alone.) Is that better than your website being a collection of notes?
It seems that the note is the preferred form of interaction, following straightforwardly from the concept of revealed preference—else those in the target audience wouldn't actually be choosing the notes every day, when they could be choosing not-notes.
So that's the value proposition here: taking the thing that its users like more and exchanging it for something that they like less.
Again I gesture towards what we know as revealed preference. People like the idea of blogging. In practice, they don't like actually blogging. This is why we have:
I think this graph is somehow invalidated in recent times. Now we have something in the middle: Minimalist blogging platforms which provide the service sans the need to rebuild the site every time you publish something.
The graph was true, because handling the static site was a big time sink and also prevented me from having a blog. Otherwise you have to go full Wordpress or similar.
Now I use Mataroa. There's also prose.sh, bearblog, smolpub and possibly others. Being able to type something away in your notes app, and share it to somewhere is an unprecedented power enabler. Because it's simple, transparent, and heck, it works.
This is the also proposition of Obsidian publish. Yes you have Quartz4, which needs Node, NPM, and a factorio pipeline plus a server and whatnot. You select the pages, press publish and presto. Your site is up in "5" seconds flat.
Removing the exciting tech and making it simple, thin and invisible is a great way to make people to work your tool. If I want, I can make all the CI/CD dance and animate it in the process to entertain myself, but no. I want a simple, minimalist blog with a nice layout. Hence Mataroa.
Alto caters to the same demographic, and is brilliant for that.
I think that it is kinda cool to convert your notes to a website, especially if you want to easily share them. I just created a Shortcut that sends my modified notes to an email address, and then I use Eleventy to build a website. Here is the result: https://albertoprado70.github.io/Mini/this-blog-uses-ios-not...
Whenever I export notes from Apple Notes it replaces the Markdown title marker `# Title goes here` with `*Title goes here *****` or something similar. Any notes on this?
Notes is a writing tool that approachable and easy to use. It also works across the ecosystem on a syncing platform I already pay for and whose privacy I am comfortable with. I like the idea of setting up a simple text based website without needing to adopt a new editor. That's plenty value prop to me.
I need to share a doc with family that is basically the agenda for our reunion.
There is no service (Google, iCloud) that we all have access to, and I do not want the doc I share to be full of prompts for the people I share it with to join any service (this disqualifies Dropbox paper).
I need to be able to update this doc on my phone.
I have this need a couple times a yeat, so this app appeals to me (haven't tried it yet!)
I suppose the use case for using Notes to back a website is the same reason you'd use Notes over Notion, Obsidian, Todo apps, Evernote, and everything else:
Notes are built-in to your Macbook and iPhone, and they sync across them, and you're probably already using it.
Every time I try to use a new tool, I end up going back to Notes.
I noticed a trend with gen z at least that they use Apple Messages and Apple Notes for everything. Even scheduling and stuff, I had a shared note sent to me. So probably a replacement for Notion.
It seems that the note is the preferred form of interaction, following straightforwardly from the concept of revealed preference—else those in the target audience wouldn't actually be choosing the notes every day, when they could be choosing not-notes.
So that's the value proposition here: taking the thing that its users like more and exchanging it for something that they like less.