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Looking for a Notebook program (that looks notebooky)

VideoBeagle

VideoBeagle

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
823
18
App Q&A testing by request.
I'm looking to replace Notetaker which requires old Java runtimes to work with a program that functions sililarly with note taking, but I'm wanting to keep the notebook like appearance if possible (because I like it).

Screen Shot 2016-04-03 at 10.52.41 PM.png

Anyone know of anything?
 
I have long thought that Microsoft OneNote has an organizational scheme that is most similar to a traditional notebook - with notebooks, tabs, and pages being the hierarchy. It doesn't have the extra visual stuff like the spiral bound in your picture, but set your default paper to lined and it functions very much like a digital replica of a paper notebook.
 
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Maybe Notability? I doubt you'd use the handwriting features, (which come into play rather more on iOS), but it has the option for various paper colours and types (ruled, squared - both at various sizes), and you can import PDFs, add images to your documents, etc.
 
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OneNote and Notability. Both are (or can be) similar in look to notebook pages, and the apps work similarly on Macs and iPads.

When you want to extend your note-taking to an iPad (you probably will at some point), especially with the new Pencil for handwritten notes, you will be ready with these apps.
 
VideoBeagle said:
Can one note be set up to have like new pages with the same fields on it?
Like bills I pay each moonth, so I each month gets a page?
Click to expand...
Yes. While OneNote can be used as a quick-and-simple note-taking app, it is possible to set it up with formatted note sections or "pages" that contain tables (if you want to do it that way).

See the screenshot of the Mac version of OneNote in the "Home" tab. This note has an embedded table showing some new features. You could easily do your bill-paying setup as a table in one page, or you could devote a "section" to this with each "page" representing one of your bills. Or maybe each page representing a month's worth of bills. Several ways to do this.
Screen%20Shot%202016-04-12_zpsh811yrwm.jpg


You can think of OneNote as a cross between Excel and Word, but simpler, and set up for easy creation of many "notes" (or sections, or pages, or whatever you want to call them). There are many ways to use it and set it up.

You could even do what you want in Notability, but the organizational tools are simpler and less extensive. Notability presents you with something closer to a blank page, with fewer "tools" showing. You can embed objects and set up an organizational hierarchy, but the tools are not staring you in the face.
 
VideoBeagle said:
Thanks! I'll look into Notability... One Note's $0 is appealing...which I imagine is why M$ has it that way :)
Click to expand...

It's a tie-in to their Office365 program. It's free on devices like the iPad, but if you want the full desktop versions, you're going to have to pay. OneNote is WAY more powerful than any of these other apps on the desktop. On iOS it is not up to par yet, and developing very quickly. One benefit of OneNote is that the file format is likely to hang around for a long, long time. With these smaller apps you can export everything automatically as PDF, but I can't see most of them being around 5, 10 years from now.
 
zhenya said:
It's a tie-in to their Office365 program. It's free on devices like the iPad, but if you want the full desktop versions, you're going to have to pay. OneNote is WAY more powerful than any of these other apps on the desktop. On iOS it is not up to par yet, and developing very quickly. One benefit of OneNote is that the file format is likely to hang around for a long, long time. With these smaller apps you can export everything automatically as PDF, but I can't see most of them being around 5, 10 years from now.
Click to expand...

It's free in the Mac App store. I don't believe it requires Office 365 anymore either. (At least not for now)
 
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