New app, Bike

Posted by MadaboutDana
May 18, 2022 at 05:49 PM

I was checking through Hog Bay’s posts, of which there are (currently) only two, and found the “Moby Dick” files Jesse uses to test the speed of, yes, you guessed it, Bike (and other apps).

And just for a laugh, I opened the markdown version of the file (1.2 MB in size) in various markdown apps. Here’s how they all did:

Bear – imported, opened, scrolled like a rocket; no pauses at all.
iaWriter – ditto (with a very nice instant markdown preview, too)
FSNotes – ditto
Highland 2 – ditto (including list of chapter headings)
MacJournal – ditto (and backed it up in seconds, as it automatically does)
MWeb Pro – ditto
Nota – ditto (nice app, this; can easily handle large folders full of markdown files)
Notebooks – ditto (and displayed it very nicely in markdown preview)
Taio – ditto
Typora – ditto (including list of chapter headings)
Zettlr – after a few seconds’ pause, loosened up and scrolled as fast as any of the others, with list of chapter headings

Now granted I’m running these apps on a new MacBook Pro 14 (base-level configuration), which is really quite fast – even so, I am reassured by the speed and quality of all the above-mentioned apps, and slightly baffled by Jesse’s obsessive emphasis on the ability to load and scroll through a very large document. I mean, you don’t have to slim down your app to the point of having no real features at all to benefit from fast loading and scrolling (and editing, for that matter). So what’s his point? In short, what’s the point of Bike (I’ve got some very large outlines in Dynalist, and they don’t slow down noticeably in any of the apps – even though they’re markdown-compatible)?

Sigh.