I see that the much vaunted version 2 of Bear is now available. Based on the hype leading up to this release, I find the new release somewhat underwhelming. There was a lot of talk early on about their new editor engine, which I think was called Panda. But all that seems to be delivered is just a catch up to other apps already out there, including:

- backlinks
- tables
- footnotes
- markdown hiding

And a lot more. Don't get me wrong, for people using Bear, this is a significant upgrade. But it doesn't seem to offer any incentive to switch to Bear from other apps. The $30 annual subscription is a bit less than other apps (such as Ulysses, which is also Apple-eco-system exclusive as well).

https://bear.app

Does anyone have a counter point of view? I'm curious.

Steve

I agree these additions bring parity to other apps. However, I like Bear for many of the pre-existing features. Typography with hidden markdown is great. I also like the note organization scheme via nested tags, although you can also approximate this in Notes with smart folders. However, my favorite feature is a very nice web page markdown import feature that's activated via browser extensions or the share sheet in iOS.

I think it's a polished and great-looking follow-up, but as The Verge pointed out it took "forever" to come out. Bear done a very nice job at fixing a lot of deficiencies of the previous version, including fonts, theming, a hidden/WYSIWYG Markdown option, tables - as well as updating to meet features of current hot apps, like crosslinks.

In 2023 it seems like it's playing catch-up to some apps (like only now offering in-note find/replace), and still having a hard time differentiating itself from free/cheaper ones. It's slotted in as a supercharged notes app, but doesn't compete well with longform writing apps or project-oriented apps.

The current version has some bugs. On Reddit people are complaining about various issues, including crashes when opening PDFs and crashes when backing up notes. And by now adopting the CommonMark standard in Bear 2, everyone's bullet points made in Bear 1.x has discovered that they have all been irrevocably turned into asterisks in this version.

$30/year feels like a fairly reasonable price, even though it's twice the old subscription rate. ($30/yr is my grandfathered Ulysses rate [normally $40/yr].) But I don't think I could use Bear as well for the longform writing I do in Ulysses (eg word count and goals, 'glueing' chapters, proofreading functionality, fully-justified text option). For people who love tags a la Gmail, Bear might be the right app, but I still prefer the folder metaphor (which includes the ability to include keyword tags) in Ulysses.

And for mere notetaking $30/yr seems too pricey for the small number of additional features over the built-in Apple Notes. Indeed, although I have Bear on my Mac and one can make unlimited notes in the free version, I still resort to Apple Notes because there isn't enough reason for me to switch.

Some people might prefer Notion, which is cross-platform, is built for sharing and work within teams, and is better for working on projects than just notes. And for individual use it's free. But Bear has better, more advanced markup support, and rich previews/WYSIWYG, and uses Apple's Data Detectors for smart recognition of dates, emails, addresses etc to be acted on. (Earlier versions of Notion didn't, but it's possible they do now.) And for writing Bear has a Focus Mode, which is something very useful I employ in Ulysses. (Also: I think Notion is a UI mess and I see so many people wasting countless hours tweaking and reworking their Notion pages.)

Bear Pro claims e2e encryption while Notion only offers it at rest and not e2e. I say claims because it's apparently not utilizing Apple's CloudKit e2e implementation for backward compatibility reasons.

https://beta.bear.app/t/will-bear-get-zero-knowledge-encryption-with-icloud-advanced-data-protection/6318/20

On the pure notetaking side, Obsidian is probably Bear's major competitor. The free version is powerful, and the plugin architecture extends functionality considerably. But as I read somewhere Obsidian is the Linux of notetaking apps; it's a pretty geeky tool and not ideal unless you don't mind periodically evaluating competing similar plugins and themes, and updating plugins regularly (and depending on devs to keep working on your favorite plugins).

steve-rogers wrote:

my favorite feature is a very nice web page markdown import
feature that's activated via browser extensions

For amost a decade I've used a PopClip
https://pilotmoon.com/popclip/

extension
https://brettterpstra.com/2013/12/23/web-markdownifier-for-popclip/

for that; it enables use on any text anywhere.

I haven't seen a head-to-head comparison, but it seems that Apple Notes under iOS/macOS 17 will be pretty much on par with Bear 2.

I love Bear. It is a beautiful app. But development is the most glacial of any competitor. Sometimes it seems that Bear is developed during an occasional coffee break by someone whose day job requires a lot of travel away from the office.

I'm luck to have legacy pricing on Bear Pro, and just for nostalgia I keep Bear in my Mac's dock and on the first page of my iPhone, but I rarely use it. Time was, Bear was the best way to capture notes with images, but that time passed by Bear long long ago. Obsidian on the phone is a cluster and best avoided, but Notes is good, and Agenda is excellent and surpassed Bear's feature set years ago.

But, I still love Bear, if only to look at it from time to time.

Cool! I use Popclip all the time for text manipulation, but had not come across that extension, so thanks for that. Know of an equivalent for iOS?

satis wrote:

steve-rogers wrote:
> my favorite feature is a very nice web page markdown import
> feature that's activated via browser extensions

For amost a decade I've used a PopClip
https://pilotmoon.com/popclip/

extension
https://brettterpstra.com/2013/12/23/web-markdownifier-for-popclip/

for that; it enables use on any text anywhere.

steve-rogers wrote:

Know of an equivalent
for iOS?

Terpstra says on his PopClip extension page that it is based on his Marker bookmarklet

https://brettterpstra.com/2013/12/22/marker-web-selections-to-markdown/

but I don't know if it still works (or has been updated) after a decade. At any rate it *might* work on mobile Safari.

I don't use iOS bookmarklets but prior to the use of Share Extensions they used to be popular. Not sure if it still works, but you create a bookmark, then edit it by pasting in the bookmarklet Javascript. Here's a 2013 collection of bookmarklets for iOS that someone compiled

https://www.labnol.org/software/iphone-ipad-bookmarklets/18969/

Adopting markdown format and storing it in an internal database is just pointless to me.

I trashed Bear within the first few minutes I downloaded it.

Dellu wrote:

Adopting markdown format and storing it in an internal database is just
pointless to me.

But it's become a very popular design decision. Though usually with added coloured text and underlining. Writemonkey 3 was possibly one of the first to do it, but added the ability to sync with markdown files so there was never a need to rely on the json database. And others (eg Heptabase) will do daily backups to markdown files.

It feels that some of them just use markdown as a marketing ploy.

Personally I'm going the other way. Recently switched all my writing (but not notes) to Word; rich text in files.

Ha, this more or less describes my position – except I also use Bear to capture interesting web pages (although more and more, I rely on History Book to do that automatically). The Bear extension for Safari is very good (but then, UpNote's extension is also good, and available for other browsers as well).

I was underwhelmed by their folding, although there is a convenient keyboard shortcut. But compared with e.g. Obsidian, it's relatively clunky. You can, of course, capture web pages to Obsidian as well, if you really want to (there's a plugin for that ;-)).

But Bear remains a very good-looking app, with an excellent search function and a very elegant handling of hierarchical tags (although here again, Obsidian is just as capable). So like @Paul, I'm reluctant to get rid of it (especially since I subscribe at the original price).

Paul Korm wrote:

I haven't seen a head-to-head comparison, but it seems that Apple Notes
under iOS/macOS 17 will be pretty much on par with Bear 2.

I love Bear. It is a beautiful app. But development is the most
glacial of any competitor. Sometimes it seems that Bear is developed
during an occasional coffee break by someone whose day job requires a
lot of travel away from the office.

I'm luck to have legacy pricing on Bear Pro, and just for nostalgia I
keep Bear in my Mac's dock and on the first page of my iPhone, but I
rarely use it. Time was, Bear was the best way to capture notes with
images, but that time passed by Bear long long ago. Obsidian on the
phone is a cluster and best avoided, but Notes is good, and Agenda is
excellent and surpassed Bear's feature set years ago.

But, I still love Bear, if only to look at it from time to time.

Off-topic, but thanks for mentioning History Book. I hadn't come across this plugin - it's badass!

MadaboutDana wrote:

Ha, this more or less describes my position – except I also
use Bear to capture interesting web pages (although more and more, I
rely on History Book to do that automatically). The Bear extension for
Safari is very good (but then, UpNote's extension is also good, and
available for other browsers as well).

I was underwhelmed by their folding, although there is a convenient
keyboard shortcut. But compared with e.g. Obsidian, it's relatively
clunky. You can, of course, capture web pages to Obsidian as well, if
you really want to (there's a plugin for that ;-)).

But Bear remains a very good-looking app, with an excellent search
function and a very elegant handling of hierarchical tags (although here
again, Obsidian is just as capable). So like @Paul, I'm reluctant to get
rid of it (especially since I subscribe at the original price).

Paul Korm wrote:
I haven't seen a head-to-head comparison, but it seems that Apple Notes
>under iOS/macOS 17 will be pretty much on par with Bear 2.
>
>I love Bear. It is a beautiful app. But development is the most
>glacial of any competitor. Sometimes it seems that Bear is developed
>during an occasional coffee break by someone whose day job requires a
>lot of travel away from the office.
>
>I'm luck to have legacy pricing on Bear Pro, and just for nostalgia I
>keep Bear in my Mac's dock and on the first page of my iPhone, but I
>rarely use it. Time was, Bear was the best way to capture notes with
>images, but that time passed by Bear long long ago. Obsidian on the
>phone is a cluster and best avoided, but Notes is good, and Agenda is
>excellent and surpassed Bear's feature set years ago.
>
>But, I still love Bear, if only to look at it from time to time.

I wish vendors would keep in mind old-school types like me. If an app doesn't work with local storage, maintains a separate file per project, and will let me arrange my own sync via methods I choose then I don't want to use it.

It's silly of me to run from cloud sync. Unfortunately, it chills my creativity to think a work in progress could be read by someone with no idea why I'm writing my drivel.

One could imagine the SWAT team showing up after a dedicated sysadmin found my plans for breaking into Fort Knox with a spork and a can of WD40. Fiction, of course, but that's just what an international arch villain would say, isn't it?

I suppose this is worth worrying about. A little bit. Maybe more. But on the other hand, I don't recall ever seeing the internet all outraged because someone dug through iCloud or AWS or elsewhere to find someone's private poems. I don't think there's a hacker out there who would care to know what I think about anything, let alone go through the effort to find out. This kind of hacking is more likely to be at the hands of someone at a party who idly picks up my journal and flips through it.

Amontillado wrote:

It's silly of me to run from cloud sync. Unfortunately, it chills my
creativity to think a work in progress could be read by someone with no
idea why I'm writing my drivel.

Love it. Of course, if your spork was really SporkGPT, maybe that *would* be more serious...

Or not, of course. As I keep reminding people (yep, tedious), AI should really be termed II (Imitation Intelligence).

Amontillado wrote:

I wish vendors would keep in mind old-school types like me. If an app
doesn't work with local storage, maintains a separate file per project,
and will let me arrange my own sync via methods I choose then I don't
want to use it.

It's silly of me to run from cloud sync. Unfortunately, it chills my
creativity to think a work in progress could be read by someone with no
idea why I'm writing my drivel.

One could imagine the SWAT team showing up after a dedicated sysadmin
found my plans for breaking into Fort Knox with a spork and a can of
WD40. Fiction, of course, but that's just what an international arch
villain would say, isn't it?

Ha! Love it. Imitation Intelligence. That could apply to a few people in the news, too.

Michael Lopp (Rands In Repose) is a longtime Bear user. He wrote about the update on his blog.

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/300-times-a-day/

Still not bitten by the Bear bug, but I was impressed by Curtis McHale's just-uploaded 46-minute-long "first look" of Bear 2.x for the Mac. A lot of power in the app, and it looks great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCYL4qbev4g

I like that the video is not merely a tribute to the app, and that he even scans for complaints on the the Bear subreddit. McHale discerned that the themes generally replicated common programming color themes, something I'd missed but seems obvious now. And I liked his real-time, step-by-step creation of a Shortcut for the app.

$30/year still seems excessive to me, especially since that's the grandfathered rate I've been paying for Ulysses, which has some different features but is better suited for the type of writing app I prefer to live inside.