Wow! This is so exciting, darlings! ProjectBook has arrived in Europe at last - and has turned into a very smooth-running Mac/iOS app rechristened NoteSuite.

What a great combo of goodies: outlining as a matter of course, collated todos (from any and all notes with todos in them), ability to find related notes, keywords, automatic and manual linking... what can I say? The only thing that's not 100% a-m-a-z-ing about it is the fact that it doesn't exist for PC!

I'm going to be doing some serious stress-testing over the next few days to see if the initially gorgeous impression is offset by any negatives, but so far it's looking truly fantastic!

Cheers,
Bill

You beat me to it, Bill.

I've had a license for the iPad version of ProjectBook, which I liked, but which was missing connectivity to other apps -- oh, it was there, just not powerful enough for me to commit to PB as my iPad notes app. NoteSuite looks like it is the real deal. I was able to sync the notes on my iPad with the Mac version of NS very quickly and easily through iCloud. One thing you didn't mention, is that the introductory price for the Mac version is just $4.99 U.S. -- can I assume it is similarly priced in Europe? And they promise that there will be no subscription fees!

I'll be looking forward to your reports, and I will offer mine as well.

Steve Z.

Yes, at the moment the iOS app is available for just £1.49 from iTunes; I'm not sure what the Mac App price is, because I don't have a Mac (I confess I'm wavering...).

So deffo a bargain! I've been playing, and it all seems to run very smoothly and neatly. And it links in to Dropbox, Box, Google Drive etc. very nicely indeed! Because I have a Samsung Galaxy Note, I've recently - with the upgrade to Android 4.1.1 - been upgraded to 50GB of Dropbox storage for free! Very convenient.

It's a sophisticated piece of software, there's no doubt of that. In fact I've not seen anything quite as sophisticated as this since the advent of my beloved Notebooks (still my go-to information storage app, not least because it DOES have a PC client...). The related notes option is very clever. I'm going to load up with data and see if the file indexing (of e.g. .doc, .pdf, .xls files etc.) works, too.

Cheers,
Bill

Blimey, I've been impressed by the smart functions so far. The way you can create actual folders that also have a virtual 'smart' component (i.e. show documents that match certain keywords, regardless of where they are in the notebook) is seriously cool. I haven't got enough info in here to do some proper 'related notes' comparisons, but gimme time...

Search engine is nice, too (long-term readers will know how that MATTERS to me...).

Not available in the German AppStore so far :-(

Thanks, Bill. Just downloaded it - £2.99 in the UK Mac App Store. What I can say at the moment is that its signature colour is a nice, graded blue.

Well, I'm playing with NoteSuite in earnest now, and I can say that its web page import function is faultless! I'm currently doing a lot of research into various things on my PC (not Mac, unfortunately, otherwise this process would be even more seamless). Whenever I find a page I want to include in my research database, I send the URL to my iPad using myPhoneDesktop. The equivalent app on my iPad opens the page in Safari. In Safari, I press 'copy'; then I open NoteSuite, which immediately asks me if I want to import the web page in its entirety, or as an article. I add a few tags, then press the 'Clip' button - and hey presto, a few seconds later, the entire web page (fully formatted - impressive!) appears in NoteSuite. And it's automatically indexed, too.

The above procedure is fast and practical, and has seriously impressed me with NoteSuite's consistency and stability - no crashes so far, no problems importing complex pages (e.g. from Amazon). Faultless indexing. Wow. On the other hand, it's vexing: I managed to talk myself out of moving over to Mac last time I upgraded my laptop (I use a very pleasant 13" Lenovo running, I confess, Windows 7 - not because I'm "afraid" of 8, which I've played with fairly extensively, but because too many of my fave progs don't run on it); now I'm gnashing my teeth, because so many of my favorite apps have Mac equivalents - but not PC equivalents. Curses!

However, it'll do for the time being! Now I need to experiment with other types of file...

Cheers,
Bill

Silly me - what a complicated process. After sending the URL from my PC to my iPad using myPhoneDesktop, I simply copy the URL to the iPad's clipboard, which is where NoteSuite is picking it up from in the first place. No need to involve Safari at all!

D'uh! Sorry about that!

After lots of playing about with NoteSuite (for iOS: I remind readers I don't have a Mac), and importing lots of documents/pages, I have concluded:

- it's really very good. Very stable, indexing appears to work very well.
- it doesn't import web pages as well as Alfons Schmid's Notebooks for iOS (it doesn't preserve formatting as well), but it handles imported web pages better (faster and more fluid). I save web pages that really interest me to Notebooks by cutting and pasting the article bits, however, and in this respect Notebooks is the equal of - and in fact slightly superior to - NoteSuite.
- the search function is good - again, on a par with Notebooks's (very good) search function (highlighting of search terms, fast search within notes as an extra function etc.).
- image/graphics handling is actually very impressive - fast and fluid, with great word-wrap options (but see below).
- the range of Cloud sync options is awesome! As is the range of Cloud import options.
- the 'Related Notes' function really works!

I did manage to unearth a bug, by dumping graphics and drawings on a page that also had an extensive outline to-do list, and then opening and closing the outline (which caused all the images to vanish!). But this would be, I suspect, an unusual scenario - I was deliberately stress-testing a single note to see just how much I could cram into it!

There are also hints in the blog and product descriptions that the developer is thinking of bringing NoteSuite to more platforms. Very encouraging!

I am on the point of tentatively concluding that you could actually use NoteSuite as a replacement file system - the combination of indexing, tagging, folders and auto-linking (the 'Related Notes' function, plus the customisable folders function) is moving in precisely that direction. For an app that started on iOS, that's impressive!

I'd love to know what Mac users of the app think?

Cheers,
Bill

I just published a review of NoteSuite on my blog, which, if you are interested, you can find here:

http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/notesuite-the-ultimate-ipad-note-keeper/

My conclusions are similar to Bill's. I like NoteSuite a lot -- much more than Evernote. But since Evernote is available on so many other platforms, it will continue to be my go to note taker for many things, especially those that relate to my office, where I work on a Windows PC.

Steve Z.

Thanks Steve.

There is also a review of the Mac/iOS combo of NoteSuite on appstorm: http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/productivity-review/notesuite-notes-and-todos-combined-in-a-powerful-new-app/#more-60128

It's still not available in Germany. So, I will stick with Evernote as it it cross-platform and as I have tons of material in it.

Franz

Thanks for the review Steve. I've been playing around with NoteSuite and it's pretty impressive. Where I'm at right now:

* I really like the web clipping features
* ... and the "related notes" automation
* ... and the outlining and formatting tools
* I very much do not like the lack of a way to export anything

But that's not quite right, is it. Actually, NoteSuite can export stuff, just not very well. You can export any individual note (or attachment) to a wide variety of targets, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box etc., in which case NoteSuite converts the note to a PDF. This is deffo a useful feature.

What you can't do is specify a particular format, or export more than one note at a time (at least, I haven't found a way of doing that yet).

I need to correct myself on this. When you send a note via e-mail or save to Dropbox, you can in fact export plain text. It is when using the "Open in other app" command that you only get a PDF export... just figured this out. Sorry for creating confusion.

Still, it would be nice to be able to open text in other apps, or (pie in the sky) save outlines as OPML.

MadaboutDana wrote:

But that's not quite right, is it. Actually, NoteSuite can export stuff,
just not very well. You can export any individual note (or attachment)
to a wide variety of targets, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box etc.,
in which case NoteSuite converts the note to a PDF. This is deffo a
useful feature.

What you can't do is specify a particular format, or export more than
one note at a time (at least, I haven't found a way of doing that yet).