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Bear review
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Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 5, 2016 at 04:45 PM
This was an error—the share extension is available on OS X. Apologies.
>Also, curiously, in my opinion, for a modern OS X app, Bear does not offer a share extension on OS X.
Posted by Luhmann
Nov 5, 2016 at 11:34 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
CloudKit is not “different from iCloud”—CloudKit is Apple’s framework
>for iCloud sync and collaboration. Apple Notes uses the CloudKit
>framework, for example.
As I understand it there are three different things:
- iCloud Drive, which is a file based sync engine used by apps like LetterSpace which keep all their documents as plain text files
- iCloud Core Data which is a now depreciated database sync service via iCloud which was rather clunky
- CloudKit which is Apple’s new database sync service (used for Notes, as you said)
CloudKit is free only up to a certain point, at which case developers do need to pay some fees.
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Nov 6, 2016 at 12:18 AM
Does anybody know if there is a user manual or video overview of it? I cannot find either, I really don’t like wasting time learning features by stumbling into them while shooting in the dark. This is a gripe that I have with the very-similar-to Bear program called Ulysses.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 7, 2016 at 10:43 AM
Well, I’m currently using Bear on all my iOS devices and my Mac, and it’s rapidly becoming my go-to notetaker. That’s because it does indeed have a sharing extension, plus a very good web page import facility (which could be further improved by the addition of the source URL, but that’s a detail). After a couple of issues with synchronisation, the whole sync side appears to be working very well and very quickly - I suspect the initial issues were typical examples of first-time-itis, and were resolved by force-syncing (i.e. editing of the notes involved).
So my two major note-taking apps are now Bear and Apple’s own Notes (the latter because you can “lock” notes in a way that’s not yet supported by Bear, although apparently it’s on the roadmap). Bear is substantially faster than Ulysses when launching, and more flexible on importing (it’s capable of importing Evernote .enex files, for example).
I like Ulysses, but Bear has something Ulysses doesn’t - you can instantly filter notes simply by clicking on tags in notes; in Ulysses you have to set up a filter, you can’t simply click on tags (a peculiar shortcoming). Also, Ulysses doesn’t handle todos. But then, you could argue that Ulysses is a writing app, it’s not an all-rounder.
I tend to agree with Jeffery that it’s a shame proper manuals/instruction videos don’t exist for Bear or indeed Ulysses. Not least because you only gradually become aware of features that would actually be great marketing USPs (such as Bear’s little bar that indicates which notes have todos in them and how far you’ve progressed with them). In Ulysses’ case, it took me a while to work out how customised themes work; I could find no detailed instructions on Ulysses customisation.
With Bear’s promise that they’ll be introducing folding in a later version, and Outlinely for iOS lurking on the horizon, the whole cross-platform Markdown notetaker space is becoming very exciting!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 7, 2016 at 11:27 PM
Oh dear, how embarrassing: I said Bear doesn’t copy the source URL when you copy and paste a web page or part of a web page into a note by pressing the button (installed as a Safari or Chrome extension - I don’t use Google Chrome, but do use Chromium). Actually, it does in both cases, very neatly.
Bear has seriously grown on me!