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Trunk Notes personal wiki closes up shop
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Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 13, 2018 at 11:55 PM
The developer of Trunk Notes (and Beorg) announced the product’s development has ceased.
https://appsonthemove.com/blog/2018/11/12/discontinuingtrunknotes/
“Trunk Notes has been in development since 2009 and unfortunately it has come time to say goodbye. Revenue from Trunk Notes in the past couple of years has been very low. The interest in personal wikis, especially when lacking a companion web or desktop app, just isn’t high enough to generate the sales needed for further development. To give an idea of monthly income from Trunk Notes - it is equivalent to about one hour worked on projects for clients. The lack of competitor personal wikis on the App Store is a very clear indication that not many people are looking for one.”
Posted by Lothar Scholz
Nov 14, 2018 at 02:59 AM
I’m not surprised. This is a very difficult business in a total oversaturated market and with an application that hardly had any unique selling point.
But he did not fully give up and i know why. The life of a successfull (aka making the same level of money you would make in your 9/5 job) independent software vendor is so good, especially when you are able to do free roaming around the world.
He ends the death note with:
“I am actively working on a new app called beorg which for some of you may be a good replacement. It follows some of the same philosophy as Trunk Notes - it is plain text and has plenty of features for power users. It isn’t strictly a note taking app and won’t necessarily meet your needs.”
Posted by Prion
Nov 14, 2018 at 07:31 AM
I am a paying customer of Trunknotes since basically forever, it still lives on the home screen of my iPhone. And I do disagree that there was a lack of interest or competition. Arguably, *any* note app that can link among pages is a basic wiki already and that is one of the busiest categories on iOS and macOS.
The main problem with Trunknotes was that it was (is) perfect for the use case personal wiki on my phone but there was no counterpart on the computer. Yes, I could pair it over wifi and open the page in the browser but that is just a glorified input method with none of the actual functionality coming across to the desktop, not even basic navigation to the next page.
I firmly believe that if the developer had managed to produce a desktop version (there was a prototype years ago but long abandoned) it might be different situation today. But that is easy for me to say.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 14, 2018 at 09:20 AM
Yup, that’s what prevented me from taking it more seriously. It had a lot of outstanding features, including scripting. But without a desktop equivalent, it was difficult to turn it into the universal repository it could have been. Ah well…
Prion said:
> I firmly believe that if the developer had managed to produce a desktop version
> (there was a prototype years ago but long abandoned) it might be different
> situation today. But that is easy for me to say.
Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 14, 2018 at 09:29 AM
I agree with @Prion’s assessment. A wiki should be cross-platform and easily accessed. That said, I think the developer’s view that not many people are interested in this sort of software is probably (increasingly) correct. ConnectedText seems to be waiting for the black car; VoodooPad was sold twice, harvested for revenue, then effectively ignored except for minor bug fixes.
“Beorg” app has been discussed in this forum elsewhere, I believe.