Note-Taking App for PPC and "above"

[bobesch]

After preparing an iBookG4 1.33 with an mSATA-upgrade for my son as a birthday present and for use at first-year student I've been looking for a comprehensive, non-distracting, all-in-one, fast and versatile note-taking app for PPC, which is capable of "handshaking" to it's intel-mac successors.
I went through the whole thread of this very informative thread about OneNote substitutes on Mac ranging from 2004 to 2011 "What is the Mac equivalent to Microsoft OneNote?" https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-is-the-mac-equivalent-to-microsoft-onenote.426460/
I checked and downloaded all the mentioned and available software, to see, what's still possible on PPC/Leopard.
Here's an overview of the latest versions, that run on PPC/Leopard (for a lot of them I had to use the wayback-machine and getting/purchasing a license will need an individual request by email...)
I'm just at the beginning to check and compare pros's and con's...

- Curio /zengobi (v.7.4.4)*
- DEVONthinkPro (v.2.3.5)*
- Evernote (v.2.2.3)
- Journler (2.5.5) (-)
- MacJournal (5.2.7) (?)
- Notebook /CircusPonies (v.3.x) (?)
- Pear Note (2.1.1)*
- Scrivener (v.2.3)*
- SOHO-Notes (v.9.3.6)*
- Together (v.2.3.11) (?)
- VoodooPad Lite/Standard/Pro (4.3.6)*
- Word 2004/2008 (Notebook-Layout)
- Yojimbo (3.0.3) (?)

*) still available/purchase via official homepage.
(-) discontinued but website/download still working
(?) still available via wayback-machine, but possibility of purchase only on email-request

 

[Dronecatcher]

If it's simple note taking, won't TextEdit suffice? It also has drag and drop for images, audio, video etc.

 

[bobesch]

If it's simple note taking, won't TextEdit suffice? It also has drag and drop for images, audio, video etc.

It would be nice to keep things together in a kind of folder-style with different folders for different subjects.
With TextEdit Finder could offer the structure of folders and Spotlight will help to search for stuff, but it lacks of a kind of "intelligent" groups that reorganzie stuff for certain purposes without moving the documents off their initial location.
I guess DEVONthink does things fine for me. Same as "Togeter". With Together files can be located within Finder too - with DEVONthink everything disappears within a single container-file like with former iPhoto. I'm still a bit anxious to trust single-containers for my paperless-office, therefor I use Togeter for this purpose. But I started to put all my scanned journals as searchable PDFs into DEVONthink, which does the OCR-job nice and unobstrusive in the background.
Getting back to my son's iBook, I guess he will mainly use pencil&paper for taking notes ... So maybe Evernote might be a nice solution because of it's text-recognition capacities even for hand-written documents.
For myself I use iPhone with MentalNotes and BT-keyboard to take notes. It's simple to use and text, fotos and scetches can be combined in a time-line (but are able to be moved to another location).
Maybe pencil&paper, the iPhone with Evernote plus Scannable and some other notetaking app plus BT-KB will make it on the long run and the iBook keeps sitting in the drawer ... Never mind - it's good fun to look how get the best out of the old hardware.
btw: how can you attach audio to TextEdit?

 

[Dronecatcher]

btw: how can you attach audio to TextEdit?

I see...if organisation is key then yes, something more sophisticated is required.

Attaching audio, images and video is just drag and drop. Quicktime can be your audio/video recorder (with iSight or camera) if needed, the content can be linked or embedded.

 

[bobesch]

If it's simple note taking, won't TextEdit suffice? It also has drag and drop for images, audio, video etc.

On the second look "simple" TextEdit with embedded images, audio and even video plus Finder and a hirarchie of folders in combination with Spotlight is as brilliant as simple! And the most versatile way to keep your stuff synched between all versions of OSX from Tiger up to El Capitan.
That system will also hold nativ PDFs, images, videos etc. Files may be tagged (native or with the help of TagIt) and Intelligent-Folders would be made of "Alias" files.
And everthing by means that are on-board of OSX from its beginnings.
I'm really impressed after you've opened my eyes about these options.
Looking at all the NoteTaking/Gathering Apps for OSX or iOS they just put together all these elements into a box with less or more different and convenient xtras but with the disadvantage of being locked into any special system/file-format/etc.
Thanks for this inspiring point of view about TextEdit!

 

[bobesch]

Tomboy

Just re-discovered TOMBOY today. http://www.mono-project.com/
A cross-platform wiki-like text-only note-taking app based on .net framework achitecture.
Needs "MONO" ("Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications part of the .NET Foundation.") http://www.mono-project.com/
Lateste Mono for PPC can be downloaded here: http://download.mono-project.com/archive/2.10.2/
I remember using it on Ubuntu a few years ago as a link between OSX, Linux and WinXP.
Now I found it helpful to link OSX/PCC with OSX/intel.



A really nice feature: if you change the header of any note, the corresponding you were asked if the hyperlink is to be renamed as well...

 

[swamprock]

I use xPad for a simple note-taking app. It's a universal binary and free as well, although it's no longer being maintained.

http://www.getxpad.com/

 

[bobesch]

I use xPad for a simple note-taking app. It's a universal binary and free as well, although it's no longer being maintained.
http://www.getxpad.com/

Fine - it can hold images too.
Does it run on El Capitan?
[doublepost=1471797657][/doublepost]About Sync ...
Here's an upgrade about synching PPC/MobileDevice/intelMacs

MacJournal: Sync works text-only, so images etc. stay on their respective source-database
MJ v.5.x works on Tiger and Leopard. Synching with MJ for iOS is very easy to setup and runs fast. Both devices need to be in the same network (using the PPC a local hotspot unfortunately doesn't work out since iOS9 doesn't log into the PPC hotspot... )

SOHO Note: keeps text-files with embedded attachments and syncs fine with iOS9 (needs two separate Apps for both iPhone and iPad). Also works as a kind of fiie storage and viewer for PDF, images etc.
"Handwritten" stuff can be created with e.g. Paintbrush and added with copy&paste, but after having the images pasted to a multipage document within SOHOnotes no further editing of that picture is possible.
So far the most versatile option for PPC/iOS/intelMacs.

...

 

[mectojic]

Coming back from the year 2022. I wondered if anyone has got a working note-sync app that could sync between PPC, classic + modern iOS, and Intel/AS. All I need is text that can be edited.

The closest I can get right now is just to send myself emails, and pull them, edit and email back when needed. But that's clunky.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Coming back from the year 2022. I wondered if anyone has got a working note-sync app that could sync between PPC, classic + modern iOS, and Intel/AS. All I need is text that can be edited.

The closest I can get right now is just to send myself emails, and pull them, edit and email back when needed. But that's clunky.

Evernote

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/evernote

 

[dextructor]

For OSX I don't have a solution, because the TLS hell don't help connecting to modern servers and Nextcloud still offer WebDav to access my notes from everything that can use this "modern" security. So unless I try some SquidProxy or other things if they work, OSX until Leopard it's a no go.

For more modern OSX they have a Desktop client (for 10.10 and up) but since I don't have any computer running this versions of OSX test it for yourself, they sync what you want (if you only wanna your notes to sync, just select it)

In Linux they also have their client (In Void it's the latest version even available for 32 and 64 PPC), if I don't wanna install the client many file managers allow me to connect via WebDav and access my notes.

They also have a Windows client, but almost anything it's made for Windows.

For the mobile (iOS and Android) they also have their respective clients and I access my notes.

Differently from Evernote and other apps, my notes are in MD extension that's compatible with any text editor, and if I really wanna, I can change it to TXT without any consequence for any apps (but I like MD for the flexibility and resources consuming almost any extra time)

 

[eyoungren]

Coming back from the year 2022. I wondered if anyone has got a working note-sync app that could sync between PPC, classic + modern iOS, and Intel/AS. All I need is text that can be edited.

The closest I can get right now is just to send myself emails, and pull them, edit and email back when needed. But that's clunky.

keep.google.com

????

Could put that in a Fluid instance if you really want an app.

 

[ww2_1943]

Evernote

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/evernote

I was the one who uploaded that to the Garden. I had to search through the Wayback Machine. Just a few notes (no pun intended)

- This is the final version that will work on OS X 10.5.8. It will also work in 10.6. However, it is not the newest version that will work with 10.6.

- There are earlier versions that should work on earlier versions of 10.5 and 10.4. I have not looked though.

- Legacy support for Evernote may not be around much longer. Honestly, I would get the paid version if I knew the app will continue to work for the rest of the year. Evernote was acquired by another company that wants to make this app part of their own suite. I think there is a good chance that they are going to completely rewrite the app to work with their own apps which seem to share some commonalities. This is all conjecture on my part.

 

[crimsonRE]

I use https://anotepad.com/ - allows making plain text and RTF notes, imports Word & PDFs. And is accessible via TenFourFox/IWPPC (and I run NoScript to get rid of the ads). You can create folders in which to save your notes, don't have so many that I need to search through things...

 

[ww2_1943]

I wonder what is happening with this. I wanted to download the app to see if it is compatible with iOS 16 but it cost $4.99. According to the app store it has not been updated in 4 years.

Pear Note for Mac - Useful Fruit Software

Pear Note for Mac is a note-taking utility for Mac that records audio, video, and slides while you take your notes, so later you can find what was being said when you typed something.

www.usefulfruit.com

If I am reading this correctly, cloud storage is done through DropBox which dropped PPC support a long time ago. I am curious if this could be a work around for accessing DropBox at least in some capacity. There is a 30 day free trial. I am going to try that out this week and report back. If it works on my PPC, I will take the chance and buy the app. It is not very useful to me if I can't use this with my phone.

 

[bobesch]

Coming back from the year 2022. I wondered if anyone has got a working note-sync app that could sync between PPC, classic + modern iOS, and Intel/AS. All I need is text that can be edited.

The closest I can get right now is just to send myself emails, and pull them, edit and email back when needed. But that's clunky.

My choice for that wide range of operating systems is HanDBase.
- iOS (old and new)
- PPC- and intel-Macs plus Virtual Win2k
- Win2k and above
- mac OS9 (via emulated Win2k)
and a lot more ... (I'm a fellow user since PalmOS)
Future of HanDBase is but uncertain, since the userbase is shrinking.
There's no kind of cloud-sync and it will need some sort of fiddling to make all parts work.
But it's the most mature database for all mobile operating systems.

 

[ww2_1943]

EDIT- I can connect to my G5 from my M1 MBA but not vice versa. It appears from what I read a protocol issue. I can still move files back and forth but I can access a DropBox or Drive folder from the G5 on the M1.

@eyoungren I believe you are able to access DropBox from your PPC machines. Is there a workaround I am missing?


It looks like this should still work. You have to be able to share a DropBox folder to your PPC Mac from a more modern one. I guess this should work with Google Drive as well. Experiments to follow.

 

[mectojic]

Wow. Lots of interesting solutions – so great to see all these!

I think I've added an additional challenge for myself by wanting to use Classic iOS (iPhone 4). The result is that most apps can't download, and due to recent broken support on the App Store, the old method of downloading older versions of apps has also become difficult. Only hacked IPAs tend to work, but they're hard to source.

I use https://anotepad.com/ - allows making plain text and RTF notes, imports Word & PDFs. And is accessible via TenFourFox/IWPPC (and I run NoScript to get rid of the ads). You can create folders in which to save your notes, don't have so many that I need to search through things...

This is what I've decided to use. It's a simple TXT/RTF editor that syncs and can be shared by a mere URL. For Captcha supported-browsers – PPC via Interweb, modern iOS/macOS – you can login and save all notes together. For modern iOS/iPadOS, there's an app that lets you view your files offline, too.
For the iPhone 4, which doesn't support Captcha, you can still view and edit the docs online without logging in, by setting a password on the note and opening it from a URL in Safari.
Thanks for the suggestion @crimsonRE!