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Notion releases offline mode

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Re: Notion releases offline mode

#111

Post by KetoManx64 »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #109
tequila_shot wrote: post #2

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

I dunno. I love Obsidian, but it has a huge learning curve and is not currently the type of tool that I see companies adopting when they need to have their employees adopt it’s use. Obsidian is way too overwhelming for the average user, whereas Notion is far more user-friendly and intuitive for people who just need to interact with the system to do their job. Edit: Not to mention that (last I checked) Obsidian lacks…

By default Obsidian is a markdown editor with the ability to link to other notes with a pretty graph of your note links. What is overwhelming about that?

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#112

Post by Slow_Hand »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #111
Slow_Hand wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. I love Obsidian, but it has a huge learning curve and is not currently the type of tool that I see companies adopting when they need to have their employees adopt it’s use. Obsidian is way too overwhelming for the average user, whereas Notion is far more user-friendly and intuitive for people who just need to interact with the system to do their job. Edit: Not to mention that (last I checked) Obsidian lacks…

By default Obsidian is a markdown editor with the ability to link to other notes with a pretty graph of your note links. What is overwhelming about that?

Obsidian can be extremely simple at it's core, but to structure everything and make it easy to use by an organization will likely require a whole lot of additional infrastructure and adherence to strict guidelines for organization. Notion seems far more intuitive in this way. Notion is also a bit limited when it comes to customization, but that limitation seems like more of an asset in this case because it produces consistency of style and usage patterns across the platform.

Also, I don't find the Obsidian graph to be practical for organizing or locating files. It's impressive to look at, but not that practical in my experience.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#113

Post by richardlblair »

tequila_shot wrote: post #2

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

Notion for my team, Obsidian for myself.

We do everything in Notion. Book time off, HR policies, run books, playbooks, knowledge dumps, project management, sprint management. Search is a lot better so it really opens up the use cases.

Imo, if you're building a company with the goal of selling it you should use Notion. Get your team to use it, and capture everything about your business. When you go to sell it you have the whole business packaged up in a searchable, interactive knowledge base.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#114

Post by hotep99 »

colordrops wrote: post #41
dcreater wrote: post #39

Just use obsidian instead. Don't trust 3rd parties with your sensitive data if you dont have to - especially ones who've to IPO and delivet returns to investors

And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.

I recently migrated to Obsidian for personal use and configured it to sync my data to a private git repo that I can access across my devices. The data is all in markdown so I figure if Obsidian ever plays games I can migrate to another app pretty easily and still have my information intact and under my own control.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#115

Post by throwaway19383 »

colordrops wrote: post #41
dcreater wrote: post #39

Just use obsidian instead. Don't trust 3rd parties with your sensitive data if you dont have to - especially ones who've to IPO and delivet returns to investors

And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.

I don't see how "losing it one day" is possible for an offline app. Worst case scenario, I won't be able to update it, but I'm more than happy with what Obsidian offers currently.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#116

Post by wkat4242 »

0xCMP wrote: post #90
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian is great for solo use, but then so is Apple Notes and a dozen similar options. Where Notion shines is team based sharing and collaboration. There's really nothing else like it with the same feature set.

Once iOS 26 drops Apple Notes will be much-much more useful with the combination of supported linking between notes and supporting Markdown. Before it rapidly became untenable as a place to actually store my notes. I use it more as a "temporary note" that will be moved to the proper place later.

It's nice if you're on just Apple but if you use Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS all mixed together it's pretty useless. Like most of apple's stuff.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#117

Post by nhumrich »

trentnix wrote: post #15

I'm a Notion fan but the lack of a native Linux app has me shopping for a replacement. Obsidian seems, from what I've seen, focused on the ability to graph notes, which I don't really care about. I want note-taking, list-making, and markdown friendly. I do want to keep Notion's ability to work in a browser and to maintain a single, accessible store of my notes. What are my options?

Joplin

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#118

Post by colordrops »

hotep99 wrote: post #114
colordrops wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.

I recently migrated to Obsidian for personal use and configured it to sync my data to a private git repo that I can access across my devices. The data is all in markdown so I figure if Obsidian ever plays games I can migrate to another app pretty easily and still have my information intact and under my own control.

Sure that's why I said text editing. But if you rely on any of it's extended functionality you are out of luck.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#119

Post by colordrops »

static_motion wrote: post #54
colordrops wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.

But everything is stored as .md, which is ubiquitous. You'll still have access to your notes and be able to edit them with your preferred text editor.

This is always the argument but obsidian does a lot on top of these md files. NASA's mission control software stores data in JSON, it's an open format so I guess the NASA software is easily replaceable huh? If obsidian was such a thin layer then why isn't there a good open source alternative? People build their workflows on top of the obsidian functionality, not just the md data.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#120

Post by colordrops »

throwaway19383 wrote: post #115
colordrops wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.

I don't see how "losing it one day" is possible for an offline app. Worst case scenario, I won't be able to update it, but I'm more than happy with what Obsidian offers currently.

It means if it's abandoned then it's not maintained and the longer ago that it stopped being maintained the harder it is to use quite often. I have some old truecrypt volumes and I had a hell of a time figuring out how to decrypt them. It's closed source but local only so exactly the same situation.

I don't understand how the benefits of open source are so easily downplayed.

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