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Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#161

Post by arresin »

pvo50555 wrote: post #145

I am consistently shocked at how bad Apple Notes is. I like the features it has and I like the iCloud sync between devices... I use it daily. But it's so damn buggy. It's a notes app! Why do new lines on a moderately-long note cause half the text to disappear until I hit the carriage return a few times? I also wish it simply converted copied text to plaintext by default rather than trying to preserve formatting.

Have you tried the handwriting recognition? It’ll take you all the way to the newton.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#162

Post by arresin »

nextos wrote: post #95
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny because it’s really an incomplete spec that originated from a blog post. But it won anyway because both machines and humans can use it with relative ease, which is apparently quite a difficult thing to achieve in a markup language

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be great to have in applications such as Apple Notes.

ASCII docs is the nicest for humans of all the ones I’ve experimented with.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#163

Post by Kwpolska »

jeeyoungk wrote: post #90
plufz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the version number from year is quite good. I keep forgetting which version is new and old with the current system. Now it will be easy to remember if you are lagging behind one year, or two or whatever.

Yes; Ubuntu did this from the beginning; (6.06 is the first I've used, and I still remember _when_ I used it), Python's introducing CalVer too (aptly numbered PEP https://peps.python.org/pep-2026/ )

That PEP has been rejected.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#164

Post by ornornor »

pvo50555 wrote: post #145

I am consistently shocked at how bad Apple Notes is. I like the features it has and I like the iCloud sync between devices... I use it daily. But it's so damn buggy. It's a notes app! Why do new lines on a moderately-long note cause half the text to disappear until I hit the carriage return a few times? I also wish it simply converted copied text to plaintext by default rather than trying to preserve formatting.

I think apple cares a lot less than it used to and it’s been like that for a while. There are long standing bugs or missing features on iOS that are just there and have been for years.

I guess they don’t have to try as hard anymore, so they don’t.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#165

Post by homebrewer »

arresin wrote: post #162
nextos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be great to have in applications such as Apple Notes.

ASCII docs is the nicest for humans of all the ones I’ve experimented with.

And it's readily convertible into high quality manpages. I thought git's were written in troff before stumbling into the actual source:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/refs/heads/master/...

When the original is in markdown, it's somehow always noticeable.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#166

Post by Kwpolska »

rk06 wrote: post #93
tlhunter wrote: post #20

Microsoft notepad is also getting markdown support. It's a very interesting coincidence! Overall, I'm surprised to see markdown become mainstream so quickly. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2025/05/30/text-fo...

I wish they stopped adding feature to notepad. Or if they really wanted to, create a new app note.exe and add features to it instead.

The new Notepad is a separate app. The classic Notepad with zero features can still be accessed with some hackery.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#167

Post by MonkeyClub »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #88
whatever1 wrote: post #78

Markdown is the defacto language of the llms. Between this and the python library from Microsoft that converts all of their formats to markdown I think that markdown officially has won the markup language war.

Which is funny because it’s really an incomplete spec that originated from a blog post. But it won anyway because both machines and humans can use it with relative ease, which is apparently quite a difficult thing to achieve in a markup language

> ... it’s really an incomplete spec ... . But it won anyway

It's the new classic example of "worse is better".

Other markups may be more well thought out and more complete, but Markdown beats them hands down on usability.

Consider the comparison between MD and RST, for example...

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#168

Post by Spicy69 »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #109
nextos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be great to have in applications such as Apple Notes.

I love org-mode, but if I were king, it would accept freakin' back-quotes for monospaced text. Instead, it takes ~tilde~ or =equals=, and I will never remember the difference no matter how many times I look it up.

I use orgmode's ~tilde = "for code"~ and =equals_for_filenames.txt=, but what do I know.

I also like [Markdown's text first](https://hyperlink.com) then link format much more than [[https://hyperlink.com][Orgmode's link first then text]].

But for the life of me, there are so many things I hate about Markdown:

  - Alternative syntax for _italic_ *italic* and __bold__ **bold** (why?)

    - versus using /italic/ and *bold*. It just feels so right

  - You need to use HTML tags to underline, or strikethrough, or just about anything in Markdown (including line breaks! You need to use the 
 tag)

    - +strikethrough+ is alright, but _underline_ just makes sense

  - Lack of a unified Markdown standard:

    - Diminishes portability (e.g. varying approaches for file meta tags like in Obsidian)

    - Causes different renderings of the same document (e.g. Obsidian vs GitHub)

    - There was a serious standardization effort in 'Standard Markdown', only for the original creator to be a knob about it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/
It's a shame too because despite Orgmode being superior to Markdown in just about every way, its adoption is nowhere near as close (editing is hard on iOS, and needing Emacs is a barrier for the general public).

Markdown isn't going away anytime soon.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#170

Post by Skeime »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #167
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny because it’s really an incomplete spec that originated from a blog post. But it won anyway because both machines and humans can use it with relative ease, which is apparently quite a difficult thing to achieve in a markup language

> ... it’s really an incomplete spec ... . But it won anyway It's the new classic example of "worse is better". Other markups may be more well thought out and more complete, but Markdown beats them hands down on usability. Consider the comparison between MD and RST, for example...

RST disqualifies itself immediately by making inline markup un-nestable, though.
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