Note and bookmarks apps need to make us feel safe. Safe that we can save everything and forget it, that it’ll be there when we come back. Anything could be that safe place, even a plain document, a scratchpad, that gets longer the more things you add to it. Search, linking, organizing, filing—all good for your most important notes, but then again, the most important stuff will show up again on its own (something else the best notes apps could do, resurfacing older notes like Apple Pictures does with your photo “memories”). You’ll come across those best ideas again and again; your notes end up merely being a record of when you first encountered the idea.

From Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good. I often joke about digital systems that “forgetting is the point”. You put it down somewhere and forget about it. If you happen to go look for it again, maybe it’s there, but more often than not if it was a really good idea, the putting it down sticks a pointer in your brain that reminds you what to go look for better than ever finding the note about it does.