Apple Notes is on the cusp of ‘sherlocking’ many note-taking apps

When Apple Notes arrived as one of the original 15 apps on the first iPhone, it was a very basic app. Note-taking on the Mac was dominated by Evernote and others and Apple Notes was little more than a very simple text editor. Subsequent releases have significantly bolstered Notes and it is now a viable alternative to commercial apps. And that puts them at serious risk of ‘sherlocking’.

What is sherlocking?

Apple’s history is littered with great applications and utilities. In some cases, the functions they bring to macOS are so compelling that Apple adds them to their software. As result, those third-party apps become redundant and their marketshare shrinks almost instantly.

Back in the 1990s, Apple introduced a feature to Mac OS called Sherlock that enabled you to find content on your Mac. By the early 2000s Dan Wood, an independent software developer, created a companion to Sherlock called Watson. Watson was a $30 app that augmented Sherlock, enabling it to connect to the Internet to grab online information like…