Bear 2 is a major update to the popular note-taking app Bear, which was an immediate hit when it launched in 2016. The new version has taken a long time to build, over 5 years, as the developers decided to completely rewrite the underlying text editor to enable features like tables, GIFs, and footnotes. The developer says building a great text editing system proved more difficult than expected due to edge cases and complications. While Bear 2 has many new features, the developer wants to stay focused on the needs of average users rather than power users, and is skeptical of AI assistants in note-taking apps for now. Based on my experience with the beta, Bear 2 still captures what made the original great - it’s simple and fast like Apple Notes but with more powerful features.
If anyone cares, this is an Apple thing.
I really love Bear, and I’m immensely relieved they’re not trying to bake AI garbage into it.
Typical Verge headline…“A terrific notes app [for the Apple ecosystem]”. FTFY.
Also, I wouldn’t call it simple. A simple notes “app” is a plain text or markdown editor.
I love Bear and used to use it a lot, but don’t want to be locked into just apple stuff. Still I am glad to see they’re still going strong and I’m really happy they aren’t forcing AI integration (which is something Notion has done/is currently doing and monetizing…).
Bear was phenomenal when I had an all Apple ecosystem. I don’t anymore, so I’m trying to replicate it with notion. Works out pretty well.
