Bear turns 10, and it still feels like day one (blog.bear.app)

26 pointsby psxuaw2 hours ago16 comments

brink 40 minutes ago

It just so happens I am looking for a solid knowledge management application. Too bad this is Apple-only.

I've gone from Obsidian, to LogSeq, to Org-mode on Emacs a few days ago, and I think I'm probably going to stay there.

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'm pretty sure Obsidian is winning not because it's great, but because it mostly doesn't suck, and it runs everywhere. I have little doubt that Bear is a better app than Obsidian.

dominotw 37 minutes ago

dont do any knowledge managment. you'll be fine.

Ezhik 30 minutes ago

nothing left to learn

it's all already known

bananamogul 25 minutes ago

Joplin is another option, if you want a FOSS OneNote replacement

tptacek 25 minutes ago

I'm gradually replacing most of the software I use with software I conjure myself, and Bear is the reason I'm probably never going to write an editor; it's not clear to me how I could improve it. Emacs is probably out the door by the end of 2027, but I'd be surprised if I wasn't still using Bear for years from now. It's quite good.

brink 5 minutes ago

> I'm gradually replacing most of the software I use with software I conjure myself

Why?

stevenhubertron 15 minutes ago

What am I missing about Bear? It looks like a close source Obsidian? What is hte magic that I am not seeing.

kstrauser 10 minutes ago

Obsidian is a closed source Obsidian.

I pay for Bear because it’s a native app and not in the weird uncanny valley of Electron apps that almost feel native until you hit the rough edges. It syncs with iCloud. It supports Shortcuts. It’s as responsive to keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts as any other Mac app. Basically, it just feels good to me and I enjoy using it.

Obsidian’s awesome. It’s also an ADHD tarpit for me. I can way too easily get distracted into optimizing my workflow instead of, you know, just typing notes into it. That’s a me problem, not a them problem. I don’t mean it as a criticism against Obsidian. It’s just not the right tool for me.

chrisfosterelli 9 minutes ago

I use both Bear and Obsidian. I do some long-form writing in Bear but keep all of my structured notes and markdown in Obsidian. Obsidian has much better tooling and many more features, but Bear has a very pleasant experience for writing. It's very simple but if it's all you need it's very polished.

If I had to choose one I'd use Obsidian because Bear's features are a subset of what Obsidian does, but Bear is still nice.

bherms 7 minutes ago

I've been using Bear for a long time. I tried Obsidian to move off Bear, but it didn't last long. The Bear UX is just great and that's what's kept me around this long.

ballmerpoint 29 minutes ago

I’ve used Bear for years now and it’s great for writing notes and composing essays. I should probably subscribe to Bear Pro but they don’t have a lifetime option and I despise subscription models.

Luckily the paywall is mostly for export tools and cloud backup. The latter I don’t need, and it’s only a minor inconvenience to use Airdrop + pandoc for the former.

iberator 32 minutes ago

Nowhere on the webpage i could find WHAT IS IT?

sanjit 25 minutes ago

Agreed! You’d have to navigate to the top level on the site…

“Bear is a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown note taking app to capture, write, and organize your life.”

https://bear.app/

matteason 14 minutes ago

I thought it was pretty clear?

> Back in 2013, three friends who loved Apple and design couldn’t find a notes app they liked, so they built their own. That side project became Bear.

expedited123 44 minutes ago

I thought this was about https://www.bearblog.dev/

ginko 25 minutes ago

I thought this was about a literal bear. Then again 10 years is not much of an age even for a wild bear.