One Column: The Future of Notes

When it comes to my notes, I have a mixture of digital handwriting, typed words, and scans of journals and documents. The document scans sometimes live in folders on my computer, and sometimes they live inside of Apple Notes.

Problem

Look how chaotic this looks. Horizontal stacks of documents, if you scroll down there's iPad-written handwriting, typed text, etc.

Solution

Intelligently merge all of these formats into one column.

All of these formats contain only two object types: text & images; lines of words & diagrams, sketches, etc. Given these global object types, it's pretty reasonable to expect that one day all these various sources could be combined into a single body of work. A single chronological column.

A single chronological timeline. Oldest writings at the very top of the column and newest writings at the bottom.

And of course, dark mode. As per my proposal to Apple Notes to invert document scans to make documents compatible with dark mode.

This One Column proposal could look amazing in Apple's newly announced Vision Pro augmented reality platform. Not only could this One Column be visualized in 3D space, but it could seamlessly connect to the physical positions of the journals in real life.

I'm still working on the blog post, but you can visit the draft here.

When it comes to my notes, I have a mixture of digital handwriting, typed words, and scans of journals and documents. The document scans sometimes live in folders on my computer, and sometimes they live inside of Apple Notes.

Problem

Look how chaotic this looks. Horizontal stacks of documents, if you scroll down there's iPad-written handwriting, typed text, etc.

Solution

Intelligently merge all of these formats into one column.

All of these formats contain only two object types: text & images; lines of words & diagrams, sketches, etc. Given these global object types, it's pretty reasonable to expect that one day all these various sources could be combined into a single body of work. A single chronological column.

A single chronological timeline. Oldest writings at the very top of the column and newest writings at the bottom.

And of course, dark mode. As per my proposal to Apple Notes to invert document scans to make documents compatible with dark mode.

This One Column proposal could look amazing in Apple's newly announced Vision Pro augmented reality platform. Not only could this One Column be visualized in 3D space, but it could seamlessly connect to the physical positions of the journals in real life.

I'm still working on the blog post, but you can visit the draft here.

When it comes to my notes, I have a mixture of digital handwriting, typed words, and scans of journals and documents. The document scans sometimes live in folders on my computer, and sometimes they live inside of Apple Notes.

Problem

Look how chaotic this looks. Horizontal stacks of documents, if you scroll down there's iPad-written handwriting, typed text, etc.

Solution

Intelligently merge all of these formats into one column.

All of these formats contain only two object types: text & images; lines of words & diagrams, sketches, etc. Given these global object types, it's pretty reasonable to expect that one day all these various sources could be combined into a single body of work. A single chronological column.

A single chronological timeline. Oldest writings at the very top of the column and newest writings at the bottom.

And of course, dark mode. As per my proposal to Apple Notes to invert document scans to make documents compatible with dark mode.

This One Column proposal could look amazing in Apple's newly announced Vision Pro augmented reality platform. Not only could this One Column be visualized in 3D space, but it could seamlessly connect to the physical positions of the journals in real life.

I'm still working on the blog post, but you can visit the draft here.

More articles in

Concpets