An Apple Notes alternative you can take out of the ecosystem.
Apple Notes is free, fast, private-ish and excellent — right up until the day you own a machine Apple didn't make. Then a decade of notes is in a format only one company reads.
This isn't a privacy argument; Apple's is better than most. It's a portability argument. Notes.app is a beautiful room in a house you don't own, and the door only opens onto Apple's street.
What Apple does better
Instant capture from the lock screen, scribble support, shared notes, and sync that simply works. If you live entirely inside Apple and intend to stay, Notes is hard to beat and costs nothing.
The exit cost
The question worth asking of any notes app: how much work is it to leave with ten years intact? For Apple Notes the answer is "a weekend and some regret". For a file, it's zero — you're already holding it.
Living with both
Plenty of people keep Notes for scratch capture and the Writing Desk for anything they intend to still have in 2040. That's a sensible division, not a compromise.
The refund
Thirty days, one e-mail, money back.
Common questions
Can I import my Apple Notes?
Export as PDF or copy text out note by note, or select-all into the Writing Desk. There's no clean bulk path — that's Apple's design, not ours.
Does it sync between my devices?
Put the file in iCloud Drive or Dropbox. Same sync you already have, no second account.
Handwriting and scribble?
No. If Apple Pencil capture matters, keep Notes for that.
How is it different from Obsidian?
See /vs/obsidian — briefly: one file, no vault, no plugin ecosystem to maintain.