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    Apple Notes vs. Microsoft OneNote: Which is best for business?

    OneNote enjoys easy integration with different Microsoft 365 apps, however Apple Notes supplies a clear and dependable different for Apple customers who must seize and share enterprise notes.

    Illustration/Lisa Hornung/TechRepublic
    It did not all the time was once this manner. Today’s office is, after all, ever evolving. Analog telephones and mechanical typewriters are now not well-liked workplace tools. Contemporary professionals, as an alternative, require instruments able to offering utility rapidly, simply as staff should shift consideration quickly between duties whereas managing more and more frenetic schedules. Consequently, taking notes has develop into a crucial every day exercise.The sooner discoveries, concepts, strategic ideas, gross sales information, trade statistics, product updates and different information might be captured and even shared with colleagues, the faster the group and its representatives can put that info to work. Note-taking is among the many main methods professionals acquire info, whether or not the corresponding information is gathered throughout an in-person convention or Teams assembly, from a webinar or podcast or because of a presentation or vendor’s web site.SEE: How emigrate to a brand new iPad, iPhone, or Mac (TechRepublic Premium)Just reviewing the sheer variety of note-taking apps ought to persuade any skeptics of the recognition and necessity of such instruments. And, as one would possibly anticipate, two apps which have risen to the highest are from the main Goliaths: Apple and Microsoft.

    Apple’s Notes, proven in Figure A, is constructed into macOS, iPadOS and iOS. Buy a kind of units and you will find Notes already loaded. Just open the app and begin typing, or, in case you’re utilizing an iPad with an Apple Pencil, start writing or drawing.Apple Notes permits accumulating notes inside separate lists, making use of quite a lot of formatting options and importing components from different functions.Figure AMicrosoft OneNote, in the meantime, have to be downloaded individually to Apple units. To be truthful, OneNote is free for customers, no matter whether or not a Microsoft 365 plan is in play, and this system supplies a feature-packed interface, as proven in Figure B, that encourages writing, diagramming and outlining.Microsoft OneNote is a free note-taking software that boasts quite a lot of options and tight integration with different Microsoft 365 applications.Figure B

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    If the consumer or group does have a 365 subscription, OneNote additional advantages from tight integration and the next ease with which Microsoft 365 customers can create notes utilizing textual content, graphics and different components from sister merchandise, corresponding to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Microsoft BI and SharePoint. It’s a robust mixture, particularly as OneNote permits organizing notes into a number of classes: notebooks, sections, pages and even part teams.While providing complete formatting, modifying, collaboration, pagination and cloud-service talents, OneNote shares one other widespread trait with its greater workplace productiveness brethren: The app presents so many capabilities it may be tough to make use of effectively.Apple Notes emphasizes the fundamentals.  While allowing a spread of formatting and collaboration choices, in addition to matching OneNote’s talents to import components from different sources and use  dictation to enter textual content, it’s also possible to create duties or reminders from straight inside Notes, which is simpler to function, particularly for novices. And in a day and age when merely capturing ideas and information is paramount, the flexibility to rapidly and simply acquire that info in a significant approach that additionally permits speedily sharing that info with others or exporting it to a doc, spreadsheet or presentation, properly, that is nearly as good as gold.SEE: Apple: More must-read protection (TechRepublic on Flipboard)All advised, the extra simply and effectively an software performs its most necessary features, the extra seemingly you’re to make use of it, and that is the objective. As 37indicators’ founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier, the authors of the best-selling enterprise guide Rework noticed, “Small, simple, basic needs are constant. There’s an endless supply of customers who need exactly that.”Make one thing too complicated and also you run the danger of attempting to be all the pieces to everybody, which Rework emphasizes can’t be finished. That’s how one finally ends up with complicated toolbars and an unconventional information entry area and containers inside OneNote that complicate the note-taking interface, typically making it tougher to print a observe or use the app on a cell gadget or pill with smaller shows. Notes on an iPhone or iPad, as proven in Figure C, would not actually expertise that downside.The easy Notes interface, which strikes the app’s extra superior capabilities out of the way in which, works as properly on cell shows because it does for laptops and desktops.Figure CNotes excels on account of its simplicity, which belies a number of the extra superior features ready backstage, ought to you really want them. As Rework’s authors observe, “making a few vocal customers happy isn’t worth it if it ruins the product for everyone else.”Now, that is to not declare OneNote is a ruined product. It’s not. OneNote’s a wonderful device for harried professionals married to the Microsoft 365 platform, particularly customers prepared to take a position the time and vitality studying the app’s distinctive nuances.But that is the place Apple Notes shines. The program stresses capturing info rapidly and simply and allows you to give attention to working intuitively with the fabric necessary to you. Better but, superior collaboration and modifying options are available however stay unobtrusive. Capturing, formatting and sharing info is just simpler utilizing Notes, and I imagine that is the successful possibility for at present’s Mac, iPad and iPhone professionals.

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