There's some very cool ideas here, I like the approach it's taking with composability, it's an interesting project. And the integration into other systems seems kind of inspired in some ways, getting a summary email or doing stuff with text messages seems gimmicky in theory but I bet it actually feels great and ends up being useful in practice. Probably a lesson there about the benefits of integrating with multiple systems/primatives that people already know how to use and build on as a way of encouraging them to be more flexible/creative.
However, and it's a big however:
Speaking as someone who once did a ton of handwritten notetaking in OneNote, and then realized that the export options at the time made it practically impossible for me to carry those notes forward as my setup evolved, and that I was about to potentially lose somewhere between 1 to 2 years of my notetaking life, the "I need to know that when I put my brain in this that I can get it back out" worry is pretty real.
It's not even just data export, OneNote had this cool thing where it would search the text of handwritten notes, which encourages you to take handwritten notes. It's great because handwritten notes feel good to write but are disorganized, so you could kind of bridge the gap. But the problem is that then even if you do get the images out, all that functionality is gone suddenly. So similarly, lets say I do use an API to back up all my notes, am I going to build extensive infrastructure around integrating with SMS and a CLI that all just gets thrown away some day?
After OneNote, it's very hard for me to consider using a notetaking app that doesn't talk about its data format/export on its homepage. Digging through the blog posts, I can see some talk about Open Source data formats, which is good, but only partially assuages my fears. But in general, /tap is immediately talking about REST APIs on its homepage, which, cool, I do think that's a cool idea. Is there actually an overlapping Venn diagram between people who are using a note system that's so comprehensive it's sending them text reminders, and people who know how to make REST requests, and people who aren't very paranoid about owning their own data?
I pay subscriptions for other people to host stuff that I don't want to dig into the technical weeds for; I pay for Wallabag hosting because I have stuff to do with my life that doesn't involve running security updates on a Wallabag server. I'm really happy to pay for services like that, especially if its in the $1-10 a month range, which /tap is. But importantly, I could self-host Wallabag if I needed to, today, without losing any functionality and without needing to rebuild any of my infrastructure that integrates with Wallabag. I could migrate my data both to the new self-hosted service or to a competing service, or I could even pay another 3rd-party to host Wallabag for me again, and point my URLs to their servers. So I don't have a bunch of hesitations in the back of my mind about giving someone money to host that kind of service because it's less of a risk to do so.
On the other hand, with /tap, with a system where I am literally putting part of my brain into the computer, I think I need stronger guarantees about how it's going to work and what will happen after it gets bought by Google.
I did see the parsing component, and it looks good. My worry though is that even with the parsing format being good, you're not really selling this as a parser; it doesn't seem like the text format is the most exciting part of this.
With notes in specific, because they're such an important part of my life, I'm taking a very long-term view; what still exists after 15 years? Everything else is kind of ethereal and doesn't matter because I can't really invest into building systems around something that will disappear suddenly. So I look at /tap through that lens: what parts of this still exist if tomorrow the developer either gets bough by Google or joins an Amish community?
It seems like it's only the parser? Not the SMS stuff, not the visualization or searching, not emailing, not how the ledger works, not the API. And again, it seems like a good parser, but I already have some decent parsers I use for taking notes in text format, that's a somewhat crowded space that's hard to compete in.
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I may not be the kind of customer you are trying to target, and that's fine, but I'll try to explain more clearly what I mean.
When I think back to OneNote, I built systems around something that stopped working for me, and then those systems all had to be rebuilt from scratch. It was a huge loss of time investment that outweighed any monetary investment. If I'm thinking long-term about my notes, I'm paying $7 for... basically just document storage, I can't really build around the API or the SMS or email integration, because that stuff doesn't exist in a permanent form, it's all ethereal and it all goes away if you join Google. In some ways it's even worse than that, because the focus on SMS integration means I'm likely to get heavily reliant on SMS for notetaking, which is a huge issue if I ever need to self-host anything and realize suddenly that building apps around SMS handling is very difficult. I've now kind of accidentally made my life much harder.
But I compare that situation to something like Matrix/Wallabag, apps where prices for official hosting are basically in the same neighborhood as /tap and that cost me very similar amounts of money to subscribe to:
- I'm getting a lower barrier of entry that means I can start relying on the project before I ever learn anything about hosting.
- I'm getting the chance to build infrastructure around an actively supported piece of tech, where I don't have to solve all of my own problems.
- I'm paying for short-term uptime guarantees.
- I'm paying to have to think less about security.
- I'm paying to not have to think about the horror of integrating with SMS/Email notifications
In theory, I would be paying for the same stuff in /tap, but in practice I'm not because the SMS features and integrations and stuff don't actually exist in the long-term. Everything except the parsing format is ethereal and is going to go away.
So I have a short-term uptime guarantee from /tap that's higher than my own would be, at the cost of needing to redo my entire infrastructure and needing to figure out hosting from scratch in the future. I can think less about security right now, at the cost of needing to build my own product some day where all of those security problems will come back in full-force even worse. I have a lower barrier of entry now, but later on I have to drop everything and start from scratch, and I won't be able to really do anything with my notes when that happens other than parse them until I rebuild my own solutions for stuff like repeated tasks. I can build infrastructure around an actively supported tech stack, except that tech might all vanish one day, so I can't really rely on any infrastructure that I build, or on any other service that relies on /tap.
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It's difficult to put into words, but I want to feel like I am paying for a service, not for a technology. With Matrix/Wallabag/insert-whatever, I get to temporarily not think about problems that are annoying, but I could think about them if I needed to. If something goes wrong, I could even pay another person to think about them and keep putting that problem off. And that means the service is just making my life easier, I'm just paying for people to solve problems for me and to deal with things I don't want to deal with. I'm paying for someone else to help me use a piece of technology.
In contrast, with /tap, I'm paying for access to that technology just as much as I'm paying for any service, which far from solving problems actually introduces problems in my life, because it would add new API requirements for whatever custom solution I'll need to eventually build when the company pivots or gets bought out or dies.
In a weird way, because notes are a long-term investment, the exclusivity around the tech means the value proposition for me as a user is much lower than the value proposition from more open applications, because kind of summing up everything above, a concept that encapsulates a lot of these ideas is that I'm paying for peace of mind, I'm paying to have someone take my worries away and to stress about stuff like hosting for me. And /tap's approach to peace of mind seems to be "don't worry, you can rebuild everything yourself if something goes wrong." The only way I'd get peace of mind out of that is if I paid you for hosting and then only used the REST API and only after reimplementing the entire REST API myself locally. But it's not worth $7 a month for me to do that, I want solutions that I don't have to plan around a bunch, I want solutions that don't give me anxiety when I think about the future. Parsing is a very small part of that, I'm not really worried that no one would be able to figure out how to parse a documented text format if /tap went down, I'm worried about everything else.
Again, I am probably not your ideal customer, so I think take that with a grain of salt. But my perspective is that I want a service that makes me feel more confident about the long-term, not less. I feel like if I was setting up auto-responders or integrating Tasker with my SMS app on my phone around /tap -- I don't think I'd feel confident about any of those systems, /tap seems to be encouraging me to build some very long-term fragile solutions/integrations for my notetaking setup.
I think you identified the key disconnect between your interests and the current state of tap. For you the API alone is not worth the subscription. And that makes sense.
I think you and I have a lot in common, and _could_, if we wanted, have a high degree of ownership over our technology systems. I decided I wanted that ownership with tap, and originally it was built exclusively for myself.
But, I got some interest and decided to make it available to others. I have used it almost every day for three years —- for me its a long-term solution. I hope it can be that for others too!
However, and it's a big however:
Speaking as someone who once did a ton of handwritten notetaking in OneNote, and then realized that the export options at the time made it practically impossible for me to carry those notes forward as my setup evolved, and that I was about to potentially lose somewhere between 1 to 2 years of my notetaking life, the "I need to know that when I put my brain in this that I can get it back out" worry is pretty real.
It's not even just data export, OneNote had this cool thing where it would search the text of handwritten notes, which encourages you to take handwritten notes. It's great because handwritten notes feel good to write but are disorganized, so you could kind of bridge the gap. But the problem is that then even if you do get the images out, all that functionality is gone suddenly. So similarly, lets say I do use an API to back up all my notes, am I going to build extensive infrastructure around integrating with SMS and a CLI that all just gets thrown away some day?
After OneNote, it's very hard for me to consider using a notetaking app that doesn't talk about its data format/export on its homepage. Digging through the blog posts, I can see some talk about Open Source data formats, which is good, but only partially assuages my fears. But in general, /tap is immediately talking about REST APIs on its homepage, which, cool, I do think that's a cool idea. Is there actually an overlapping Venn diagram between people who are using a note system that's so comprehensive it's sending them text reminders, and people who know how to make REST requests, and people who aren't very paranoid about owning their own data?
I pay subscriptions for other people to host stuff that I don't want to dig into the technical weeds for; I pay for Wallabag hosting because I have stuff to do with my life that doesn't involve running security updates on a Wallabag server. I'm really happy to pay for services like that, especially if its in the $1-10 a month range, which /tap is. But importantly, I could self-host Wallabag if I needed to, today, without losing any functionality and without needing to rebuild any of my infrastructure that integrates with Wallabag. I could migrate my data both to the new self-hosted service or to a competing service, or I could even pay another 3rd-party to host Wallabag for me again, and point my URLs to their servers. So I don't have a bunch of hesitations in the back of my mind about giving someone money to host that kind of service because it's less of a risk to do so.
On the other hand, with /tap, with a system where I am literally putting part of my brain into the computer, I think I need stronger guarantees about how it's going to work and what will happen after it gets bought by Google.