Right now I am trying to locate the best Note-taking application for Mac OS X. I guess right now would be the best time to say that is must be FREE. Why free? Simply because I do not like to pay for applications! Here is a list of some of the applications I have tried out, and my verdicts on each.

iOrganize

After about 5-minutes of using this application, I could not use it anymore. The inability to remove a note with your keyboard was more annoying than anything. Verdict: Bad

Noted

This application is slightly annoying to use, because of it’s user interface. It is slightly outdated, and does not “wow” me in any shape or form… However because of it’s ease of use, responsiveness and simplicity I would say it is decent, but in major need of some improvement. Verdict: Mediocre

TextEdit

I never really gave Apple’s Text Edit a glance until I realized how abysmal the competition was. TextEdit comes on every Mac, and is what I would call Apple’s solution to Notepad on Windows Computers. If there were a simple filing system (Eg. iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, etc.), I would say TextEdit was perfect. Verdict: Good

JDarkRoom

As a simple/clean word-processor JDarkRoom is great. The only thing holding it back is it’s unwillingness to let you multitask. Let me explain, when writing, you sometimes want to refer to another passage or article to make sure you have your information straight (I do this with the Command – Tab Keys). JDarkRoom however, will not let you switch to another application as long as it is running. Verdict: Mediocre

xPad

I Tweeted about this application a while back, and I had nothing but good things to say about it. Nothing has changed from my earlier opinion, and it is still one of the fastest and most intuitive applications available. There is one quirk to this program; its speed is due to it’s proprietary file format. In order for the file to be compatible with any other program, you must convert it to Plain Text or an RTF Document.  Verdict: Good

In the end I chose to go with TextEdit, which is actually the program I am writing this post in. I had to play around in preferences in order to get the program to respond the way I wanted it to. For more information on my rating system, please visit http://crunchymunchkin.com/blog/ratings.