You are a bitter old man – welcome to the club!

This was a great post though Brian. I haven’t looked at this app myself (my wife is the iPhone owner in the household), but I really don’t see the point either. And notebooks going away? I think Moleskine would be the first to disagree, although I wonder if the mass expansion of their product line in the past year or two is their “jumping the shark” moment.

Moleskine is more marketing than substance. I still haven’t figured out what’s supposed to be that great about them. I’ll take a Rhodia pad or an O’Bon notebook over them any time.

“I can’t actually download and use this app to test it out, so anything I write here is clearly biased by my strong dislike of both brands, and a complete lack of ever having using the app.”

Wow. Just wow. I can see why you want a discussion rather than write a review

“A matter of time before smartphones completely replace the notebook for most people? That seems like an incredibly bold prediction.”

Seems fairly reasonable to me. With a smart phone you can take photos, videos, sound recordings, and text notes, you can exchange business cards, geotag everything and push it to the web or email it. Etc etc. Plus if you wake up and need to take a note in the middle of the night a smart phone has a built in light. Sure there are things you can only do with pen and paper, or which you can do much better, but even a pen and paper bigot like me has started carrying my smart phone with me everywhere instead of a pen and pocket notebook…

“…it’s only a matter of time before smartphones completely replace the notebook for most people.”

I have found whenever I read statements that talk about “most people” or “everybody” that it’s helpful to mentally add “that we know” or “that we regularly interact with” to the end. People tend to get a skewed view of the world just from living their lives and forget that not everyone has the sensibilities, experiences, and views they do.

So if we remember that “”…it’s only a matter of time before smartphones completely replace the notebook for most people” really means “”…it’s only a matter of time before smartphones completely replace the notebook for most people that we regularly interact with,” it’s not that outrageous a statement.

You know, I tried to use a journal app on my phone and hated it. I can’t even get used to using Evernote, and I think that is more useful. I will stick to real paper and a fountain pen, thank you very much.

I’m a huge fan of Apple and carry a soft-cover pocket Moleskine for everyday casual note scribbling, so I’m not prejudiced against Apple or Moleskine. That being said, the app seems to be primarily an ad for other Moleskine products. There is a prominently placed icon leading directly to their product catalog. The app is surprisingly difficult to use and offers nothing new or different. There are many other, better iPhone note-taking apps, including Evernote and some standalone notebook apps that sync via Dropbox, etc.

As for smart phones replacing paper notebooks, I love my iPhone but I use it more for clipping and saving info from web sites, RSS feeds, etc. If I’m using my own words, it’s easier, faster and more satisfying to write in a notebook than to try to type in more than a sentence or two with my thumbs. But since schools seem to be phasing out the teaching of cursive writing I suspect smart phones really will come to replace paper notebooks all too soon.

People who buy smartphones or iPads have money for the nicer things in life. Moleskine likes people who have money to spend on their notebooks. Like missionaries sent to a foreign land, the Moleskine app attempts to convert techies back to using pen and paper by issuing a lackluster note-taking app that leaves the user feeling the need to return back to ‘ole pen ‘n paper.

People who buy smartphones or iPads have money for the nicer things in life. Moleskine likes people who have money to spend on their notebooks. Like missionaries sent to a foreign land, the Moleskine app attempts to convert techies back to using pen and paper by issuing a lackluster note-taking app that leaves the user feeling the need to return back to ‘ole pen ‘n paper.

iPhone users are pretentous. Doubly-so when they’re using the Moleskine app.

Sorry, pretentious not pretentous… typo slipped by.

Thanks to this, I downloaded evernote for iPhone. I love it. But I can’t use it to write book reviews and the like, if you know what I mean. Good for lists and ideas, thought!

Agreed. When I want to write, I want to write (or type), not tap. (No knock to Apple, though; I’m a longtime Mac user).

LOL, saying that “there is truly no other notebook quite like it” is a perfect example of lazy writing. It doesn’t actually mean anything and certainly isn’t the highest praise someone could give a product. After all, there is no other car quite like my 8 year old Ford Taurus, but that doesn’t make it a Ferrari! I completely agree with you that smartphones will never truly replace notebooks. As for those digital signature pads at the grocery store, half the time the stylus is missing and I have to sign with my finger. Technology doesn’t always mean higher quality.

Daisy M.
http://www.sandiegocubicles.com/blog/

Wow. Who’s being pretentious here? I’m sorry, but just because I use an iPhone, that does not mean I think or feel that I am better than anyone else.

I don’t think my phone is the best phone, or that by using it I am somehow better than anyone else. As a matter of fact, I spend a lot of my day at WAR with my iPhone and cursing it to the depths of hell.

As for the Moleskine app, I’m an ex-Moleskiner, who had heard they were making an app several years ago and was curious to see what all the hype was about. It’s a neat app, but if they’re going for a cloud-based notebook, Evernote beat them. If they’re going for an iPhone-based diary/notebook? Memento beats them into the dirt and has been for well over a year.

Just because someone has used that app or owns an iPhone, doesn’t give you the right to judge them. If you’re going to make comments, at least make them relative to the topic of discussion, not just you pushing your own judgmental agenda.

Absolutely agreed. The interface is confusing and definitely does not add any of Moleskine’s charm or notebooking’s charm to the digital process. I say if you want to be digital, do a good job of it like Evernote. Otherwise, this is just a clunky version of the already-decent note-taking app that comes with the iPad/iPhone.

I have used both Rhodia and Moleskine notebooks. Yes, Rhodia is a wonderful brand, but I have a disposition with my sight and Moleskine’s tinted paper helps me be able to look at the paper, were as Rhodia is so bright that I cannot look at the paper for more than just a few seconds. I do love both brands and I think that both of them are great, it’s just that they each have an “audience” of their own. I do love writhing in both of them.