OneNote for Mac

I’m gonna take back something I said in a recent post about Microsoft’s OneNote strategy. In that post I said I reckon hardly anyone would use OneNote for Mac. But I’m rethinking that today, after trying the new OneNote for Mac release. Here’s why:

Not the Free part (although that is good), but the availability. With Microsoft putting in the effort to make OneNote available on every device, they’ve removed the biggest hurdle I had to embracing their stuff: fear of future unavailability. With that clear device coverage I know I can confidently use OneNote and not have any issues when/if I change my OS in the future. Currently I’m on Mac and iOS devices, but that’s not indefinite. A year ago I was on the Android platform for a while – and when I moved back to iOS it was hassle free. All my main services and apps were on iOS and the changeover was relatively painless. Most of my work is done with Google services these days, and they work seamlessly on Android, Windows, Mac and iOS. Moving platforms isn’t an issue for me.

Microsoft has been noticeably lagging in this area, and Apple are deliberately not even trying (it’s one of the reasons I hardly use any Apple only tools). I love Apple’s devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone) at the moment, but their ecosystem lock-in is a little off-putting for me.

Hopefully Microsoft is going to be embracing the cross-platform coverage in earnest now. I’m really keen to see what they deliver with their Office for iPad release at the end of the month. My only concern is that they are going to fuck it up by insisting on Office for iPad having an Office 365 subscription… I hope they don’t do that – and instead just release them as simple, good value paid apps (UPDATE: or perhaps for free).

This OneNote release also has me reconsidering OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive). Perhaps I’ll actually have a use for it now.

This could also be good timing for Satya Nadella – although I’m sure these releases have been in the works for a while – their release timing works well for his new role and strategy.

Oh, and I should actually mention – OneNote itself is pretty good. Not as feature rich as Evernote (I’m an Evernote Premium subscriber) but certainly good enough for me to consider switching down the track.