“Patience, my young Padawan” is not actually a line used in any Star Wars movie.
It is, however, something that seems to be in dwindling supply online. The prevailing culture is one of everything now. The technology train is leaving for productivity town, so hop aboard for the next update, the next feature, the next boost, the next small miracle that will make us better, faster, calmer, more organised and whole.
It is, of course, big tech to blame for this impatience and —with every keynote, every release note, every biggest update ever— we are pushed further along the tracks towards a version of the latest thing that we must have so that finally everything will click.
While I am a fan of Apple products, I know that Apple is no different. If you watch most Apple keynotes you’ll see the same broad themes return again and again as they tout better integrations, smoother workflows, more intelligence, and then scatter a few new features in for good measure. Slowly the default Apple apps improve because, simply, they must.
Apple continues to maintain their default software suite apps because they matter, not just because they sit on top of the operating system, but because they help sell the whole ecosystem. The better Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Mail, Photos, Journal, and the rest become, the more useful your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch become together. That, in turn, keeps you in Apple’s world. Locked in.
All of those new features seem appealing and also help drive the hardware cycle; Ohhhh you want Apple Intelligence? Well, you’ll need a new iPhone for that.
Yes, I’m still using an iPhone 14 Pro, which does not get the newer Siri AI features and that alone has me pondering an upgrade later this year. I resent this manipulation but not enough to stop pondering the idea.
By and large, Apple’s default apps are good enough for the vast majority of users. Most people do not need the most powerful notes app, the most configurable email client, the most obsessive task manager, or the most advanced journaling app. They need something that opens quickly, syncs reliably, looks familiar, and does the job without asking them to learn a whole new system.
There is another group of users though —I fully admit I fall into this category— who look at Apple’s apps and sigh. They are too simple and are too slow to improve, Apple seem too cautious and too unwilling to give us the buttons and settings and workflows we know are possible. Why can’t they just add a section of Advanced features for crying out loud!
We know it’s possible because we’ve seen other apps do the same jobs better. With more options. More flexibility. More power. More care, sometimes.
Let’s get specific.
Apple Journal is rubbish
Apple Journal is one of Apple’s newest apps. It arrived in December 2023, and as a long-term journaliserer, or whatever the word is, I was intrigued.
My first impression was that it was simple. Very simple. Suspiciously simple. The sort of simple that makes you tap around for a while because you assume you must be missing something. I was not.
Compared with more established journaling apps, Apple Journal felt basic. Day One was the app I saw mentioned most often in comparison, and as it was also the one I had used myself for years I will admit my own bias. Day One has been good enough for my uses for a long time, and although I occasionally looked at alternatives, I always seem to go back to it.
So when Apple launched Journal, to say I was underwhelmed at first is an understatement.
No proper import feature. No Mac app. No iPad app at launch. Not much in the way of organisation. Not much depth. Not much to tempt someone with years of entries, photos, locations, tags, and habits already sitting somewhere else.
I saw someone online (reddit maybe?) ask why Apple didn’t just base Journal on their Notes, which already has enough features to keep most people happy.
It’s a good question. Why didn’t they?
Apple Journal is Apple Notes
Not literally, obviously. What I mean is that Apple Journal feels like the early version of an Apple app that may become very good later. Apple Notes languished for years as a fairly basic, forgettable app. Then, slowly, it improved. It gained formatting, folders, tags, scanning, collaboration, locked notes, enough features that it is now a genuinely decent app.
I switched away from Evernote, after brief dalliances with SimpleNote, Bear, and others, and have been a happy Apple Notes user for a several years now.
Is Apple Notes the best notes app in the world? No.
Does it need to be? Also no.
And that, I think, is the point that is easy to miss. Apple’s default apps are rarely trying to be the best possible version right out of the box. They are not trying to compete feature-for-feature with their immediate competitors.
Rather, Apple apps are built to be good enough to be the default version. They are designed for the person who does not want to research twelve alternative apps when all they need is to be able to write a shopping list, save a recipe, plan a holiday, set a reminder, or record a few thoughts before bed.
However if, like me, you have hopes of clever automation to help pull in data from one system to another, or would like to be able to export all your data in a specific format, or have all apps default to Markdown, then you may find yourself frustrated.
Call yourself a power user, a geek or nerd, a techno wizard of the 15th realm if you will but remember, Apple does not build their apps for us.
Who are the Apple users?
Apple builds apps for the person who opens the app once, understands it immediately, and never thinks about app selection again. For that person, Journal might be fine. It suggests moments from your day, lets you write something down, adds photos or music or locations, and quietly syncs through iCloud. That is enough.
Now, I get it for us power users (techno wizards of the 15th realm etc), “enough” can feel like an insult, because, what, we aren’t smart enough to handle more?
To be fair, Apple deserves the criticism. It is one of the richest companies in history. It has the talent, money, platform control, and ecosystem knowledge to make these apps far better at launch than they often are. A basic import function for Journal should not feel like an unreasonable request. Nor should better organisation, search, export, or backup options. Nor should the ability to automate the capture of a workout in Apple Fitness and log it and other details into a new journal entry (workout, music listened to, weather, photos taken, for example).
There is a difference between simplicity and absence and I don’t think Apple always lands on the right side of that distinction.
There is also an uncomfortable truth for third-party developers, aka Sherlocking. App teams build apps like Day One and have spent years proving that their functionality matters. They experiment, refine, add features, support edge cases, and build trust with users. Then Apple arrives with a simpler version, pre-installed or prominently promoted, and instantly that becomes the default choice for millions of people —again, I am one such person.
Apple gets to be patient because the platform is already theirs.
Sticking with Apple Journal
All of that said I find myself more forgiving of Journal than I expected. Not because I’ve uncovered something special about it, but because I can see the shape of what it might become. The app is young and we know that Apple often starts cautiously, sometimes frustratingly so, and then improves things over time. Reminders got better. Notes got better. Maps got much better. Even apps that once felt like afterthoughts can eventually become part of the furniture.
So is Apple Journal rubbish?
In parts, yes.
Or maybe it is exactly what Apple apps so often are at the beginning; simple, obvious, limited, and in three versions from now it will be hugely useful.
Whilst that wait will be annoying, it’s not unexpected, as it’s very Apple. It’s why Android users mock iPhone for finally including a feature they’ve had for years.
Don’t get me wrong, I would still like an import function and I would definitely like Apple to move a little faster, especially when other developers have already shown what good looks like. This is always the bone of contention. It’s like trying to help Jack find his favourite car, IT’S RIGHT THERE, I point, as he swivels and looks everywhere except where the car is.
When I bought Day One, it didn’t take me long to leverage some of its extra functionality, using IFTTT to drive workouts, albums listened to, and all sorts of ephemeral information into a myriad of different journals within the app. It was convoluted to maintain, broke more frequently than I liked and looking back the real value isn’t any of that information, it’s in the words I chose to write in a journal entry.
So, as it turns out, Journal is good enough for me. Part of that is because I’ve learned to differentiate between a want and a need. I want much more functionality than it currently offers, but all I really need is the ability to write a journal entry every day, and very occasionally include a photo or two.
As for all those other features that could be added, well, they will come when they come. I can wait, but increasingly the noise online suggests that others don’t like that, don’t like being told no, don’t like being told they can’t have something they think they need.
Patience, it seems, is a virtue that is in short supply.
The question is whether patience is genuinely a virtue, or whether Apple has simply trained us to wait.