Understanding the tools one uses is important.
Every day I read a post or article where someone is saying “application x should natively do y” when the idea of the application specifically is that it doesn’t natively do feature y. Today, it was a complaint that a markdown-oriented note-taking application didn’t support rich text as core functionality. Several other people in the forum jumped on, remarking how “this should be the minimum standard in 2024” and the like.
The expressed purpose of the tool is for plaintext notetaking. It is designed for people who do not want their notes to be in any sort of proprietary format and are comfortable taking notes in Markdown. The intent is to ensure notes can be read by any text editor anywhere, at any time. The intent is to remove complexity from note-taking.
Now, it’s fine if someone wants a bunch of colors and fonts and all sorts of other decorations in their notes. If that works for them, fine. Go nuts. Do what works for you.
But by insisting on using this particular application, they’re using the wrong tool. There are many other tools that will do exactly what they want. But not this one. This one is not designed for that. The developers don’t want it to work that way. They aren’t trying to replace other applications that work differently. They are making a tool for a specific audience who want a tool that works that way.
But people read posts online and see that the “cool kids” are using application X, so they want too as well. They don’t research it; they just grab it and start trying to use it…and then gripe because it doesn’t work the way they believe it ought to work.
Now, it’s always been this way, at least back to the days of Eternal September. I think it’s worse today, though. Big Tech has promoted the idea that everything should be instantly intuitive and operable on a mobile. The desires of the majority of users are always paramount in blitzscaling start up culture. We’ve told a couple of generations now that because they’re adept at Facebook, and then Instagram and then TikTok they’re digital natives, and therefore they know more than anyone else.
Specialist tools don’t work the way consumer social media apps work. They don’t even work the way generalist productivity apps like Word or OneNote or Photoshop work. They’re intended for, you know, specialists. Who often have very specific needs, and want very specific things from their tools.
Maybe take a few minutes before downloading and installing an app to really understand what it is supposed to do and how it is supposed to work. It’ll be a huge time saver - for everyone.