Six Colors
Six Colors

by Jason Snell & Dan Moren

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We owe Apple Notes an apology

Back in 2016 I, er, noted that people sure use screenshots from the Notes app a lot when posting long items on Twitter. That observation let me weirdly fulfill a lifelong dream by getting me quoted in Sports Illustrated.

Anyway, Twitter’s got 280 characters now and it doesn’t really matter—Notes is still king, as Lindsey Weber notes in the New York Times:

Notes, a free app that is preloaded onto Apple devices for the purpose of storing personal memories and to-do lists. In recent years… it has become the medium of choice for celebrity mass communication.

I love that people work around text limitations by finding stock apps and using the built-in screen shot feature to avoid Twitter’s intentional limitations. Users will find ways around limitations. They’re very clever!1

When the iPhone was first released it didn’t have a screen-shot feature. Who needs that feature other than tech journalists, right? Turns out it’s everyone. For unexpected reasons.


  1. As I noted in 2016, screen shots aren’t accessible, which is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Twitter has had years to address this problem and still hasn’t bothered. 
—Linked by Jason Snell

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