By Jason Snell

August 21, 2016 1:27 PM PT

All-star notes app Vesper reaches the end

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Launched three years ago with fanfare by an all-star development team, the note-taking app Vesper is shutting down. “The time has come to say goodbye,” said the announcement from developer Q Branch Sunday, embedded in the release notes of a final App Store update.

The app, developed by John Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus, featured a tasteful interface design. (I used it a lot, especially for recipes.) But it’s hard to compete with Apple’s own Notes app, especially after Apple upgraded it dramatically with iOS 8. The last post to the development blog was in February 2015 when the app was updated to support iPad screen resolutions.

The new update, version 2.007 (Bond fans till the end), allows users to export Vesper data as plain text and images to iCloud Drive or any other destination offered by a Document Provider extension. (I saved mine to Dropbox.) Q Branch is shutting down its sync servers on August 30 and deleting all the sync data, and removing the app from the App Store on September 15. (The app itself will hang on to its data indefinitely, so there’s no ticking clock there.)

Update: Brent Simmons on some details of the shutdown.

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