I was elated when I finally received my tana invite and I wrote about my first impressions here. I loved the tool so much that I even started a wiki at tana.wiki where I thought I would help others to learn Tana.
But over the weeks, I almost stopped using tana because Tana had a learning curve.
I won’t say it is a particularly steep curve, but it is a new UI is not intuitive and I mean that in a good way. We haven’t seen such a beautiful counter intuitive UI in a long time. You would almost feel similar apps like notion or coda have cheated on you once you see the beautiful new UI of tana. In this counter intuitive UI, each node can be a potential database, this is the reason it has been called as the third generation of outliners.
Learning TaTana was slowing me down.
The number one feature I need from my note-taking application is to get out of my way. Tana is touted as the The Everything OS. Their Unique Value Proposition is what is exactly coming in my way. I prefer one app to do one thing extremely well. I prefer this one app which does one thing extremely well to communicate with other apps with an export option or and API. But I don’t want this one app to do everything for me. For eg, Tana is an outliner, a todo list, a database. Which is great for users who want an upgrade on say notion. I have never been a notion user. So this app wasn’t for me. I want whatever idea I have to get out of my mind and into a sheet of paper.
Another reason is I cannot use Tana on my iPad or iPhone.
This is always a significant point of frustration for me. I can go as far as saying that I have resolved only to use apps native to the Apple ecosystem. I feel Tana would suit people who are industrious and conscientious. These personality types love order and organise their notes meticulously. I wonder if women love tana more than men, because women are better organisers in themselves. Maybe @tana_inc has some data on the gender-wise break-up? Would love if these note-taking apps make some usage data public. :)
I might still revert back to tana if they come up with iOS and iPad apps which are or look native to the Apple ecosystem. Apologies for sounding like an apple fanboy.
For me the euphoria behind the most exciting note-taking application of 2022 has faded. Are there others who have ditched tana? If yes, let me know why?