Simplenote and Dropbox Are Meant to be Used Together

I have been using Dropbox for what seems to be years. I do not recall the exact day I subscribed, though they did not own dropbox.com back then.

Anyway, what was once something new and shiny I wanted to try — for the sake of trying something new and shiny — has now found a place in my workflow. And although I do not have many computers to work with during the day, I found extremely useful to have a copy of whatever I am working on, wherever I go, and whatever hardware I use at the moment.

(Moreover, I have been using Dropbox even more since I have started to take my courses on my old PowerBook: they are instantly synchronized to my MacBook running round the clock at home. That way, even if I drop and break my PowerBook the courses are still safe somewhere else.)

As for Simplenote, once again I did try it when it was first released, and I even bought the Premium plan to remove the ads. But I never used it since I did not do much writing back then, and that I found the Simplenote-only syncing a bit of a downer.

Then they released the newest version this summer. I updated the app and tried it. I was not convinced. Again. Sure, it has a nice interface — congrats to Jon Hicks — and all, but the syncing has not changed a bit.

What if Simplenote allowed syncing to Dropbox instead of its own service? Sure, it would make their customers not subscribe to their Premium plan, and thus make them loose money. And it would loose its label of full-featured web service and become a mere text editor.

The main benefit however is that we would not be tied up to Simplenote servers, and we would have plain access to our data. Moreover, whereas I really love using Simplenote on my iPhone — hey! I am even using it right now! —, I would prefer to use Espresso or Textmate at home.

I know the decision rests in the hands of Simplenote developers. They might think their synchronization service is better than Dropbox’s. They may fear they would loose paying customers.

However, they could add Dropbox synchronization as a feature of their Premium plan, which could bring them even more customers. And I would be among them.

Update: Well, it looks like Hog Bay Software’s Jesse Grosjean heard my rant and has offered us a nice app, PlainText. I will be trying it and update this post accordingly.