Memex vs Skein Notes

Memex puts your Markdown notes and PDFs on an infinite canvas, with an AI chat that reads them. Any document can sit on the canvas as a live, readable card. Arrange and connect your cards, write around them with Apple Pencil, and ask the chat about what you have gathered. ON THE CANVAS - Markdown documents render as live cards, not links - PDFs sit on the canvas as cards showing their first page - Draw arrows between cards and gather them into groups - Handwrite and sketch next to your typed notes with Apple Pencil - On iOS 27, search finds your handwriting as well as your typed notes - Push cards to another canvas as your thinking changes - Type @ to link to anything in your library, or @here to link the spot you are on - Add text, code blocks, tables, images and embeds CHAT WITH YOUR NOTES - Add a card, a whole document or a PDF to the chat, or type straight in - Ask about your notes in plain words - Put any reply back on your canvas as a card - The chat is there on canvases, documents and PDFs MAKE IMAGES - Select typed text, or handwriting on iOS 27, and tap Make image - The picture lands on your canvas and in your library YOUR FILES STAY YOURS - Documents and canvases are plain files in your iCloud Drive, visible in the Files app - No Memex account, no lock-in - The AI sees only what you add to the chat. Your messages and that context go through our server, which stores none of it, to OpenAI via OpenRouter BUILT FOR IPAD AND APPLE PENCIL Memex is designed for iPad first, with Pencil writing directly on the canvas. It also runs on iPhone and Mac. ONE SUBSCRIPTION One Memex subscription unlocks the complete app, including 500 AI credits a month: a chat message uses 1 credit and an image uses 10. Credits reset on the 1st of each month (UTC) and don't roll over. Take the hands-on welcome tour, then try the chat with 5 free messages before you subscribe. Eligible new subscribers get a 7-day free trial. Choose $9.95 monthly or $79.99 yearly. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Skein is a notes app for people who want to keep their own files. Your vault is a folder of plain Markdown on your device or in iCloud Drive. Skein reads and writes those files directly — the same folder you open in Skein for Mac, or in any other editor. Nothing is locked in a database, and there is no service in the middle. Write it down before you lose it The app opens on a capture field. Type the thought and send it; the first line becomes the note's title and Skein files it where you told it to. No dialog, no folder picker, no naming a file before you have written anything. Find it again Search matches titles the moment you start typing and searches inside every note once the index is ready, ranked, with the matching lines and their line numbers — tap one and land on it. The Vault filters by name, by #tag or by folder in one field, and tags are real: tap one anywhere in the app to see everything carrying it. Real Markdown, properly Headings, lists, task lists, tables, footnotes, code blocks, callouts, ==highlights== and [[wikilinks]] — read cleanly and edited as text. A keyboard bar puts the things you actually reach for above the keys, including arrows that move by character and by word, and you can choose which of them appear. Type / for a command, #for a tag it already knows. Canvas Open a JSON Canvas board, move cards, connect them, colour them and write on them. The same file, the same format Obsidian writes, so a board made on the Mac opens here and back again. It keeps your writing safe Skein keeps earlier versions of a note as you edit, so you can go back to what you wrote this morning. When the same note has been changed in two places, Skein keeps both and asks — it never picks a winner quietly. Also Share text from any app straight into your vault. Four themes, including one for reading at night. Dynamic Type throughout, and full VoiceOver support. Skein does not have an account, a subscription for the basics, a server, or telemetry. Your notes never leave your device except through iCloud Drive, which is yours. Skein for Mac is a separate app on the same purchase.