Vesper 1.0


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Today John Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus jointly released an iPhone app, Vesper. If you were assembling a dream team of people to create a new application, I can’t think of a better roster.

The application is a replacement for the Apple Notes app and all of its yellow paper and marker felt font glory.


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The real story about this application is the user interface. If this is an example of the direction we’re heading (I think it is) then I’m ready for the future. There are so many little details of this user interface that I love. For instance, when you slide a Note to the left to add it to the archive, the direction arrow slowly moves in relation to your finger and the color switches from grey to orange when you get far enough to archive. Transition from the main view to the new note view has just enough zoom. The app is flatter but not flat. When you slide the main screen to the right, it exposes a list of all notes that is clearly behind the main view.


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It’s these little touches that I’m sure went through many, many iterations. This app helps you as a user without banging you over the head with Corinthian leather.

I’m really enjoying Vesper. It does have limitations. There is no synchronization available and, for that matter, no iPad or Mac version of the app to synchronize with. In a recent interview at Macstories, John Gruber explains they wanted to focus all of their attention on the iPhone application first. I suspect we’ll be getting additional versions for the other platforms and syncing in the future. In the meantime, I really love this app and I will find use for it.