TextEdit has its roots in OPENSTEP, where it was used as kind of a demo application of the text views IIRC. It even came with source code, as did Chess by the way.

So I guess a comparison between TextEdit and Pages doesn't make too much maybe, they're really different things.

Source code, published until OS X 10.9: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/TextE...

> TextEdit [...] was used as kind of a demo application of the text views IIRC. even came with source code, as did Chess by the way.

On the other side of the fence, WordPad initially came with source code as well, and was essentially a demo app for the rich edit control as well as the criminally underused text converters[1].

[1] https://www.malsmith.net/wincvt/

I’ve been a TextEdit-only user for years. I write notes as quick streams of consciousness for me to pick up later. TextEdit is great, but I have similar qualms as the author, and I also have been wanting something that allowed me to build some programmatic tooling around the short notes I write (ie: format these and move them to my Todo list). I’ve been working on a very simple app that is rock solid like TextEdit, but with some niceties for using it as a notes app, instead of a rich text editor.

Feedback appreciated! https://jort.app/

You should be able to create and use templates for TextEdit using the Stationery Pad feature which comes built-in to macOS:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mchlp1341/mac

Stationery Pads are one of the almost criminally underused and well-hidden features that have been around since the Mac OS (pre-OSX) days.

Another one is Cmd+H for hiding an app. People often minimize the current window to see the next app underneath, while hiding the current app is much more elegant and creates a lot less friction for restoring it later.

Which of these hidden champions did I forget?

Also Pages also has a fairly decent print design mode. Sure, it can't compete with something like Indesign in feature parity, but I find it pretty useful to do posters, booklets, flyers and the like. It's free and fairly intuitive to use.

Pages is an underrated Word Processor. It has the lessons of 30 years of development and experimentation of WYSIWYG editors distilled and applied in a tight little package.

The team that created Pages, before that they were GoBe Productive for BeOS, and before that Clarris, so Pages is their 3rd or 4th redesign from scratch.

The same goes for Preview.app - it's a very underrated, super powerful app for PDF editing and lots of other stuff.

It arguably gets worse with every OS X iteration. I understand why they removed postscript support, but it still makes me sad.

But it can still do a lot.

Give me KDE Kate, or give me death!