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"Though the iPeople insist Notes is for “memo-taking," that is not, in my experience, where its real utility lies," writes Katy Waldman in Notes on Notes. "Not everyone walks around with a Moleskine notebook, but almost everyone has a smartphone. The Notes app therefore serves as a diary for nondiarists, a catchall for the flotsam and ephemera you didn’t even realize you wanted to record."

The Notes app seems to be a hotspot for lists — shopping lists, to-do lists, idea lists. But it's also a place to jot down thoughts we don't want to lose, some of which can be quite dark and others which are deliberately intended to lift us into some ki...