Nows and Forevers

One of the headlines of this week’s Apple developers conference was Journal, a diary app that will be embedded with iOS. In the early days of the iPhone — and I’ve had one for 15 years in August — I would have welcomed this. Now, I’m not so sure.

I’ve a kept a journal — not a diary — for most of the past 38 years. It’s taken various forms, whether handwritten (like in high school), typewritten, on the computer, or, more recently, on the iPhone and iPad. Since 2011, my journaling has become more frequent — it already was daily, long, long ago — thanks to an app called Day One.

How much? I haven’t transcribed everything, and I’m not even close to doing so. But I’ve got more than 32,000 entries across 7,658 days from the late ’80s until this morning. That’s a streak, DayOne tells me, of 5,282 days. That’s not a brag, or it shouldn’t be taken as one. I merely say it to explain how important Day One is to me. It’s my most opened app, and my most used app. I’m writing entries up to a dozen or more times within an 18-hour span, basically a running chronicle of my day, every day.

I’ve been using Day One more than any other app, ever since I bought in 2011 on the strength of a review. And for the past several years, since it went to a subscription model, I’ve been paying $24.99 a year for it. Day One is worth it.

DayOne has been gearing up for competition for a while. It’s hardly the only diary app out there. (I’ve also tried Momento, but it didn’t fit my life as much.) But the idea of Apple making a big splash in DayOne’s pool has been rumored for two months or so, and now it’s here.

“Day One will continue to differentiate from Apple and other journaling apps with a focus on inspiring writing, beautiful design, security and new innovations,” Day One Founder Paul Mayne wrote at the end of April. It had similar things to say this week on a blog.

I believe him, and in Day One.