Thanks, it’s a good point. I meant this post mostly as a “how” to use both apps, but perhaps the “why” deserves its own write-up—or at least a bigger call-out. Briefly, there’s two main reasons:
- iPhone/iPad notes access. NotePlan gives us a powerful way to access and add to our notes when away from the desk.
- Task filtering. If you’re not managing projects/tasks within your notes, this won’t matter, but NotePlan provides an intuitive rollup of tasks that is very handy. (E.g., I can review and interact with every “overdue” task from my previous daily notes in one view.)
NotePlan also provides a few other benefits unavailable in Obsidian: you can open notes in their own windows on macOS; you can use @ to tag people and it’ll pull them together, there’s a CloudKit-based collaboration option (e.g., share a note with another NotePlan user and you can both edit it simultaneously). But the main ones are above!
Edit: missed that the question went both ways… As for why not to use just NotePlan, I find Obsidian’s “IDE for thought” approach to be more productive than NotePlan. The graph, transclusion, search, and window management features all make Obsidian a bit more powerful, for me. Plus, customizability (especially with plugins) is a major boon—I love using the “focus mode” and “Andy’s mode” tweaks to get different emphases on what I’m working on, for instance.
You’re right in that the overlap of both apps may mean that just one might be enough for most people. It is an important consideration. Still, as both apps continue to develop, I think we’ll see more divergence than convergence here.
I’ll edit this into the guide. Thanks again!