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So, because i had that big stupid pout about AI in productivity/knowledgebase software, a few days ago instead of sleeping I just tried a bunch of them. i haven't settled on which is "the best" because i still need to think about my specific needs, but the baseline that i'm working with is that i need something for individual use that supports both pc and ios devices, and a write a lot of notes about everything. here's everything i tried out and the feelings i had about them:

1. Workflowy - everything is a bulleted list. You make lists inside of lists. you get 100 free notes and items per month. Paid version is $4.99 a month/$46 a year. You auto opt into the free trial. i'm not really a list kind of guy, and especially not good for the fact i need to write huge and multiparagraph notes.
2. Microsoft OneNote - you have to download the 365 suite even if you don't want to use it. i just really don't microsoft's ui, even if this one seems to be the most robust in terms of it's free and low cost aspects, however i can't get a hard answer on how much stuff you get for free since it seems to rely most on how much cloud storage you take up, which will ovbs differ from person to person. i do like that it's optimized for both typed and handwritten notes, which is nice for me who uses an ipad as a laptop half the time. if you want the paid stuff you do have to get a 365 subscription which i dont know if people are that into.
3. Evernote - yeah, i mean. this is the "THE" notetaking software everyone else uses. there's a free plan and it honestly seems pretty good and robust for someone that doesn't want to pay for it. i think what made me worried is about being able to sync my notes to my phone on top of my ipad since it's kind of nebulous about what "2 devices" means on their website. their yearly plan is kind of expensive, even with the discounts that they have on the site right now. seems useful.
4. Slab - knowledgebase software. realized that i write wiki/knowledgebase level notes sometimes so maybe i should look at that stuff. it feels functionally similar to notion or obsidian but because it feels like everything should exist as a web-page also, it takes an extra step to know what is editable and then being able to edit it. There's like an "update" stream in the right side of some pages that shows what user edited what last, but it made me realize that there's a bot that comes with using slab. and you can't get rid of it. defo a software more focused on collaboration, but even in the free version you can get up to 10 users accessing your stuff which i think is probably among the most i've seen you can get in these things.
5. Guru - i honestly don't know why i tried this one. made specifically for teams and groups. meant to work with all the other productivity software you use. auto enrolled into a 30 day trial. also you have to email their support to delete your account which i was... not really happy about since i was there for 5 minutes and then it's like i have to return my gun and badge if i want to leave. i especially don't know why i tried this because i was so mad about AI and they boast about how their tools are AI driven! why did i do that!
6. Standard Notes - very appealing free plan at first sight, encrypted notes, multidevice sync, you can tag notes. however, the free version only can use plaintext. markdown or richtext are a paid only feature. which is insane. paid version is $90 a year, which isn't bad comparative to a lot of other similar things, but i bounced right off. plaintext only. cmon man.
7. Scrintal - i didn't actually get to try this one, since it's still being developed and you need to pay for it in order to be in the early access/beta. it's $60 a year, which is pretty cheap compared to other yearly plans. it looks like it's trying to be like milanote and notion/obsidian which is interesting, but people seem to like it, i just can't vouch for anything.
8. Anytype - this site looked different 4 days ago, i hated it then, and you can actually scroll on it now. you have to sign up to get an email to their early access thing, but they have a desktop and mobile app you can still use. it seems like it's trying to be a decentralized and open source notion, which, sure, and you can apparently import you notion notes directly into it, but when i tried to, it didn't work. also because it's still being developed it's free now, but there have not been any hard established pricing plans/ideas yet, which turned me off to it a bit. if i invest my time and my notes into this thing and it ends up being over $100 a year to keep them in anytype, that wouldn't really sit well with me, yknow.
9. Leanote - open source alternative to evernote. the ios part of it hasn't been updated for 3 years. desktop app seems nice, but i couldn't figure out how to get the ios part of it to work, save for making a chinese app store account. i've made app store accounts for other countries before, i just didn't feel like doing it in this case just for the test. i also don't know if the ios app still works.
10. Logseq - very similar to workflowy, so i didn't really test it out to find the specific differences. it seems to be entirely free, which i appreciate, but i uhhh, like i said, i didn't really like workflowy, so this one wasn't gonna work out.
11. Goodnotes - so this one might seem weird, but there is actually a pc desktop app available for goodnotes, which famously only has been on ios and mac devices before. i've tried goodnotes on my ipad and wondered what the desktop app would be like, but it's kind of convoluted and you have to go through the microsoft store to get it, and it's only a beta app at the moment. and because of that, none of your notes from pc will sync with the ios app so it was kind of a dead end on that for me at the moment.
12. Acreom - it feels like a software developer's notion. the thing that feels weird is that you don't "delete" pages, you archive them. the free version has basically all of the features, the paid stuff just gets you better community support things and jira integration if that matters to you at all. i think it could be quite good, but there's just like a navigational quality to it that i didn't really like, but maybe someone else will like it better than me. seems to be suited for both individual and collaborative development in mind, which i did like. oh also, it might just be because i haven't updated my ipad in a while but i couldn't open the acreom app on it so i couldn't test that part of it.
13. Simplenote - well that feels a little self explanatory. it's a bog simple app that uses markdown and has device sync. the only turn off is that it has not innate hierarchy, meaning you just get a big long list of all the notes you've ever made. you can apparently pin the important ones, but then you have a long list of pinned ones and then unpinned ones at the bottom. super duper free.
14. Amplenote - one thing off the bat is that they don't have a desktop app, it's just in your webbrowser, but they do have ios apps that sync for free with everything. their whole thing is that you have 4 sections of information, daily notes, long form notes, tasks, and calendar scheduling, hoping the need to pare down all the other productivity apps you use. the nice thing is that if you do put those other things into amplenote, you can link between a lot of different things that you need to do. the one turn off again in the free version is that there's no note hierarchy, so everything is in a huge ass list. this one did admittedly appeal a lot to me. it has plugins you can put into your version of amplenote too, but the supported ones are at the moment just a bunch of AI prompt shit so, lmao
15. Obsidian - the big contender. i have multiple friends vouching for this one, and the fact that it lets me write notes in html (i have a problem), and has some neat plugin options makes it very cool. one caveat is that you do have to pay for the multi-device sync, which is my only hold back on just jumping in on it, which makes for about $10 or $96 a year. otherwise on ios you make notes that are restricted to your icloud storage that will never get out.
16. Milanote i used this a while ago for a bit but tried it again just to see how it fared. the whole point of this thing is that you basically make visual reference boards for everything and can map stuff together. the hierarchy system is entirely visual too which can make navigating a little bit of a nightmare. you only get a certain amount of free "blocks" to use before you gotta pay up.
17. Zettlr - mostly a markdown editor. it doesn't have an ios app or anything, but people in the community recommend that you just get a markdown editor app for ios and keep your files in a cloud drive in order to access them both.

EDIT: I FORGOT SOME!!! these are less ones i've tested personally and ones i looked at but still thought worth mentioning.

18. Memrey - it has a really interesting approach to how you do notes. basically you make categories and notebooks where all these free-form notes live in and you can access. it has a really different structure than all other notetaking stuff i've seen so far, but the free version of it seems worthwhile. the ui is a little weird and antiquated but not distracting.
19. fiinote - doesn't have an ios app but has an android one. the cheapest pricing plans i've seen. i didn't try this one out because i was at getting tired and also the free version has ads?
20. Tiddlywiki - basically a wiki software that you have the ability to self-host. i was looking at some of the hosting options there are and you can get as in depth or simple as you want to be about it. all community supported.
21. Bookstack - another self-hosted wiki software. pretty much restricted to desktop unless you really wanna go at it.

so where am i at the end of looking at all of these things in one day. i don't really know. a lot of these didn't suit my needs or had features i didn't care about or lacked features i really needed. the things that do appeal to me after all of this are evernote, obsidian, amplenote, and zettlr, but that's 4 potential contenders i like for all different reasons and what i don't like about them isn't shared between them. so i dunno. this post was as much for my use as it was for anyone else's looking into notetaking software. i need to think about it some more.