This flies a bit in the face of the author's "The sync breaks. The company sells out and dies" point and the simple beauty of a text file. I find that Obsidian.md is just one step above a text file.
Simple daily notes, which are automatically organized into year and month folders. (Tip: Set the date format to YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD)
The Sync feature works great, but no reason you couldn't do this with just git on your own.
Plenty of built-in features (Plugins, ToDos, etc...)
Cross platform apps.
Markdown
Free. The sync feature is $4/month. Worth it for me.
They also have a one-time $25 payment to get early access to beta versions and a VIP discord channel.
I love Obsidian and the sync is worth it, but I wouldn't say it's one step above a text file. It's miles away. Never-ending features and customisations. If you want simplicity, a text file really can't be beaten.
The point is, you don't need to play with extra features and customizations if you don't want to, so you can keep it "a step above a text file". That said, having those additional features is nice when you want just a little bit more, or you want to link a note file with your todo file, etc.
I use Obsidian as basically just a markdown editor that I can throw images into. I find that all of the bells and whistles stay out of your way if you don't want them.
My grandmother worked for a bank for the better part of her life. She used to bring old punch cards home to use for notes/grocery lists. My mom and I used to drive through her teller window and send her cookies through the tubes or the document slot.
