Since the blow-up of Zettlekasten and #pkm over the pandemic, I haven't really thought about them much, but before Obsidian or Logseq, my two top note-taking apps for a long time were Notational Velocity (followed by nvALT) and Simplenote.
When they launched, there was nothing like them. There were no similar apps I can think of from that time that focused on simplicity and speed.
I don't think the Notational site has changed at all in 15 years.
