My current favorite equivalent of Notepad.exe is Simplenote – it is cloud based but beautifully minimalist, I run the native app on iOS and MacOS (and can get to a webpage with all my info when on someone else’s computer.) I love how it makes the first line of text the defacto title (a trick PalmPilots used) and how it never tries to duplicate the font and color of stuff pasted into it (those are two things that its competitor Evernote gets wrong – plus Simplenote never begs me to upgrade.) Also I periodically get Simplenote to let me download a zipfile, my complete archive that I can backup safely, on my own terms… More at Kirk’s UI Dev Blog.
Good stuff as ever from Kirk.