Sometimes Apple news comes from the strangest sources. In this case, Japanese Windows-focused magazine PC User interviewed Apple marketing VP Brian Croll, who told the interviewer that Notes will gain the ability to capture or import notes from Evernote with the release of OS X 10.11.4. This feature will probably be found in the iOS 9.3 version of the app as well.

The current beta build of OS X 10.11.4 can capture notes in Evernote's .enex file format, but the formatting is off. The ability to import Evernote content could be a way for Apple to steal market away from Evernote. Evernote's free basic tier allows only about 60MB of uploads per month, while iCloud offers 5GB of free storage and has no upload/download limits.

Looking at paid options, iCloud starts at $12 per year for 50GB of storage, offers 200GB of storage for $36 annually, and ramps up to a full terabyte of storage for $120 per year. By contrast, Evernote has a $25 annual "Plus" plan offering up to 1GB of uploading per month and a $50 annual "unlimited" level. For occasional users of Evernote, moving notes to Notes and iCloud could offer a less expensive solution.

The upcoming version of Notes in El Capitan and iOS will provide the ability to password protect individual notes, and currently allows importation of data from other apps through the share extension. For iPad Pro users, Notes works well with the Apple Pencil for capturing handwritten notes. That being said, Evernote's ability to pull information off of business cards or otherwise create searchable scans through OCR is quite powerful and there's no similar capability in Apple's Notes app.