Notes syncing, imap duplicates, and general iCloud notes/mail confusion

I believe I have a good general understanding of how syncing works on iOS devices with iCloud.

What I don't understand is how it related when you add IMAP into the mix.

I currently am using gmail as my email provider, set to IMAP mode. While I understand there are significant differences in how gmails IMAP works, using a psuedo folder with a label rather than a real folder, the concepts should be close enough for this discussion.

I disabled notes syncing the other day leaving me with only "On my Mac" for notes. Or I guess "On mu iPhone" on my mobile. The reason for this, is that with notes enabled, you will gain a new "Notes" folder/label in gmail. They will sync fine, any new note you make on an iOS device will also be made in your iMAP mail account, be it biewed on the web or in iOS Mail, or Apple Mail.

The proble, and many may not even be aware of this, is any note you edit, or even at times, just the creation of the note, makes multiple copies of that note in your IMAP folder with your servers Notes folder. I don't believe this matters if you use gmail or not, and beieve it applies to any IMAP server, being an Apple bug.

What is really terrible about this, is that the duplicates are near impossible to locate. Unless you want to look at each note, and then search for some string of text in your emails, there are not many ways to locate the notes. Many don't have subjects, and if you delete a note, the duplicates are not deleted. About the only significanlty unique piece of data is in the headers of the email, where there is a single header that could be searched on, if you have that ability, which gmail does not, Apple Mail does not, and some third party IMAP tools do.

Does anyone know a solution for this?

In general, I don't understand why there is even a section in iCoud for notes. It is a feature Apple has shoved into their email applicaiton. If you use IMAP, it is no more than a folder/label. Prior to iCloud, I was using notes, they were synced over IMAP, though at that time, I was unaware of the duplciates issue. The point is that there was no special section to turn it on or off other than in the mail applicstion itlsef.

So now, without IMAP being the backend for my sync of notes, does anyone know of any desktop app on the Mac that wil allow me to read/write to my notes on my iOS devices?

This also brings me to another question about iCloud syncing. I currently don't have Mail set to sync. What is it for if you are using IMAP? What is going to sync? Is it goin to sync the emails? That makes no sense, as that is entirely the point of IMAP.

It really seems to me that Apple should pull the notes feature out of Apple Mail. It is not in iOS mail, it is a distince application. That makes sense, but on the Mac, it really doesnt. I don't use Apple Mail on the Mac, especialy with gmail and the bug of the IMAP/archived folder issue. Without the use of Apple Mail, I have no notes. I would not want to launch Apple Mail just to use notes even if there were not duplicate notes issues.

Perhaps someone knows of a very simple notes application that has a desktop and iOS version, that will dysn natively, or using DropBox, that should solve my issues perfectly.

Thanks for any help in explaning this to me.