pages VS text edit VS notes app on mac?

Pages is a full-blown word processor equivalent to Word.
TextEdit is a feature-limited word processor that is fine for text-based tasks but is not going to get you very far if you need more comprehensive text, image and table formatting options, or the auto-creation of tables of contents etc.
Notes is not a word processor but has some limited text-formatting, table and image options. Its principal task is for note-taking and it isn't something you would use in favour of eg Pages for creation of documents or reports.

I can't answer for their ease of use with VoiceOver (I'm sighted and don't use a screen reader) but - assuming each works well with it - the answer to which one you should use for note-taking is probably Notes. This is mainly because of the different way it handles file management.

With Pages and TextEdit, you are going to be bouncing between the app and the Finder to gain access to older documents etc and therefore you'll be grappling with finding unrelated file types and folders. With Notes, you will do all that within the app and you'll only ever be working with or finding your other Notes.

Notes has its own folder structure that you control and it also supports hashtags so you can easily find and filter your different Notes by the way you've tagged them. Eg. if you tagged the Note for your current class with the teacher's name or the course or the topic or all three, you'd be better placed to find it again next week than you would a Pages or TextEdit document.

I just use textedit to take quick / long notes in class and use pages when I really have to for actual assignments when I don't / cannot have a windows system to do that because of personal preferences and too long list of bugs to tell hear for now. Remember, textedit on macos is not like notepad on windows. First it will have the system spell check as most of the other mac built in apps. Plus it's more a combination of wordpad and notepad, and for quick reading you can even open .docx within textedit however don't send edited .docx with it as it will completly break the formatting and layout. You can decide whether to use rich text such as underline bold etc with the rtf (wordpad like) mode or the plain .txt (notepad). Also don't underestimate the quick look / preview feature on finder, you can easily look at large documents in the preview window even for .docx and etc.
For Notes, I honestly haven't really explored it a lot yet but I'll definitely do that when I have time as it seems very interesting especially if most of its features aren't so bad with voiceover.

1Below is a summary of my thoughts on the 3 aforementioned apps. Your mileage may vary.

Pages

This as stated, is a fully functional word processing application. Part of Apple's "iWork" suite, and is meant to be the answer to Microsoft's "Office" suite. Pages is meant to be robust and even comes with some preinstalled templates for certain types or categories of documents, such as essays, legal documents, and much more. It has a large amount of formatting features, and there is even 3rd party add-ons for it to give more versatility.

While you can opt to use this for note taking, it might be a bit of overkill. Also you can open, edit, and save documents in the ".DOCX" format. However as has been mentioned quite a bit here, there are some issues with maintaining formatting between Microsoft Word and Apple Pages.

Notes

Notes is fairly feature-rich note taking app that will auto organize your notes between various criteria such as by title, by date, by recent, etc. You may also have different folders based on your needs, for example, you could have a folder of notes dedicated to different classes you attend or based on life needs, etc. One beautiful thing about Notes is that the organization and folder structure carries over between devices i.e. notes taken on, let us say a Mac, will show up exactly the same on your iPhone or iPad.

As of MacOS monterey and iOS 15 (2021) there is a feature called "Quick Note", with shortcuts to easily access and allowing you to effortlessly write out a new note and it will autosave in real time.

Text Edit

Ah, this is the tried and true "Notepad" of Apple's ecosystem. This is essentially Notepad and Wordpad rolled into one. As stated you can open and edit ".DOCX" files, but not recommended as formatting can get jacked. However if you want a quick and easy app for note taking, this will do nicely. It is lightweight and will open and save files very efficiently, and as they are typically saved to your Documents directly, at least on a Mac, they are easily accessed with the "Command plus Shift plus 'o'" hot key.

Final thoughts

While all of these apps are capable of meeting your note taking needs, do keep in mind the pros and cons of each. To reitterate:

1. Text Edit is fast, lightweight, but offers little in formatting functionality.

2. Pages is extremely robust, but could overwhelm as it is a fully functional word processing application with a ton of features and the ability to incorporate add-ons. Can be utilized for note taking, but is going to be overkill for basic notes.

3. notes is extremely versatile, user friendly, and with its auto organizational functionality, may be the best for your note taking needs. The fact that everything is done from within the app is a plus, and as such, is the best for note taking among multiple devices.

HTH. 🙂

I think of it this way.

When you have an idea you need to jot down right away without concern for fancy formatting, word processing or even full sentences, use Notes. Yes, there is a bug right now with list styles, but Apple Accessibility is aware of the issue. Notes are also all in one place, searchable and you can even lock notes for things you want to keep private. Notes also lets you quickly write out checklists. It's best at working with ideas that are seen by you, unless you want to collaborate or share your note with someone else. Again, this is not for fancy formatting or public viewing.

Pages is a fully featured word processor and the go-to for presenting your ideas with style and flare. When you want to write something that gets seen by other people, use Pages. Pages lets you format, align, decorate and embellish text to your heart's content. It's what you would use to write an essay, quarterly report, a novel, a printed letter or flyer.

TextEdit works best when viewing documents and making light edits to things like RTF or text files. You can also use it to edit HTML source code by hand. Need to quickly view a README file, open a Word document to read the first few lines or open an RTF? use TextEdit. It's light duty and fast.

I timed opening a document in MS Word on the Mac vs. TextEdit. A simple 12 page document took 28 seconds to open on an Intel mac with 16 GB of RAM. the same Mac took 2.5 seconds to open the same Word document in TextEdit.

Would I use TextEdit to edit a colleagues Word document? No.
Would I use TextEdit to quickly scan a Word document for a recipe? Yes, so long as I wasn't making changes to it.

Hope this is helpful.

When I was in school, I exclusively used Pages for writing reports, completing quizzes and tests, and taking notes. I found it was helpful to have all files related to a particular class in one folder in Finder, so whether I was looking for my notes file or a report I wrote, I knew they'd all be in that class's respective folder.

When I want to quickly write something down for later retrieval, I use the Notes app. Another situation where this app is useful for me is when collaborating on a simple note, like a schedule or family vacation plan, with others. While Pages offers similar collaboration features, not everyone who I collaborate with has Pages installed or knows how to use it, whereas the Notes app is included with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and in my experience is more immediately familiar to a greater number of people.

When I want to quickly jot something down with no intention of saving it, I use TextEdit. It's a simple enough interface that I can open it, immediately start writing in a blank document, and easily discard what I wrote when I close the window.