Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices • Hacker News Board

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#441

Post by lukefreiler » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:12 AM UTC

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #384

lukefreiler wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently lost nearly a days writing - but apparently they only do a back-up every 8 hours, and I was off by one (I don't write in Evernote anymore, lesson learned). They did try to placate with 3 months free (after being a paying customer for years), but I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. Hopefully their new f…

> I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. I don't understand. EverNote has instant sync across devices. If you are using in web browser or PC client then its even real time. (Android one requires you to click "Done" before syncing apparently because it treats the whole note as one giant text area). I very frequently…

The iOS and Desktop clients do not instant-sync, or I assume they wouldn't both have sync buttons (or a "Synchronize Automatically" preference, that has "Every 5 minutes" as it's most frequent option).

I'm aware of instant-sync in the web client, but typically (especially in this case) prefer desktop clients to web.

In the unfortunate case I referenced above, I spent an entire morning writing in Evernote (Mac desktop). At lunch I had another thought to add, opened Evernote on my phone, and apparently the same note was already open - so it overwrote all the work I set all day to it's earlier state. There was no way to get it back, as it didn't consider it a conflict and it had no backups due to being less than 8 hours (I went through this with their support team). It's a broken product.

Sync shouldn't even need to be one of their goals - it should be a solved problem by now.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#442

Post by lukefreiler » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:13 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #203

lukefreiler wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently lost nearly a days writing - but apparently they only do a back-up every 8 hours, and I was off by one (I don't write in Evernote anymore, lesson learned). They did try to placate with 3 months free (after being a paying customer for years), but I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. Hopefully their new f…

> I'd have moved by now if I could find something that was both highly cross-platform (Mac/Win/iOS) and lighter (Markdown pretty please). I've compromised on OneNote, which isn't lightweight, but has become impressively cross-platform.

I tried to get back into OneNote last night (after the frustrations brought up by posting in this thread). I appreciate the cross-platform aspect, but I really don't like the interface - especially on desktop. The really weird text-box thing just blows my mind, I just want to write.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#443

Post by mark-r » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:27 AM UTC

davidjgraph wrote: post #360

pjc50 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users no more expect vendors to lose their data than they expect banks to lose their money. I suspect we'll eventually end up with some sort of standards body making sure you do backups.

I don't quite follow your point. We didn't lose their data, we never had it.

The analogy then is having the bank tell you to take your deposit home and hide it under your mattress. That mental model just doesn't fit into people's world-view.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#444

Post by wpietri » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:48 AM UTC

sweetbacon wrote: post #280

wpietri wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I don't want them to make anything noteworthy. I want them to make something subtle, unobtrusive, and as reliable as gravity. I've been using them 3 or 4 years now and as far as I'm concerned, they're my favorite vendor. Google and Amazon keep screwing with things because they have a complicated global-dominance ecosystem that they're trying to build. I don't trust them with my files. But Dropbox keeps do…

I hear ya. But how much $$ have they made from us to keep the servers running? Sometimes it feels like my data could vanish at any time... I've started looking into ownCloud and the like lately as I'm just getting tired of offloading critical storage to something that may prove transient.

I don't know about other people, but I'm paying them $100/year for disk space that costs them under $15. Which is fine by me; I'm paying them for the seamless sync and the reliability.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#445

Post by akulbe » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 4:03 AM UTC

WaltPurvis wrote: post #422

akulbe wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reason #1 why I like DEVONthink for the Mac. It uses exactly this model. I'm sure equivalents exist on the other platforms, but I'm not all that familiar. I have been an Evernote Premium user for a long time, and since the company seems to be having a rough time, I recently looked at getting all of my data out of Evernote. What a nightmare . I loved Evernote. I loved the fact that Phil Libin said he wanted it…

At risk of sounding like an Evernote apologist, I'm going to repeat a question I asked to another commenter elsewhere in this thread: Why do you consider it a "nightmare" to get your data out of Evernote? You can select one, several, or all of the notes in a notebook and export them in either HTML or XML format, with all metadata (tags, etc.) and embedded media included. That seems pretty good to me, and it's certain…

If I put plain text into a note, I'd expect to get plain text out. You put plain text in, and you get something that still have to extract the text from. That isn't what I'd consider "pretty good".

My point doesn't apply so must just the plain text. It's everything. You put it in in source format, and you get .enex out. It's not so cut and dry.

Going in, it's one step. Coming out, to get it back in the same format you got it... it's multiple steps, and manipulation with other tools.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#446

Post by cpach » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 6:54 AM UTC

tedmiston wrote: post #414

cpach wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, in Pinboard it's possible to combine tags for filtering, like this: https://pinboard.in/u:kr4d/t:chicken/t:soup/t:recipe/

I really like that feature in the web app. Do you use a mobile app that supports multi-tag filtering too?

I'm not sure TBH. I tried in Pinner for iPhone, but the app is quite buggy so I'm not sure if it's supposed to work or not.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#447

Post by xerophyte12932 » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 7:20 AM UTC

julianz wrote: post #437

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. I don't understand. EverNote has instant sync across devices. If you are using in web browser or PC client then its even real time. (Android one requires you to click "Done" before syncing apparently because it treats the whole note as one giant text area). I very frequently…

The Windows desktop client isn't real time sync at all, it's set to sync every X minutes (configurable) and there's a great big Sync button on the toolbar.

i meant in the context of the whole 8 hours limit thing. Yes its X minutes but not X hours, but that has been cleared up by his follow up comment

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#448

Post by xerophyte12932 » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 7:21 AM UTC

lukefreiler wrote: post #441

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. I don't understand. EverNote has instant sync across devices. If you are using in web browser or PC client then its even real time. (Android one requires you to click "Done" before syncing apparently because it treats the whole note as one giant text area). I very frequently…

The iOS and Desktop clients do not instant-sync, or I assume they wouldn't both have sync buttons (or a "Synchronize Automatically" preference, that has "Every 5 minutes" as it's most frequent option). I'm aware of instant-sync in the web client, but typically (especially in this case) prefer desktop clients to web. In the unfortunate case I referenced above, I spent an entire morning writing in Evernote (Mac desktop…

I agree, it needs git style (or even Ms word style) conflict resolution. hopefully they will figure this out soon

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#449

Post by Flenser » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 8:31 AM UTC

joshdickson wrote: post #284

vskarine wrote: post #185

"Evernote, The First Dead Unicorn" https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55e1beac15970d6c01395d9d

great article! ;)

(Sorry for posting off-topic but I know you wrote the syrah platform and I can't find an email address for you)

Could you please remove this bit of CSS. I'd like to be able to see my scrollbar:

   body::-webkit-scrollbar {
     width: 0!important;
   }

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#450

Post by neya » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

5555624 wrote: post #343

neya wrote: post #264

The problem with Evernote is with the way they treat data. I found a really interesting guide hosted on Evernote[1] and I tried to download it. But no, I couldn't, because, they took the pains to block someone from downloading their notebooks and made my life so difficult in the end that I not only gave up on the conversion, but also stopped being their customer. I couldn't even print the damn thing! Ironically, they…

If you've got an Evernote account, rename that notebook and sync your account. I clicked on the above link, renamed it, then synced in the desktop app. It was now my notebook. I then was able to export it. (That said, I'm leaving Evernote.)

Thanks for the tip!