Live data from Hacker News

Evernote is in deep trouble

businessinsider.com

71–80 of 100 posts

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#71
post #7

It's interesting to me that EN is apparently in deep trouble partially because of buggy feature releases. Three days ago I wrote this comment in response to the last article about EN: I wonder if they're experiencing feature creep because they've satisfied users of the core features. I use a program called Devonthink Pro according to this method: http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... and in…

How does the sync between machines work, in your experience?

I know it wouldn't work for a lot of people, but I myself keep looking at switching from Evernote to "DevonThink Pro Office" because I would be OK with going Mac-only to get reliability.

(I know Devon has an iOS app, but my understanding from their own forums is that the iOS app is basically garbage, and the users are all basically waiting for Devon's rewrite that has been in progress for years; is that right?)

I do need it to reliably sync 500,000 items across multiple computers though, even if they are all Mac. Last time I checked, that didn't really work, the sync was a hack built on top of Dropbox and it had tons of problems. Do you use that and has it improved?

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#72

Evernote has me hooked on cross device persistent notes. And I will change to the first quality alternative that lets me import my existing notes from Evernote. Evernote still can't handle even simple non-overlapping changes on two devices. Every time I close my laptop I have to wonder if changes were synched. Especially embarrassing because superb open source code is already available for conflict resolution (git, f…

apple notes works pretty well for me across devices

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#73
post #51

Actual headline: "The inside story of how $1 billion Evernote went from Silicon Valley darling to deep trouble" Current: "Evernote is in deep trouble" (overly strong, imo). Also, I don't think the article supports very well the "deep trouble" description. It sounds like the company has plenty of money and continues to grow.

That doesn't seem like that big of a difference to me. In fact, I'd say the actual headline is more hyperbolic. The inside story of how $1 billion is specifically written to cause people to click the link.

I Guess that's true. "Deep trouble" to me suggests the company is running out of money and in somewhat dire straits. Which I don't believe to be the case at all.

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#74
post #3
post #2

All I need is a good web clipper like evernote's Clearly, so that I can directly save cleaned webpage to a .doc file in a Dropbox folder. Still can't find one. Also, why dropbox does not create a simple note taking app, just save notes to a dropbox folder?

If you don't need it to be a .doc, Google chrome allows you to save webpages to PDFs just by going to file > print[0] and it works quite well. The Evernote clipper worked pretty well IIRC, but either way you will have to edit the markup a bit to get the results on a very cluttered page. In a pinch though, chrome does a great job if you don't want to have evernote simply to clip pages. [0] http://www.labnol.org/softwa…

I generally avoid Chrome, but I'll give that a try. I hope it works better than my experiences with both Safari and Firefox on OS X.

Those browsers have long supported what is mentioned in your linked article:

   File -> Print -> PDF -> Save as PDF
However, it's very hit-and-miss of what results you'll get. About 80% of pages come out fine, but the remainder can be quite awful. And it's unpredictable which browser will do better on any given page. At the least, you'd expect results to match printing to paper, but sometimes even that doesn't happen. Safari has a Reader View that produces good results, but I don't think very many websites support it.

Unfortunately, certain websites go out of they way to prevent us from saving them to PDF.

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#75
post #54

Evernote has me hooked on cross device persistent notes. And I will change to the first quality alternative that lets me import my existing notes from Evernote. Evernote still can't handle even simple non-overlapping changes on two devices. Every time I close my laptop I have to wonder if changes were synched. Especially embarrassing because superb open source code is already available for conflict resolution (git, f…

The thing I've become hooked on and am desperately trying to find a replacement for (just in case) is the functionality that adds a checkbox to a text file which can then be searched for with the todo: search parameter. For example "notebook:Pdcast todo:unfinished" will show me notes with things I still need to do (any unchecked todo checkbox will mean the note appears in that search) I realise there's a billion and…

NValt uses (a possibly nonstandard) markdown notation for checkboxes. So a search for unchecked would be "[ ]", checked is "[\]"

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#76

I heard this a lot: Evernote sync-ing is buggy. Could someone point to me how to implement a good cross-device sync-ing algorithms? Or is it perhaps just as simple as using object version based on timestamp? I've never done this before so I have no clue how easy/hard it is to implement one.

Here's a set of slides on how Spotify does it with playlists:

http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/JimmyMrdell/playlists-at-sp...

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#77
It's striking to me that here on HN, where there's rarely anything approaching consensus on software user satisfaction (IMHO), evernote is being roundly blasted. These feelings weren't formed in 2015 (I've been disappointed by it for years), and yet they continued to let it fester. (Shruggy guy)

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#78
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mac and Windows user I've never used google keep as there is no native app.

Just curious, what do you need a native app for? I ask because I'm usually suspicious of any company that has a native app when one isn't needed. I usually suspect they have some ulterior motive, spy ware, malware. Etc. Plus even if they don't have an ulterior motive installing a native app is one more vector for having my machine owned whereas a web site is not. (the browser might be a vector but it's a given I'm go…

"works on an airplane" is an important quality for many.

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#79
post #69
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that you could do that with org-mode…

Interesting and thanks for the heads up but I don't believe I'm quite compatible with that software. I guess I'm also looking for usable-at-3am features, web accessible, phone accessible (currently iOS), centralized or at least synchronised, and the only feature Evernote doesn't seem to provide - backup-able files/database CLI, Linux.. emacs (!). I'm not sure I could manage to grasp emacs during the middle of a reall…

How much would you be willing to pay for this software? Available on all desktop and mobile platforms, with flawless synchronization and ridiculously good search capabilities?

Re: Evernote is in deep trouble

#80

A great example of why the "number of users" metric is being overvalued. Until there is a solid, proven and scalable business plan to translate usage to revenue the $100 per user standard valuation shouldn't apply.

> $100 per user standard valuation

Is that actually a thing? If so, I can retire on the valuation of my obscure vanity blog, but I'm also worth a few million to websites I've accessed.

Post reply on HN