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Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

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Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#111
post #69

I haven't seen too many people mentioning the onslaught of Microsoft One Note in developing a great note-taking tool, that syncs well in the cloud, and integrates with several of their other tools like Word and Outlook. Personallly, as a early Evernote User, once One Note came out for Mac, I switched. And then getting a job somewhere where we used Windows PCs, just solidified it for me, and I never found the need to…

For sure. I had an Evernote subscription, but I used OneNote at work - and it's just better. Letting you place snippets and notes on the vertical AND horizontal plane makes sense for quick note taking. Anyway, I switched last year and the fact that OneNote had a convenient note importer for Evernote was icing on the cake. Evernote never seemed to evolve either. It was the same product 5 years ago, as it was last year…

Anyone know if they're involved in selling metadata/data?

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#113

I don't think Evernote need(s/ed) a team version, but I do think its not sufficiently better to current alternatives for note-taking and bookmarking. I use Pocket for tagged bookmarks and OneNote when I want more context. Where there is a gap in the market, tying notation to memory and productivity, would be some kind of notation context and intelligent reminder (e.g these web tabs, that note, this tag) tied to some…

> Where there is a gap in the market, tying notation to memory and productivity, would be some kind of notation context and intelligent reminder

If I were running the company, there's no way I would start chasing idea like this. I like how they used to describe the product 10 years ago - your external brain. It's an application for taking notes, not calendaring or task management.

There are lots of apps that do exactly what you are describing. I think it's a core Android features. You can say "ok google, remind me to buy eggs when I'm at the store" and it just works. I believe iOS has the same functionality.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#114
post #68

Am I the only one just using the stock MacOs Notes and Reminders? Does the trick for me. Never lost a thing. Does pictures and text and has basic grouping. Mac only of course.

I am too, but I really wish I could sync them with my Android phone somehow

Alternatively I have Google Keep on my phone which I can use on desktop via web app. I prefer the design of macOS Notes app for a lot of the notes I want to take though (i.e. long form rather than lists)

After reading this thread I am going to try MS OneNote, seems quite recommended so far and has free macOS and Android apps with syncing

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If OneNote had been made by a hot new startup if would have crushed the competition (easy to use! affordable! very flexible! just works!). Instead, it's too often glossed over because it's made by one of IT's behemoths and not considered to be sexy enough.

How is the OCR in OneNote now? One of the features keeping me on Evernote is being able to take a photo of a whiteboard and put it in Evernote which then does a surprisingly good job of recognizing the text and making the photo searchable.

Not bad at all, even with my atrocious handwriting it manages to be around 85% accurate.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#116

What a strange article. It's a note taking program. It has search. The author called it brilliant. Huh? As a long-time (no longer avid) user, the screenshot of the old version made me nostalgic, but I don't remember the search as different to a standard search function.

Search in Evernote can also use metadata. So if you jotted down something you wanted to remember while you were on vacation and now you can't recall what that was, you can search for all the notes you created in Ibiza.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#117
post #74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t any explicit notion of collaboration, and tagging can be accomplished by way of a folder structure. I haven’t tried symlinks, which is how you’d make multiple tags work on a regular file system. Syncthing’s purpose is to ensure that a specific directory remain synchronized across multiple computers and/or mobile devices. It accomplishes this goal with the minimum of fuss, and (in my experience) works bett…

I think when I looked at it a while back my concern was how it would cope with one or more of my devices being off-network for days at a time (a regular occurrence). The other devices wouldn't be, and changes would only be done wherever I happened to be, but the cost of evaluating this solution was unfortunately higher than not making any changes. As I say, it's on my list. The suite seems to be quite robust - but gi…

Evaluating as well, is your concern that the files won't come down at all?

Or that it'll be egregious when it's time? Solution?

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#118
post #6

The problem with both Dropbox and Evernote is that their minimum pricing tier is too expensive for what they provide - particularly when both functions are provided as part of the Microsoft Office package with is the same price as Dropbox alone. I used both for years and would have happily paid a couple of dollars a month as I do for the basic tier of Google Drive. I abandoned both when the 2 device limit came in.

I agree 100% about the price. I subscribe at the $36/year level (I don't think they advertise it) mostly because I want to support the company. I probably only open the app once or twice a month which means every time I do, it costs me $1. By that standard, it's the most expensive app I use.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#119
I'm working on an Evernote clone for markdown. I find that almost all my notes are text. I hate the buggy EN editor, it's where I constantly think the app could do better and wonder what the heck all those engineers are doing... Here's the gist of my idea: Similar UI like EN, but designed along UX experience of VSCode. It's an Electron app using Monaco as the editor. Also uses a similar concept like VSCode's workspaces. Each workspace is indexed for quick search and has a powerful tagging system (just like EN has). The idea is to support different file types for notes over time, but it will be first and foremost designed for markdown. For me, it is essential that I can use Dropbox, GitHub, or a different provider to sync my notes and that I don't have to trust my note taking tool to do that. Anybody interested? (I know there are different tools like this already, but nothing that a) tracks EN's UX closely, and b) is comparable in usability and hackability to something like VSCode.)

Edit: notes are simply text files. ".md" or whatever you want.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#120
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the "until they pull the plug" is a popular meme but EOL expectations for GSuite products are completely different than other Google products.

Hangouts and Google Talk used to be part of the core services of GSuite and they still got the axe.

Rebranded as "meetings" or something. But I still use Hangouts.
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