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Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

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Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#261

Post by nextos »

saadullahsaeed wrote: post #244
slantyyz wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an early EN user from way back in the day when the UI metaphor was basically an infinite roll of paper. I abandoned EN around the time everyone else did for a Dropbox synced folder full of markdown files. I use Sublime Text as my client on the desktop. For my particular use case (I never really used the advanced EN features) it's worked well. I never really created notes on mobile, but I can read them using the…

I am curious how do you handle search? Is that even a use case for you?

You can simply use ripgrep to search. Either from a terminal, or from an editor it is integrated with.

I favor the same approach. In my case, I use org-mode instead of markdown as it offers a few niceties when editing from Emacs. But irrespective of that, IMHO plain text overrules any other choice as it is future-proof and can be composed with your favorite tools. For example, a VCS like Git.

I have many files in a flat zettelkasten-like structure [1]. That means, essentially, having one file per concept and using links to chain them.

[1] https://qr.ae/TW8ieU

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#262

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Evernote and most note-taking or knowledge repository solutions are pretty solved problems for those willing to do a bit of self-hosting. Personally, I host a Tiddlywiki server on a cheap VPS I own that runs other things. A cron job regularly backs up the entire TiddlyWiki to a git repo, and the contents of the repo to cloud storage. TiddlyWiki is responsive and works fine on mobile, and I am assured that all my data is backed up and private.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#264

Post by cjensen »

Comparing Evernote to Dropbox is interesting to me.

Evernote had a bad rep for reliability, and was messing about with very questionable enhancements to its product line. I switched to a Good Enough competitor after being an Evernote customer.

Dropbox has a great rep for reliability, and is messing about with very questionable enhancements to its product line. I have plenty of OneDrive and iCloud disk space, but I pay for Dropbox because it just works.

To me the lesson is make sure your primary product works and remains best in class. "Fly the Aircraft First" [1].

[1] https://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/2018/media/SE_Topic...

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#266

Post by netsharc »

criddell wrote: post #116
netsharc wrote: post #24

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.

But it only started to do it from the mobile app, and I didn't realize the idea behind it, it annoyed me because I just wanted to take a general note, nothing to do with the location (which is how interpreted it, a location based note would be something like "This is where I parked my car).

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#267

Post by cparsons3000 »

shosko wrote: post #265

Evernote was never simple to use, and its design was clumsy. I have always wanted to use it but never enjoyed the product. Makes me miss del.icio.us. So simple and useful.

I agree. Always found it clunky. Now I use Bookmark OS for notes and bookmarks and am happy https://bookmarkos.com

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#268

Post by underwater »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #262

Evernote and most note-taking or knowledge repository solutions are pretty solved problems for those willing to do a bit of self-hosting. Personally, I host a Tiddlywiki server on a cheap VPS I own that runs other things. A cron job regularly backs up the entire TiddlyWiki to a git repo, and the contents of the repo to cloud storage. TiddlyWiki is responsive and works fine on mobile, and I am assured that all my data…

Your post echoes the infamous comment on Dropbox's announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

There is a difference between building something that works for you, a technical person, and something the general population will trust and pay for.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#269

Post by F_J_H »

olivermarks wrote: post #177
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #157

I find it weird that no one is mentioning that this article is written by an EN competitor. I've been an EN user since 2010. Yes they have had some problems and I have even tried to jump ship (as recently as last fall when I gave DEVONThink a go). I keep coming back though. I've yet to find anything that touches it in terms of features and functionality. Only ones that come close are OneNote and Notion. OneNote is fi…

I use EN every day also. The search is not good, but I haven't found anything better, I have a lot of notes in different notebooks and it works ok for me in terms of speed and usability across mobile and desktop. I'm glad they didn't become some bloated app that tries to upsell you with useless new features all the time but worry they might not survive. I had a major problem with sync 3 years ago where I lost an impo…

yeah, search is really bad. Not sure if it's still possible, but a few years ago when trying to find something I knew I captured, I just wrote my own SQL against the local DB - found what I was looking for pretty quickly.
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