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Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

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Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#21

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

INeedMoreRam wrote: post #15

I use and encourage Joplin instead of any privacy-breaching commercialized product such as Evernote, Notion, or OneNote.

I use the multimedia and handwriting touch capabilities of my tablets and phones. Since Joplin does not have handwriting support, nor image embeds, nor file embeds. This is not to single out that tool, since most cross-platform notetaking applications have the same problem or a similar permutation.

I choose to be stuck with OneNote 2010 because:

1. It has local files I can back up and sync, no cloud account or online requirement (also more privacy from cloud scanning)

1. It supports embedding files so I can back up the notebooks and not have to go find every file scattered all throughout my hard drive in order to make those up two

1. I can hand write and have text be searched or OCRed

1. It has embedding support for images and audio and have them be interactive (you can see the image, play the video, listen to the sound right in the program)

Writing such a program is a very difficult problem. If it were easy, we would be having all of these features and not just another round of markdown text file editors.

Xournal++ is considering moving to a file format that would enable you to embed files that would be zipped up as part of the file format, since it already supports handwriting recognition and has basic text and good enough image display, I continued to watch it to see if it can take over my onenote use cases, but it's just not there yet.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#23

Post by canadiantim »

baby wrote: post #20

Honestly Apple Notes works really well. It doesn't have much features, but its simplicity should be the baseline of any note taking app

How do you get your notes out of apple notes though? They're like some sort of covetous demon who won't let your notes go once it consumes them.

I literally went to the apple notes discord once and asked them directly and their response was basically "Apple Notes isn't design to be used for more than 100 notes"... so be very very careful about choosing to use Apple Notes cause you may never get your notes out of there

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#24

Post by aaronbrethorst »

baby wrote: post #20

Honestly Apple Notes works really well. It doesn't have much features, but its simplicity should be the baseline of any note taking app

I find the simplicity of Notes to be a big win. I don’t need to be able to publish a blog from it—I just need to know if I still need to pick up a bunch of kale or not.

Notes satisfies my three must-have requirements: it’s on every device my wife and I use, it allows mixing checklists with free form text, and we can effortlessly share information with each other.

I just checked and found that I have 1,321 total notes stored in iCloud. These range from my daily todo lists (invaluable for end of year performance review documents, saying nothing of just remembering what I’m supposed to do), to the all-important shared grocery list, which we will both update whenever we’re shopping at the grocery store.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#25

Post by nathanaldensr »

jwr wrote: post #19
rcarmo wrote: post #17

It failed because it turned the app into bloat and killed multi-device syncing. Most of the decisions made regarding product features were user-hostile not just to the free tier, but also to paying users who did not want the "features" they kept pushing out.

This is a very similar path to the one that Skitch and Dropbox took. In each case, instead of perfecting and maintaining a really good app, business pressures caused them to pursue growth at all costs. This is a common problem these days.

> business pressures

You mean greed.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#26

Post by halpmeh »

canadiantim wrote: post #23
baby wrote: post #20

Honestly Apple Notes works really well. It doesn't have much features, but its simplicity should be the baseline of any note taking app

How do you get your notes out of apple notes though? They're like some sort of covetous demon who won't let your notes go once it consumes them. I literally went to the apple notes discord once and asked them directly and their response was basically "Apple Notes isn't design to be used for more than 100 notes"... so be very very careful about choosing to use Apple Notes cause you may never get your notes out of ther…

Where exactly are my notes supposed to be going?

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#27

Post by SUPERSLEDZ »

Still looking for viable replacement:

* Joplin had some issues I've checked year ago.

* Apple notes while I have iPhone there's no Windows app.

* OneNote is just trully horrendous app.

* Obsidian just can't convince myself. I'm forcing myself to use it work, while it works, it's not something I enjoy doing.

* Notion is odd, everything is a block and sometimes formatting is just meh...

* Google keep is just simple note and that's it(unless something has changed).

Any worthy apps to look at besides those?

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#28

Post by olivermarks »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #25
jwr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very similar path to the one that Skitch and Dropbox took. In each case, instead of perfecting and maintaining a really good app, business pressures caused them to pursue growth at all costs. This is a common problem these days.

> business pressures You mean greed .

also survival, but in the case of Evernote (which I still use)incompetence

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#29

Post by c-smile »

Except of few ideological mistakes, I would say, quite a lot of time was wasted on doubtful technical decisions ...

One year was wasted on trying to make it as WPF application, .NET all that ... 5, if not more, years were wasted on making it work as Electron'ish like application (CEF was integrated).

Evernote is a typical companion application - the thing that sits in tray and pops up as quickly as possible when needed.

Management read once that "Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil" but missed the critical point - this kind of application MUST be lightweight or dead.

The elephant was born instead.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

#30

Post by nvrspyx »

INeedMoreRam wrote: post #15

I use and encourage Joplin instead of any privacy-breaching commercialized product such as Evernote, Notion, or OneNote.

I like Joplin, but it's a poor experience on iOS. Besides the material design theme feeling out of place, scrolling is weird/slow compared to other iOS apps, including webpages in Safari, and there's no gestures, so I have to reach all the way to the top to go back to the note list instead of swiping from the left of the screen like every other app I have installed.

Although it's not open source like Joplin, I've switched over to Obsidian.

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