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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)

#131

Post by mjburgess »

c-smile wrote: post #29

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 need…

> Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil

Means don't drop down to asm to save a few cycles. It doesnt mean "dont fill your 10fps GUI app with crap".

Today, it more or less should be killed-off as a phrase. There isn't anyone optimizing anything, let alone "prematurely"

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

#132

Post by Kye »

Baeocystin wrote: post #101

I am grateful for whichever Googler who has managed to keep Keep up, running, unworsened and uncancelled over the years. Sometimes a product is enough as it is, and man does the modern software world have a problem with recognizing that.

Blogger is in a similar spot. It gets updates every few years to keep track of major changes in web technology, but nothing radical.

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

#133

Post by pqs »

deepspace wrote: post #118
SUPERSLEDZ wrote: post #27

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 not…

I use Simplenote to solve the problem of sharing quick notes between Apple Notes and Windows. My core data storage app is still OneNote, though. I moved there when Evernote started getting buggy, and it is a perfectly fine replacement. I don't understand the hate for it.

How did you move your notes from Evernote to OneNote?

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

#134

Post by criddell »

scioto wrote: post #119
cpach wrote: post #78

Am I the only one who still pays for and like Evernote? (: I don’t love it, it’s too bloated for that. But it still works (if not optimally). I could switch, but doing research to find an alternative and then migrate would take quite a lot of time, and time is always a constrained resource.

I paid for Evernote when it had the silver/mid tier, and it was about $35/yr. Then they got rid of that tier, and now it's $80/yr. for Personal. So I switched over to Joplin[1]. -- [1] https://joplinapp.org/

If you ask, there's still a $35 / year tier called Evernote Plus. I'm on it and that feels like a fair price however I'm not going to be renewing. I've been meaning to get off it ever since the Windows client turned into a slow, bloated mess and this year I'll probably finally do it.

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

#135

Post by ggregoire »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #96
TillE wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also to paying users I was a paid user of the lower tier, and I decided to leave when they kept showing me nag screens to push me to buy the higher tiers. Totally unacceptable in a product I was paying for.

Dropbox does the same shit. they are totally shameless.

Apparently even Wikipedia does this. A HN user was saying the other day that he donates $50 every year and this year they emailed him to ask $250.

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

#136

Post by twblalock »

They let the software become buggy and unreliable. It's that simple. In the meantime, other notetaking apps came along that were able to compete, and a lot of them are free. There is clearly still demand for this kind of software.

I don't think it mattered that Evernote was selling branded Moleskines and wallets -- that was a weird thing to do, but I have a hard time believing that sucked away all the resources from engineering for the core app.

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

#137

Post by xeromal »

Baeocystin wrote: post #101

I am grateful for whichever Googler who has managed to keep Keep up, running, unworsened and uncancelled over the years. Sometimes a product is enough as it is, and man does the modern software world have a problem with recognizing that.

Me too. I know Keep is going to get cancelled but I use it so much.

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

#138

Post by csours »

Obligatory mention of the Memex and Vannevar Bush's essay 'As We May Think'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

HN discussions:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=memex

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#139

Post by nelsonenzo »

I stopped using evernote after their drastic UI change (which was universally loathed), and I got tired of it not supporting markdown or code snippets.

While I found the product useful for keeping tech notes, I was constantly getting tripped up by the formatting. It became clear to me this was aimed at journalist rather than software developers.

While I support journalist having a product that is a good fit for them, from a business perspective I think they were chasing a relatively poor demographic with a shrinking user base.

It's a shame though, it was a great product I was otherwise happy to pay for.

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

#140

Post by spyda »

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 recently switched to Apple Notes for the ecosystem experience. I like it.

That said, it *absolutely boggles my mind that there is no Markdown support*.

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