on MacOS/iOS, Bear was the best note taking app I found. If you need cross platform capability and/or want free and open source I like Joplin a lot as well.
I have also tried to find an alternative to evernote and i settled to Joplin for now.
Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
111–120 of 354 posts
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#112I really liked Evernote. Yearly subscription instead of the monthly Netflix like prices that ever half baked app asks for these days. Integration amongst all my devices phone, table, various desktops. All nice. And no further dependency on Microsoft, Google or Meta. Product development stalled a long time ago though. I do hope this thing stays in the air, cause I got a lot of notes in there.
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Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#113I really liked Evernote. Yearly subscription instead of the monthly Netflix like prices that ever half baked app asks for these days. Integration amongst all my devices phone, table, various desktops. All nice. And no further dependency on Microsoft, Google or Meta. Product development stalled a long time ago though. I do hope this thing stays in the air, cause I got a lot of notes in there.
Yea, I'm in the same boat as you. The notes I have in there are really valuable.
Curious, would you have been willing to become an investor in Evernote to avoid this acquisition? And if so, what order of magnitude? I'm curious why they didn't just do a crowdfunding campaign.
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree on #3. Social & collaborative features are the bane of my existence. No I don't want to share all my scraps of information, no I don't want to let my friends know what I'm listening to, no, I don't want to publish product purchases I make to twitter. I think a better #3 would be: decide whether your audience is individuals or businesses, then build for that.
If you don’t want collaborative editing, don’t use it. I’m saying most users wanted it and started looking elsewhere when EN couldn’t deliver. It’s easier to add a lock on collaboration than to backfill later.
In addition to what other posters said, there are opportunity and maintenance costs. Building features for use-cases other than mine puts me in the position of wondering whether my use-case is part of the long term vision for the product. I want a note taking app that strives to improve at capturing quick notes. A document collaboration tool that happens to work pretty well for capturing quick notes is less likely to satisfy me long term.
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#115I learned three things watching EN snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. 2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door. 3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build…
I think number 1 could be done, but not like Evernote did.
It's been what? 3 years since they released their javascript app, and they still didn't rewrite some important old features. Just last week we got back the option to start writing a note in the title instead of the body.
3 years!
I could write an entire Evernote competitor from scratch in 3 years, as a single developer (as a javascript app, not as multiple native apps).
And they STILL don't have reliable note-synching.
It took them too long, and their app is too crappy. But a GOOD rewrite would have worked just fine.
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree on #3. Social & collaborative features are the bane of my existence. No I don't want to share all my scraps of information, no I don't want to let my friends know what I'm listening to, no, I don't want to publish product purchases I make to twitter. I think a better #3 would be: decide whether your audience is individuals or businesses, then build for that.
If you don’t want collaborative editing, don’t use it. I’m saying most users wanted it and started looking elsewhere when EN couldn’t deliver. It’s easier to add a lock on collaboration than to backfill later.
Most EVERNOTE users wanted it? I sincerely doubt that even 20% of Evernote users want that.
People that want a collaborative Docs app already have Google Docs. Evernote is mostly a "digital cabinet". It's where notes and documents go to die (in a good way).
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#117I'm not familiar with Bending Spoons. Anyone able to give me a bit more context on what this will likely mean for the future of the product?
They became sorta famous over here for developing the Covid19 contact tracing app "Immuni" that was then adopted by the Italian Ministry of Health. Being a government project, they probably got a life-changing amount of money because of that. I can't comment on the quality of the app as i never used it. https://github.com/immuni-app
Actually this is wrong. They did not receive any funds from the Government.
There is an article in Italian with the words of one of the founders.
https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/20_aprile_22/luca-ferrari...
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#118I learned three things watching EN snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. 2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door. 3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build…
Regarding #1, this is now an often touted recommendation, even by folks like Joel Spolsky whom I greatly admire, but I'm not sure it's the right lesson. For example, I know that Google (at least in the 00s) rewrote huge, major pieces of their infrastructure multiple times and did so successfully. While I agree that broadcasting out a message of "We're going to stop the world and add no new features until we do a grou…
4. If you're going to do the rewrite, don't take many years working on it, just to release a broken product missing lots of core features.
5. If you're releasing a broken product missing core features, don't take many YEARS after release to un-brake your product and build some of the missing features again.
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Apple Notes because I realized that, for my needs, all the structure and organization that so many other note taking apps/services provide really just make things more complicated and isn't beneficial. Notes is simple, has one level of folders, and supports labeling. I'll almost never look at 95% of my notes again, but in case I do, I can just search by keyword and usually I'll find it. My one gripe with Notes…
The lack of export functionality without a Mac kept me from using it. edit: HN won't let me reply so... That sure is a lot of trouble just to grab a copy of my notes. This is something I do often enough that I don't want to have to go through two MFA prompts, and then another when the process is done. Not acceptable.
You can bulk export all your Notes through appleid.apple.com. They can come down as text files, or a JSON, I believe. I just went through the process recently to migrate notes into Joplin.
Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
#120Related ongoing thread:
Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626047 - Nov 2022 (143 comments)