161–170 of 354 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). One point of anecdata: I haven't heard of any of those. How do you define success? Keep in mind Evernote was created in 2000 and the web version was launched in 2008. I doubt any of the stuff in your list will be around in 14 years.
Will Evernote be around in 14 years?
They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). Evernote were first, and blew it. No other way to describe it. I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.
> They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). One point of anecdata: I haven't heard of any of those. How do you define success? Keep in mind Evernote was created in 2000 and the web version was launched in 2008. I doubt any of the stuff in your list will be around in 14 years.
At long last, Evernote takes an Incredible Journey to be broken down for parts by its new owner. Can't get any more fucked up than it already has been, it went from being an important part of my daily workflow to a place of pain. The rewrite is part of why my last graphic novel ground to a halt, I was using EN to collaborate on scripts with my partner and it is just agony to use any more. I cancelled my subscription…
I tried a few alternatives and landed on Apple Notes. It's blinding fast, and while it's not exactly feature-rich, it does everything I need while being seamlessly synced to the cloud and my devices.
The only reason I've stuck with Evernote is because it scans all of my old paperwork and lets me search by the OCRed text. Without it, so many years of personal data would be locked in images I'd never have time to eyeball. Please someone release me from this foul daemon by suggesting an alternative with this key feature.
I 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.
Except one: speed. Evernote is dog slow, whereas Apple Notes is fast. This is what killed my reason for subscribing to Evernote. Though it has far fewer features, I can press CMD+N and start jotting down my ideas/things I have to remember.
I have no objection to paying for good tools, but they are tools and must support me in what I am trying to accomplish.
They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). Evernote were first, and blew it. No other way to describe it. I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.
Actually, their experience is pretty pleasant and the product works very well after they have rebuilt their apps. They don’t need to be jealous. Their relative utilitarian take on the matter is what makes them so unique and powerful in the market. Yes, I love markdown, and Evernote just provides a slightly more powerful, WYSIWYG version of it. I neither want “everything and the kitchen sink” vision of Notion, and des…
Man this was not my experience at all. Granted I dropped Evernote quite a while ago, but for years they kept adding a kitchen sink of features that I didn't care about, while regressing at the basics like syncing and merging text notes across multiple devices.
They were maybe first company I experienced that blew up a really solid app I liked after raising a truck load of VC money and trying to take over the world.
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Debt.
Right, that's the usual meaning, but it's quite unusual for software companies to be debt financed, isn't it? SaaS companies usually go the venture route AFAIK.
Interesting to see this now, I was thinking of switching to a new platform for tasks and notes because Evernote’s free tier is quite limited and Apple Reminders often doesn’t even show the correct reminder if there are multiple open. I was just reading about Evernote’s profitability last night.
Apple notes is rock solid compared to reminders Reminders has been perpetually flakey, particularly around new OS releases and if your iPhone/Watch/iPad/Mac are in different states of latest vs non-latest OS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, their experience is pretty pleasant and the product works very well after they have rebuilt their apps. They don’t need to be jealous. Their relative utilitarian take on the matter is what makes them so unique and powerful in the market. Yes, I love markdown, and Evernote just provides a slightly more powerful, WYSIWYG version of it. I neither want “everything and the kitchen sink” vision of Notion, and des…
> Their relative utilitarian take on the matter is what makes them so unique and powerful in the market. Man this was not my experience at all. Granted I dropped Evernote quite a while ago, but for years they kept adding a kitchen sink of features that I didn't care about, while regressing at the basics like syncing and merging text notes across multiple devices. They were maybe first company I experienced that blew…
I 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…
> 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. I've espoused this before, but I've come around to moderating my take on this. "Almost never" is an exaggeration. I agree that they "almost never" work, but that's not the same as there being no case (there's a difference between "should not have done" and "should have done differently". After many years of seeing…
Relentless Refactoring replaces the ship piece by piece while it's under way. If you are effective at it, you can effectively (both definitions) rewrite the entire app with few people being any the wiser.
If you are not good at decomposing a problem into digestible, coherent steps, then you are also lousy at Relentless Refactoring. If you can't decompose the problem, your top-down rewrite is statistically guaranteed to fail. Someone somewhere will get lucky, accidentally beating 1:4 odds over and over for 50 failure points, but that person will probably not be you.
The people who can Relentlessly Refactor don't need to ask for a top-down rewrite. They just get down to doing it. Therefore most of the people who ask for one are incapable of taking advantage of such permission.
Ultimately, the only people who ask for a top-down rewrite are the people who don't deserve it. They believe in do-overs instead of doing the hard work of removing obstacles. They believe in the Second System (without the attendant Syndrome), not in observing and adapting to new information as it becomes available. They have, in essence, trained themselves to continue to misbehave in the face of new wisdom. They will repeat that behavior during the rewrite.