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Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

jasonkincaid.net

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Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#41

Post by x0054 »

wpietri wrote: post #9

Yeah. I lost substantial data in their web client. All developers know that feeling when using an app: you're dealing with something a little half-assed. Evernote has always had that feel for me. Switching over to something else, preferably based on flat files using something like Markdown, is on my to-do list.

Try nvAlt. It saves all notes to .txt or .rtf, supports markdown (limited), and is super fast. I just switched to it my self and love it. I only wish I could attach files to notes. OSX only but there is a cross platform clone, the name escapes me though.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#42

Post by bagels »

gmu3 wrote: post #19

This. I'm always particularly annoyed by the tech support when I've tried to submit bug reports. One time I found a reproducible bug in the Chrome Clipper and even offered a possible explanation/solution for what was happening and the person first insisted that it wasn't happening. I couldn't believe he was telling me what wasn't happening on my screen when I was looking right at it. I pay for prime so next requested…

Where I work, we have fans that have asked us for branded apparel. We have to tell them that despite multiple reqeusts from customers, we don't sell them. Your criticism on "focusing on socks" is one of the reasons we haven't done so, despite the fact that nearly all of the "socks" work would be outsourced or, at least obviously, not done by engineers.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#44

Post by AVTizzle »

I think this is a direct consequence of how thinly they're spreading themselves out across multiple platforms. They have a native app for every mobile and computer platform, along with web, plugins for every major browser, and then the other apps - skitch, penultimate, clearly, hello, etc...

It truly is in the face of the "do one thing and do it well" mindset that many other companies subscribe to. It's a shame too, because I love Evernote. I truly do live in it... true to Phil's vision, my mind is thoroughly mapped out throughout my Evernote account.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#45

Post by maga »

I've been using desktop app for quite some time now and it's good enough for the most part. Just recently I was considering moving to the android app when it hit me that Android app doesn't even have an option for so-called local notes even on premium subscription. Whatever you write there should eventually be synchronized with the cloud. That's no-go for me, I'm both paranoid and dealing with rather sensitive information.

Though I can't find a reasonable substitute on Android. Most apps in this category focus on getting notes easily or on some to-do/calendar side, and very few has a good set of features to organize and navigate through a vast db of notes. Springpad has the same notebook/tags system and pays a good deal of attention to the organization part, but alas it is a web app with no option for private local notes.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#46

Post by chromejs10 »

So I've never used Evernote before, but after reading this article I decided to try it out since I know a lot of people who swear buy it. My first time user experience was awful... I immediately started creating test notebooks, test notes, etc just to get a feel for how it worked. Within seconds the app was freezing on me every time I tried to delete something (this was on a brand new iPad Air). I had to either rotate the device or put the app into the background in order to unfreeze it. This is a common scenario and I can't believe there isn't quality control for that. I'm a developer and I understand not having time for edge cases...but freezing on delete? I can repro it 100% of the time

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#47

Post by temuze »

While this post must be pretty distressing for the Evernote team, their response time is pretty impressive! Within a couple hours of this post being published, Phil Libin has already contacted him. See the edit at the end of the post:

"Update: Evernote CEO Phil Libin contacted me and we spoke about the issues described. He apologized, saying the post rings true and that there is a lot of work to be done both on the application and service fronts — and that he hopes my impression will be reversed a few months from now."

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#48

Post by tifareth »

org-mode is vastly superior in every way. If you want to organize audio files, you can do that to with the attachment feature.

Oh and most importantly, you host the data yourself - no verbose plaintext logs containing your sensitive data and no support calls. Org can also encrypt your Org files on-the-fly:

http://orgmode.org/ http://orgmode.org/manual/Attachments.html

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#49

Post by mdavidn »

I evaluated Evernote once two years ago. The iOS app crashed as I was appending to a text note. The app lost a half hour of unsaved meeting notes. I never trusted Evernote again. In my mind, a shoddy rich text editor cast serious doubt on the durability of Evernote's distributed revision control.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#50

Post by nairteashop »

jonursenbach wrote: post #2

I've been meaning to move off of Evernote because their OSX client is just slow as all hell. Are there any alternatives, aside from something like Dropbox? Evernote's OCR implementation was/is really useful.

If speed is of importance, I would second the SimpleNote suggestions. You might also want to take a look at Notational Velocity and its fork, nvALT - the speed of launching, searching and creating notes is unbelievable, and both apps can sync with the SimpleNote service.

http://notational.net http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

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