Moving to plain-text and markdown a few years ago was my best decision. I encrypt all my notes and store them encrypted on GitHub.
I don't want my private data to be handled by unprofessionals.
Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
161–170 of 869 posts
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features I don't think so. They had plenty of paying customers. They claimed to be profitable for a long time (eg https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/evernote-rai... ). They had trouble with (i) implementing big price hikes, and (ii) a poor, bug-filled user experience. While that was going on, they were…
If you're on Windows, OneNote is almost impossible to compete with. Even though it's part of the Office suite, it's a free, stand-alone download. The phone apps are free, and you get 5GB of free storage. Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage. Even though OneNote is basically a loss-leader, it's extremely powerful and flexible. It's been a…
I have tried to use oneNote a few times and it just doesn’t not compute to me. Some union of Notability + Paperpile would be perfect. I review proposals, peer review manuscripts, and read papers for my own research, all done with notes take with the handwritten scribble function over a PDF (which Evernote never got right).
I have friends with OneNote and no matter what they explain, it does not make sense to me.
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assume away, but to play devil's advocate, how much testing do you think is done on the close account procedures vs add new account and accept money from that account? i'll bet it's not even close to being even
I don’t accept that. If those procedures are failing, then someone should be getting 5xx alerts. Before they started failing, unit and integration tests should’ve been raising alarms. A site that remains persistently broken has a lot more wrong with it than just some software bugs.
Tests..? For a SaaS? Surely not?
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features I don't think so. They had plenty of paying customers. They claimed to be profitable for a long time (eg https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/evernote-rai... ). They had trouble with (i) implementing big price hikes, and (ii) a poor, bug-filled user experience. While that was going on, they were…
If you're on Windows, OneNote is almost impossible to compete with. Even though it's part of the Office suite, it's a free, stand-alone download. The phone apps are free, and you get 5GB of free storage. Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage. Even though OneNote is basically a loss-leader, it's extremely powerful and flexible. It's been a…
Taking notes is a feature, not a product
And given how the "process cyclists" of Notion will move to anything that has more bells and whistles, while the rest of the 99% will use what's available for free and syncs online, it's a hard place to compete
("process cyclists": will pay a lot for every small but hyperoptimized accessory)
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#165Joplin felt like the OSS spiritual successor to Evernote for me. It’s in markdown, has a mobile app and you can self-host.
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#166I feel like Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features, something we see in many VC funded software from its era. Once you give something away, it's damn near impossible to take it back, even if you plead your case as honestly as Evernote did. Evernote was great. Honestly, it was worth paying for. But they gave away the farm too early, and folks feel…
Also Obsidian is a small team (< 5 people IIRC?) and they don't have to monetize as aggressively to make back the money that VCs have funded them with.
Have Obsidian taken on any VC funding?
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#167Here is an (incomplete) list[1] of random note-taking apps that you can try if you are leaving Evernotes. Or you can try ours, which is based on Markdown (not open source) and a nested notecard format (not documents). Heavy emphasis on getting out of your way and just letting you write notes, though still with plenty of power if you need it. It has plenty of other cool features[2] and we're prepping for a pretty big…
I can't see on your features page whether you have a proprietary format and to which degree I can easily export my notes & data.
Evernote being a cautionary tale, I think you understand why no one would or should move their notes to closed system.
Being based on Markdown means notes are stored somewhere in the file system, like Obsidian?
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#168I wonder how that 100 year guarantee is holding up? https://longnow.org/ideas/evernote-and-the-100-year-data-gua...
I see that the article says "will", but CEOs and their companies will square the circle every time they are drumming up publicity and impressing potential investors. If they have squared the circle it would be such a feat that there will be a press release talking about it in the past tense, not the progressive or the future.
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use dropbox to sync.
I've contemplated this, but in general I'm not a big fan of hosting personal files on the cloud if it can be avoided. Maybe if I use rclone and encrypt it...?
What about Syncthing ? It’s Dropbox like (you sync folders over different computers) but it’s totally P2P (so no cloud).
Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features I don't think so. They had plenty of paying customers. They claimed to be profitable for a long time (eg https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/evernote-rai... ). They had trouble with (i) implementing big price hikes, and (ii) a poor, bug-filled user experience. While that was going on, they were…
If you're on Windows, OneNote is almost impossible to compete with. Even though it's part of the Office suite, it's a free, stand-alone download. The phone apps are free, and you get 5GB of free storage. Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage. Even though OneNote is basically a loss-leader, it's extremely powerful and flexible. It's been a…
Exactly. I'm OneNote user for last 15 years or so. I got roped it in because it was free and good enough for my text notes (with image and PDF attachments).
I transitioned to MacOS 10 years back.. and lo behold, free OneNote application available there too with free cloud storage (OneDrive) and cross device sync story (mobile, Windows). Works great.