Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

usefyi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 328 posts

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#181

Post by asdff »

arkitaip wrote: post #87
acl777 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneNote. It’s free on all platforms and handles your listed requirements.

If OneNote had been made by a hot new startup if would have crushed the competition (easy to use! affordable! very flexible! just works!). Instead, it's too often glossed over because it's made by one of IT's behemoths and not considered to be sexy enough.

When I first tried it in like 2012 it was absolutely a mess that crashed all the time and bogged down with hardly any notes and was deserving of all the hate it got. If it was in the hands of a startup it would have been long gone by now.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#182

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

I used Evernote for a bit years ago, but only for scratch notes I didn't care to lose. Mainly because I saw there didn't appear to be any way to export/backup my data from Evernote in a format that was not some proprietary storage mechanism that only works in Evernote. I figured the end-game was always to lure people with freemium and then dramatically increase the prices later, holding your data hostage. And it appears that is exactly what happened.

It looks like you still cannot backup to an open format:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005557-How-to...

"The Evernote XML (.enex) file generated by the above process can be used to import notes or notebooks back into Evernote. This process can help you move notes between Evernote accounts or restore lost notes from a backup."

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#183

Post by throwaway35468 »

So, with all these sync tools, there is a potential problem. We do not know if any data is lost until we look for them.

Recently, my apple notes were not getting update in Yahoo Mail(Its the way apple notes works). For a long time, I thought it was Yahoo mail problem. I did upgrade to iOS 12 and lost my notes. It turned out that apple was not even sending my notes to yahoo mail for backup.

Some one needs to come up with the a service which monitors whether these syncs are happening or not.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#184

Post by slantyyz »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #157

I find it weird that no one is mentioning that this article is written by an EN competitor. I've been an EN user since 2010. Yes they have had some problems and I have even tried to jump ship (as recently as last fall when I gave DEVONThink a go). I keep coming back though. I've yet to find anything that touches it in terms of features and functionality. Only ones that come close are OneNote and Notion. OneNote is fi…

I was an early EN user from way back in the day when the UI metaphor was basically an infinite roll of paper.

I abandoned EN around the time everyone else did for a Dropbox synced folder full of markdown files. I use Sublime Text as my client on the desktop.

For my particular use case (I never really used the advanced EN features) it's worked well. I never really created notes on mobile, but I can read them using the Dropbox app.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#185

Post by markolschesky »

torstenvl wrote: post #170
acl777 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneNote. It’s free on all platforms and handles your listed requirements.

There is no Mac version of OneNote. There is only a Mac version of a thin client for OneNote on OneDrive.

Is this not the full version? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id78480155...

It's not quite as feature complete if you're not using Office, but it's still pretty handy.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#186

Post by asdff »

tnolet wrote: post #68

Am I the only one just using the stock MacOs Notes and Reminders? Does the trick for me. Never lost a thing. Does pictures and text and has basic grouping. Mac only of course.

I use calendar and textedit and just straight up folders for organization. Syncs to everything this way.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#187

Post by asdff »

criddell wrote: post #116
netsharc wrote: post #24

What a strange article. It's a note taking program. It has search. The author called it brilliant. Huh? As a long-time (no longer avid) user, the screenshot of the old version made me nostalgic, but I don't remember the search as different to a standard search function.

Search in Evernote can also use metadata. So if you jotted down something you wanted to remember while you were on vacation and now you can't recall what that was, you can search for all the notes you created in Ibiza.

Is that useful? You already get date created/modified in every OS. Shouldn't be hard to figure out when you were in ibiza and sort your notes folder by date.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#188

Post by ubermonkey »

bloopernova wrote: post #136
ubermonkey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me? OrgMode. I'm 100% done trusting proprietary formats for this data. My OrgMode files are all plain text, so they can be read on any platform.

I was going to comment to recommend orgmode too. Like you said, the org files are plain text, they can be opened by practically anything, and can be saved practically anywhere. I use Orgzly on Android, which syncs manually to DropBox. A free dropbox 2GB space is going to store a lot of orgmode files! I edit mostly through Orgzly, although I do use the orgmode extension in Visual Studio Code to edit on my laptop. http…

I guess the real answer is "a folder of text files you sync." You don't have to use Orgmode or emacs at all to get a good chunk of the benefit here.

True, you can't do rich text or media, but it turns out I almost never even WANT to do that.

Anyway, I was doing sync'd text with a Mac tool called Notational Velocity for years before I got sucked into OrgMode (emacs' Deft mode is a workalike). Point any iOS or Android editor at a Dropbox folder and you've got mobile sync on the cheap with versioned backup and more or less ever present and completely open data that works on any platform.

OneNote and EN may have some shiny features, but NOTHING they do is worth locking your data up.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#189

Post by duado »

Yhippa wrote: post #155
taude wrote: post #69

I haven't seen too many people mentioning the onslaught of Microsoft One Note in developing a great note-taking tool, that syncs well in the cloud, and integrates with several of their other tools like Word and Outlook. Personallly, as a early Evernote User, once One Note came out for Mac, I switched. And then getting a job somewhere where we used Windows PCs, just solidified it for me, and I never found the need to…

OneNote is the closest thing I've seen to a Google Notebook replacement. I really hope they keep improving this product. It's great.

Another thing in OneNote’s favor is you know it’s going to stick around because they sell it to businesses. With Evernote it seems like they could run out of money and with Google they could just get bored.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#190

Post by asdff »

Quanttek wrote: post #150

Are there any good, preferably open source, alternatives to Evernote/OneNote? I like Markdown but plaintext is not enough as I need support for pictures, tables, ...

Do you need them in the same file? I'll do plaintext notes and have the relevant pic or other file have the same file name (or filename_fig2.png, etc.) as the plain text to keep things together.
Post reply on HN