Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant • Hacker News Board

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#181

Post by Pxtl » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

bdwalter wrote: post #84

I have been a loyal Evernote premium payer since 2009, and using it even longer. For a long time I recommended it to friends but since have stopped. I have developed some concerns with it over the years. 1. Fear of data loss... it's probably the largest part of my mistrust of all these dang cloud services that want to control/own me or otherwise lock me into their service. I run a 99.999% uptime, extreme scale, SaaS…

I'd love to see a private controlled answer to these services - some kind of owncloud-box with apps for various mobile platforms. F/OSS server software so I'm confident in it, and then paid/closed everything-else.

Then again, the challenge is that hackers love to hack, so we'll put up with kludgy mashed-up solutions instead of a nice one-stop-shop of convenience. Meanwhile, layman users are perfectly happy with the lock-in of modern webapps.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#182

Post by rdhyee » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:10 PM UTC

Although Evernote does its share of problems, I want to throw in my generally positive view of the company and the software. I've been a premium user since 2010, and despite its problems, Evernote remains the central program I use to organize my thoughts and tasks. I'd be glad to expand on what I like about Evernote if anyone wants to know. (I'm just a bit surprised by the high level of criticism for Evernote here.)

[later edit: as I reread the thread, I now see the discussion as less negative than I originally thought. Others are pointing out positives about Evernote. If Jason Kincaid (the OP) does manage to get Phil Libin to focus his company on improving the quality of the various clients, then I'd be quite happy. For the time being, I still with Evernote because it's the best solution I've found for what I do.]

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#183

Post by reeses » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

aroman wrote: post #99

bdwalter wrote: post #84

I have been a loyal Evernote premium payer since 2009, and using it even longer. For a long time I recommended it to friends but since have stopped. I have developed some concerns with it over the years. 1. Fear of data loss... it's probably the largest part of my mistrust of all these dang cloud services that want to control/own me or otherwise lock me into their service. I run a 99.999% uptime, extreme scale, SaaS…

I agree with every single point you mentioned. You are not alone. I'm very glad to know that other loyal Evernote Premium users are also experiencing these pain points. The forums seem to be mostly inhabited by diehard evernote preachers and most everyone else has no idea what the service actually does (which is very understandable — evernote is a tool with a TON of intended use cases)

They have anointed evangelists who do more to drive people away from the forum than offer any real help.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#184

Post by reeses » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

shawn-butler wrote: post #171

jasonlotito wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Workflowy? The page is just asking for me to signup without providing any details on what it is, and then there is a bunch of people saying how great it is.

Umm there is a video demo and links? https://workflowy.com/uses/wedding_planning/

That's not helpful. I'll summarize that page.

From: How to Plan your Wedding...without going insane

1. Sign up for WorkFlowy 2. Create a project list and 'zoom in.' 3. Create sections for the major components of your project 4. Fill out the details 5. Use #tags and @tags to filter your lists 6. Share your list with your collaborators 7. Mark things as complete as you finish them. 8. Complete your project

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#185

Post by shadesandcolour » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #157

Alex3917 wrote: post #148

If you store data in a format that's not future proof, using software that's not open source, then you don't really get to complain when your data disappears. Especially if you're not storing the files locally and making regular backups.

Why is this not the top comment?

Because it's a typical useless comment from someone who doesn't use the service. It doesn't really contribute to the conversation around Evernote. It simply says "if you're not doing what I'm doing then don't complain about what you picked"

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#186

Post by tobyjsullivan » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

It's worth correcting a small point the author makes.

"This strategy is tolerable for a social network or messaging app (Facebook got away with atrociously buggy apps for years)."

But the truth is it wouldn't be tolerable for Facebook to lose photos or posts. The experience can be buggy, sure, but users should and would never tolerate data loss like this.

I suspect the only reason Evernote is surviving this is because relatively few people use audio notes and, so far, text notes work fine-ish. I wouldn't expect that to last.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#187

Post by aklemm » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #157

Alex3917 wrote: post #148

If you store data in a format that's not future proof, using software that's not open source, then you don't really get to complain when your data disappears. Especially if you're not storing the files locally and making regular backups.

Why is this not the top comment?

Because complaining publicly is one way to put pressure on the proprietary companies to improve their offering and the way they handle user data.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#188

Post by reeses » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #179

Alex3917 wrote: post #148

If you store data in a format that's not future proof, using software that's not open source, then you don't really get to complain when your data disappears. Especially if you're not storing the files locally and making regular backups.

If you are paying for it you do get to complain.

Unfortunately, you're not paying enough for your complaints to matter. Evernote has made it fairly clear that they believe the software is adequate at this point and have been seeking growth through partnerships with other 'organizational' tools such as scanners (with a neutered version of the lovely ScanSnap) and post-it notes with magic colors.

I have this weird spread between org-mode and Evernote, mainly because Evernote is usable on my phone.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#189

Post by mercer » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

A few years ago I used some wiki-style tool for Windows to keep track of all my notes. When I switched to a Mac, I couldn't run it anymore. I started using another tool called Journler, and copied all my data over to it. Took me quite a while.

Then Journler was discontinued, and I realized there was no way to export the notes without losing all kinds of metadata.

I briefly considered Evernote, but this time I didn't want the same thing to happen. So instead, I settled for Notational Velocity (NVAlt, specifically), which uses plain text files. The files reside in a dropbox folder, and I use SimpleNote on my iPad and some other app on my Nexus. I can also use a whole bunch of other text-editing tools if they have dropbox support.

While my solution only works for plain text, it's served me well and I'll never be locked into some (buggy) tool again.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#190

Post by reeses » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

GraffitiTim wrote: post #55

I've been an avid Evernote user since the beginning (one of the first few thousand users). I use it to record all sorts of ideas, thoughts, notes, reminders, research, and references. One year ago, my girlfriend was using Evernote (on my suggestion) to write her travel journal on our trip to Southeast Asia. I saw her note sync a bunch of times (the iOS app shows a little blue arrow when it's uploading). But one day s…

Sometimes you'll get hosed because of the attachment upload limit, which does not degrade gracefully. Originally, it just logged that you couldn't sync. When they did add a notification, it was something along the line of "sux2bu [ok]".

I know the Mac App Store and download versions are different (never install the MAS version, just add the download version to your puppet setup.). As the Windows and iOS versions are obviously different as well, I have this feeling there's a bunch of #ifdef hell in their builds that doesn't get tested well before releases.