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Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

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Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#291

Post by mikenew »

derefr wrote: post #276
nextos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can simply use ripgrep to search. Either from a terminal, or from an editor it is integrated with. I favor the same approach. In my case, I use org-mode instead of markdown as it offers a few niceties when editing from Emacs. But irrespective of that, IMHO plain text overrules any other choice as it is future-proof and can be composed with your favorite tools. For example, a VCS like Git. I have many files in a f…

> You can simply use ripgrep to search That assumes that the text in your notes uses the vocabulary you'd expect, and isn't misspelled. Neither of those are guaranteed if your notes are snippets of other documents (a common EN use-case) rather than text you wrote yourself. Especially not guaranteed if the snippets are images where their textual representation is the output of an OCR algorithm. Is there something like…

You can pipe ripgrep into fzf for fuzzy searching. It works like a dream.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#292

Post by eddiecalzone »

kirubakaran wrote: post #200
jredwards wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I find a new Evernote competitor, I try it out. I keep thinking that it must be easy to top Evernote, which I have various complaints about. I'm always back to Evernote within a week. Notion and Joplin were my most recent attempts.

Could you please describe what you missed when you tried Notion and Joplin?

I use Joplin every day for work, and review notes on the commute home from phone. Love being able to write in Markdown, fully encrypted across all devices, full hierarchical structure plus tags support. The UI is "basic", but so are my needs. And if it goes away, I have an up-to-the-minute backup organized by those same folders and markdown files. Several new releases since I started using it 6 months ago.

The lack of tags support on mobile and the proprietary storage format is what drove me away from OneNote.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#293

Post by topoftheforts »

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…

> Notion covers most of the bases but its an electron app and its SLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW if you have a lot of notes in it. Takes 30 seconds for the mobile app to open and be useful for instance. Thats a dealbreaker for me. I need to be able to get a piece of knowledge on the go fast. If you can't give me what I want in less than a few seconds you go in the bin.

So true. I've used Evernote for years and recently started using Notion. Notion works much better for organizing and structuring stuff, but when it comes down to jotting down a quick note, I istinctively open Evernote. Just recently I've realized it's because of the speed, both on desktop and (even worse) on mobile, Notion just takes too long to start up.

Just now while writing this comment I tried to open both of them on my Windows laptop: Evernote took ~1s, Notion ~5s between launching and loading the content.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#294

Post by capedape »

oftenwrong wrote: post #206
mortdeus wrote: post #57

Also i know, at least for me, that when i find myself wanting to take notes most is whenever its a spur of the moment kind of idea that i dont want to lose. In that kind of scenario, i find that a small notebook and pencil is still superior to an app simply because i don't have to think too much about the process of getting myself into a position where i can actually record the idea. Its just too hard to get into the…

>navigate to the app, wait for it to load up, press the + button, type in the idea using your thumbs, write in a title, save it, shit the app just crashed, load the app back up, great my idea wasnt saved, guess ill try writing it again, damn it i wish these notifications would stop popping up and pinging me, uhhh crap what was the clever angle to my idea again? Damn it. This is like the black-and-white scene in an in…

I use the app “launcher” at the top of the iOS widget area with slots that are pre-filled in templates that append to specific Evernote notes via email.

Also, use a Siri voice shortcuts that launch specific Evernote notes. Have a Siri voice shortcut that transcribes what I say and appends to a specific note. Many solutions to get stuff into Evernote on iOS and I’m sure Android too. Paper is still superior at times, but stuff ends up in EN eventually.

Getting stuff into it isn’t a problem I have with it.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#295

Post by coffeeling »

mortdeus wrote: post #57

Also i know, at least for me, that when i find myself wanting to take notes most is whenever its a spur of the moment kind of idea that i dont want to lose. In that kind of scenario, i find that a small notebook and pencil is still superior to an app simply because i don't have to think too much about the process of getting myself into a position where i can actually record the idea. Its just too hard to get into the…

Android at least has specific tasks in apps' home screen context menus (hold over app icon, get list of tasks). Those can be dragged to the home screen so you get buttons for specific actions. I have a host of quick capture tools on my home screen:

"New Note" task icon (personal notebook)

"Add new task" icon (adds new task in my todo app - personal or work depends on which one was open last)

Office Lens (camera, documents, whiteboards)

a shortcut to my work notebook's "quick notes" section (would be another "new note" button but OneNote can't handle that)

I can pretty much press a button and instantly be capturing what I need to capture. The drag-a-task thing is also useful with Outlook, since the default Outlook shortcut opens the email client. Luckily, Outlook's tasks include "Open calendar", "new event" and "new email". Bam, calendar has its own icon on the homescreen too.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#296

Post by eddiecalzone »

acl777 wrote: post #82
happytoexplain wrote: post #71

I have over a thousand notes in Evernote. One day I noticed that one was missing shortly after I created it. Eventually I discovered that the convenient new-note shortcut was failing every time with a database corruption error - but the error only appeared in a system log I was unaware of. There was no indication to the user that the notes were failing. To this day I have no idea how many notes I lost due to this bug…

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

Are you able to create/filter/update/delete tags across all devices now in OneNote? I know that wasn't the case for Android as recently as 6 months ago.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#297

Post by coffeeling »

torstenvl wrote: post #205
markolschesky wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It cannot save or open local notebooks. That's beyond "not quite as feature complete." It's a thin client for a web app.

That's a gross exaggeration. Every OneNote client (except for the browser one) downloads everything from OneDrive to the local machine and does all the changes to that local copy, which then gets synced to OneDrive. You could take weeks' worth of notes and peruse mountains of reference without any Internet access and the app wouldn't bat an eye.

It's true the app's positioned as an online service rather than a file reader for offline files the way it started, but calling a native app that operates on local data a "thin client" is just disingenuous.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#298

Post by PhantomGremlin »

barkingcat wrote: post #257
ambicapter wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continuing to play devil's advocate, I think implicit is the expectation that all parties know good manners when they see them, which could be yet another way of putting people down in that statement.

The people who are rude won't care.

Based on the guy's name and the fact that he worked with Yandex, he's probably Eastern European, perhaps Russian.

In other words, English is probably not his native language.

So let's not overthink this.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#299

Post by anonuser123456 »

nunodonato wrote: post #279
bananamerica wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a happy Org Mode user, but it lacks a complete, reliable and easy to use mobile interface. It is and probably will always be a desktop-centric application.

Orgzly is pretty good on android

Orgzly is a good interface, but the syncability is lacking.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#300

Post by sxldier »

happytoexplain wrote: post #71

I have over a thousand notes in Evernote. One day I noticed that one was missing shortly after I created it. Eventually I discovered that the convenient new-note shortcut was failing every time with a database corruption error - but the error only appeared in a system log I was unaware of. There was no indication to the user that the notes were failing. To this day I have no idea how many notes I lost due to this bug…

I've been using Trilium[1] over the past two months and I really like it. It's being actively maintained and worked on and is just getting better and better. Although, the Android client is quite limited. There's an app to send notes. You can however, use the browser.

[1] https://github.com/zadam/trilium/

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