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The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

syrah.co

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Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#51

Post by PhasmaFelis »

smsm42 wrote: post #45
dylanjermiah wrote: post #3

Used to use Evernote 10+ times per day. Now it's a few times a week at most. Seems the product has stayed stagnant for a while now.

I'm using it daily for several years now and I don't mind it doesn't have tons of new features. I don't need tons of new features, I need it doing what I use it for - organizing and storing random bits of information.

It does have tons of new features. That's the problem for me. They keep adding chat and sharing and geotagging and collaboration and all kinds of crap that is completely unrelated to actually storing notes.

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#52

Post by joshdickson »

jpatokal wrote: post #44
hkmurakami wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have just said, "just South of Oracle" .

And this is a problem because devs in SF don't want to commute south and devs in the Valley don't want to commute north? I really doubt this is in the top 10 reasons Evernote is (apparently) failing.

Yeah, weird wording - apologies. I'm trying to make the exact opposite point, in that you can go 10 mins in any direction and be at another large tech co.

If you check Glassdoor, though, you actually will see people complaining about the commute to Redwood City! (Though this is not factored into my post at all, I just find it an amusing anecdote as someone who has never had a < 60 min commute)

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#53

Post by smsm42 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #51
smsm42 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it daily for several years now and I don't mind it doesn't have tons of new features. I don't need tons of new features, I need it doing what I use it for - organizing and storing random bits of information.

It does have tons of new features. That's the problem for me. They keep adding chat and sharing and geotagging and collaboration and all kinds of crap that is completely unrelated to actually storing notes.

I agree, that sounds like a loss of focus and annoying. I usually ignore such things as chats, etc.

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#54

Post by joshdickson »

muglug wrote: post #27
inopinatus wrote: post #14

If the original author reads this; I found the combination of webkit anti-aliasing with a thin body weight to be instantly eye-strain-inducing, and the deliberate hiding of scroll bars even on non-mobile viewports made for a persistent sense of unease.

It's not the author's fault, directly – it's a problem with the platform (syrah.co). I upped the font-weight from 300 to 400 in Chrome dev tools, and everything was instantly better.

I'm the author of the post and I wrote the entire site's codebase (syrah.co), and I did all the design, so it's all on me. You're right, we will be fixing this in an update soon. Syrah is still in beta and we weren't quite expecting this to get as widely read as it's becoming, so hopefully you'll forgive the crappy formatting :)

Appreciate the feedback.

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#55

Post by mintplant »

Maro wrote: post #25
mintplant wrote: post #9

So what's the alternative to Evernote? The article lists Google Docs, which doesn't really seem equivalent, and OneNote. I'm using OneNote right now to organize planning for a media/writing project, and the experience leaves a lot to be desired. The writing interface in particular is clunky, in the web client and on Android -- on my phone, I have to pop open a menu and then a drawer just to switch bold text on or off…

http://simplenote.com/ It's like Evernote used to be. Just text, not even formatting. It just works for me. There's clients for mobile, mac, web. For Windows there's a client called ResophNotes: http://resoph.com/ I've been using this for the last couple of years, and it's perfect for my "synced cloud notepad.exe" use-case.

I've used Simplenote in the past, and it definitely lives up to its name -- very simple and smooth, great when all you need is text. And it does support some organization via tags. But for the sort of structured planning I'm doing right now (story outlines, character notes, etc), that doesn't work as well as the hierarchical folders/notebooks model in Evernote or OneNote. And the lack of formatting hurts in my specific case.

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#56

Post by inopinatus »

muglug wrote: post #27
inopinatus wrote: post #14

If the original author reads this; I found the combination of webkit anti-aliasing with a thin body weight to be instantly eye-strain-inducing, and the deliberate hiding of scroll bars even on non-mobile viewports made for a persistent sense of unease.

It's not the author's fault, directly – it's a problem with the platform (syrah.co). I upped the font-weight from 300 to 400 in Chrome dev tools, and everything was instantly better.

I'd say the author is pretty directly responsible; he is the CEO and founder of the platform :-)

Personally I just switched to reader mode, but that's not actionable feedback.

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#57

Post by PhasmaFelis »

arghbleargh wrote: post #6
dylanjermiah wrote: post #3

Used to use Evernote 10+ times per day. Now it's a few times a week at most. Seems the product has stayed stagnant for a while now.

Interesting that engagement seems to be waning from a lot of Evernote users (based on this anecdatum and the article). Is it because the product has gotten actively worse, or do you find less need to use it these days (e.g. you realized it was more hassle than it was worth)?

For me, it's definitely gotten worse. They've gone from a relatively tightly-focused product to one that does a million different things badly.

That, and they lost a bunch of my data, and then waited three goddamn weeks before responding to my ticket. I submitted it on New Year's Eve, so I would have understood if it took a couple of days, but January 20th is completely unacceptable.

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#59

Post by npunt »

inopinatus wrote: post #14

If the original author reads this; I found the combination of webkit anti-aliasing with a thin body weight to be instantly eye-strain-inducing, and the deliberate hiding of scroll bars even on non-mobile viewports made for a persistent sense of unease.

Came here to say this. Nearly unreadable without changing font-weight:400. Luckily it's not also scrolljacking or fixing headers or share buttons or some other crap.

This is one of my core 'why haven't we fixed this' frustrations with the web. Despite pre-dating social networks, blogging is stuck in its own kind of myspace era where authors have near complete control and proportional ignorance of how to present content, and every article is a surprise for the reader as to how it will look/feel/perform.

For such a simple thing as the written word, the inability to personalize to users basic reading needs is kinda bonkers and exemplary of how different the web has turned out from its intended use. Safari Reader View is alright but unavailable or cuts off on many sites like this one, and the RSS standards are sadly out of favor. Sigh

Re: The first dead Unicorn will be Evernote

#60

Post by joshdickson »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #40

Doesn't it seem nasty to claim that a large established company may go out of business? Just the claim can hurt their business. Evernote is fairly useful. I pay the minimum amount above the free tier. I enjoy the product but I only use it perhaps 10 minutes a day, on average.

The post is not about them going out of business; in fact, numerous times I suggest that that is not likely to happen. The post concerns the $1B valuation's validity. It's possible to have a very nice, profitable company making a note taking application and also not be a unicorn.
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