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Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

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Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#71

Post by happytoexplain »

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. It was a traumatic experience.

It also sometimes simply doesn't sync for days on end, until I notice and trigger it manually. This leads to conflicts I must resolve manually.

What do other people use that has similar:

- Low-friction global shortcuts for creating and searching.

- Organization (tags and notebooks, or something similar).

- A UI that handles large note bodies well.

- Is at least on Windows, macOS, and Android.

I'd love an alternative, but I've yet to find one. And I don't even use most of its features.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#72

Post by misnome »

xivzgrev wrote: post #59

Yea...I don’t understand anything Evernote has done that’s new since I’ve been using them. I also never understood why they charge based on upload volume vs total storage, say 1000 notes or pictures, like every other storage provider, or don’t fix the syncing errors. Like others have mentioned I’ve never had syncing errors with google drive or box or Dropbox like I’ve had with Evernote.

> I also never understood why they charge based on upload volume vs total storage, say 1000 notes or pictures, like every other storage provider

Because the purpose was to encourage you to trust them to store information "forever" - having a storage limit is antithetical to that because at some point you will be encouraged to clear out old things to make space. With an upload limit, once it's in you don't need to worry about it ever again, in theory.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#73

Post by kaffeemitsahne »

chdaniel wrote: post #66
kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leaner than Medium Not so difficult nowadays.

true! any other blog designs you've got that you like? For some reason I pile them up in bookmarks and have developed a hobby around that

Sorry, I don't blog!

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#74

Post by Jedd »

maxaf wrote: post #67
Jedd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on my todo list (in trello :) ... but haven't got to it yet. I use a combination of Unison(-gtk) and Foldersync (android) to replicate some quite large data sets between desktop, server, a couple of laptops, and tablet & phone. Keybase and Synthing are definitely on the list of potential replacements for the manual, periodic sync. How does Syncthing go insofar as replacing a note-taking system (tagging, collabor…

There isn’t any explicit notion of collaboration, and tagging can be accomplished by way of a folder structure. I haven’t tried symlinks, which is how you’d make multiple tags work on a regular file system. Syncthing’s purpose is to ensure that a specific directory remain synchronized across multiple computers and/or mobile devices. It accomplishes this goal with the minimum of fuss, and (in my experience) works bett…

I think when I looked at it a while back my concern was how it would cope with one or more of my devices being off-network for days at a time (a regular occurrence).

The other devices wouldn't be, and changes would only be done wherever I happened to be, but the cost of evaluating this solution was unfortunately higher than not making any changes. As I say, it's on my list. The suite seems to be quite robust - but given Evernote's primary stated purpose was to ensure none of your data was ever lost (and yet many people have sad stories of data loss) I'm extra-cautious about changing my workflow.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#75

Post by crushcrashcrush »

Evernote is a pig. It's the single biggest issue. It's slow to launch, slow to respond, doesn't follow Windows or Mac OS UI/UX standards, and is just clunky.

Note apps need to capture thoughts and objects seamlessly, quickly and with very little friction. Evernote doesn't do that. Launching Evernote feels like launching Excel or Photoshop, when it should feel like clicking on your Wifi menu.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#76

Post by gyvastis »

Notion has been getting a lot of hype recently as Evernote, Trello, Todoist, etc., killer. Switched to it recently. It has a bigger learning curve compared to the other apps, fetlt unconfortable at first a bit but now I'm glad to have everything in one place with less confusion.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#78

Post by macspoofing »

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…

For sure. I had an Evernote subscription, but I used OneNote at work - and it's just better. Letting you place snippets and notes on the vertical AND horizontal plane makes sense for quick note taking. Anyway, I switched last year and the fact that OneNote had a convenient note importer for Evernote was icing on the cake.

Evernote never seemed to evolve either. It was the same product 5 years ago, as it was last year and the company employed hundreds of developers - doing what?

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#79

Post by black-tea »

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…

In emacs (where I do 100% of my work), I press a single key combination, make the note, then go right back to work.

Re: Why Evernote failed to realize its potential

#80

Post by enobrev »

random_kris wrote: post #54
enobrev wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the UX of paper, but I feel like it stopped moving forward, and unfortunately it seems to be moving further away from straight markdown little by little. That said, it's still my go-to for writing anything that requires quick and easy inline styling and formatting. Notion looks great, but I'm still on the fence about it. I tried it a couple months ago and can't say I loved the mobile experience on Andro…

Notion looks great... but I just can't seem to keep using it consitently (maybe too many features?) Now I am back to markdown files strucuted in folders

I think I may have the same issue. There's a bit too much going on for me.

Markdown has definitely become my format of choice. It's like the JSON of plain-text files: Imperfect, but simple and everywhere.

I'd like to simplify down to markdown files in folders as you have, but I can't seem to find a native editor that I actually like on Ubuntu. They all feel incomplete, or they insist upon "preview" mode, which I can't stand.

Paper has the best editor UX for me, where the formatting happens inline, immediately, as I type. The automated TOC driven by headers is pretty great as well. I do wish I could "view source" once in a while, but for the most part I never actually have to.

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