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I'm sorry but I don't think you should call this an Evernote alternative. - No iOS client (Although the site does say coming soon) - No Firefox webclipper -

by smcleod 11y ago

I'm sorry but I don't think you should call this an Evernote alternative. - No iOS client (Although the site does say coming soon) - No Firefox webclipper - No Web interface - Large / heavy application - No Drawing / Diagram support - The app is not native, it's seems it's a web frame It's interface doesn't feel very snappy, it feels like it's built with in a Javascript framework perhaps? Evernote has been around for a long time and has grown to 110MB uncompressed / installed, this app is 100MB and it's only in its early stages and has hardly any features implemented yet - that's worrying to me. Looking at OSX's power utilisation Turtle appears to often utilise one CPU core heavily under load where Evernote seems to thread processes more efficient and ends up using around 60% less power on my 2015 Macbook in the use I put it through which was common activities such as adding and removing notes, copy / pasting text, launching and closing the app etc... What I do really like is that it uses Markdown, that's something sorely missed in Evernote. I'm really sorry to be quite harsh, I really do love when people try to improve software by creating their own alternative and that's something that's sorely needed in the land of Evernote like apps, however I don't think this comes close to a possible alternative.

s_q_b 11y ago
I'm seeing about 80% less power on a mid-2012 Macbook Air with a 2GHz Core i7 for Evernote vs. Turtl. I'm guessing more parallelization is even more beneficial on lower speed multi-core processors.
- mrmondo 11y ago
  If it is a JS app of some kind that would make sense, I've been ranting a lot about JS apps recently so I won't go into it here - needless to say they're anything but efficient in my experience. Edit: Also, I should note that I have many hundreds of notes in Evernote, where I created 15-20 in this app, I would have expected Evernote to need more resources to search such a large number of notes. ~/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote % du -sh . 608M .
  - orthecreedence 11y ago
    Turtl stores all notes in what amounts to Chrome's IndexedDB engine (encrypted...no plaintext data is stored on disk). So it really comes down to the efficiency of IndexedDB's storage engine when translating notes to disk space. We do utilize multiple core when encrypting/decrypting, but things like indexing and searching all take place on the same thread the app runs on. This is something that could be improved in the future.
triplesec 11y ago
TL;DR for parent comment: "It's not as mature as Evernote, and it has a bigger footprint." Therefore your comment is unfair: if provides a less complex evernote function that many could use. Neither of these is unfixable over time, as the product develops, and some may be a function of the increased security implementation. None of these criticisms stops the app being usable, as far as I can see.
- biokoda 11y ago
  > Neither of these is unfixable over time JS on desktop is never going to perform well.
  - justinjlynn 11y ago
    maybe not well, but possibly well enough.
    - mrmondo 11y ago
      Not from what I've seen, after hosting a bunch of NodeJS based web-apps I can tell you it doesn't perform well on the server-side or on the desktop. It's a decent rapid prototyping language / tool - but it's taking what should (or perhaps shouldn't) be in a web browser, wrapping it up and hosting it somewhere that the designers of products often don't know much about the landscape.
      - marknutter 11y ago
        For the majority of users, it performs well enough. Step out from behind your own lens. For instance, the number of times I've heard someone complain about Slack's performance (that isn't a developer) is precisely zero.
        mrmondo 11y ago
        I think my lens is actually quite large, I have 15 years of production experience hosting, building, deploying applications and build pipelines, currently I'm working across 20~ end user facing products in their various application life cycles, backed by hundreds of services running across many hundreds of instances. They scale from applications that turn over only 3-5RPM up to 8000 RPM throughout the day. We host and deploy Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, JS, Erlang, Go and Java apps. I can say without a doubt that the JS (in our case NodeJS) apps are by far the worst to work with, not just in regards to performance but also in regards to community quality. *Edit: clarification
orthecreedence 11y ago
Thanks for the honest feedback! The app IS a web frame, both on desktop an mobile. TBH it's pretty much the only way I can maintain it on 4 (and soon 5) different platforms efficiently. I will say this: Turtl will queue encryption/decryption in background threads so it does utilize cores while doing heavy processing. As far as how it utilizes cores in the main UI, that's really up to the underlying javascript engine, which most likely will be single-threaded unless instructed otherwise. > I'm really sorry to be quite harsh Not harsh at all. Turtl is a start, a goal. Evernote has so many features and so many use-cases for so many people. I agree saying it's a viable alternative right now isn't entirely true, but for those who value privacy over features, Turtl is worth a look.
- mrmondo 11y ago
  Great response, thanks for taking the time to read it, I always feel really quite guilty when someone puts a lot of hard work and passion into something they care about and I feel I need to point out problems - I am constantly conflicted between not saying anything and speaking up, in this case I spoke up because I absolutely agree with the need for Evernote-like products. Regardless of my technical opinions congratulations on launching your app publicly and I'm sure you learnt a lot along the way. *Edit: Typos
  - jhaand 11y ago
    "The authors argue that the major problem in many negotiations is that people assume positions that are either Hard or Soft. They suggest that, rather than being either hard on the people and the problem, or soft on people and problem, it is possible to be soft on the people and hard on the problem. They call this approach Principled negotiation or Negotiation on its merits." Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William Ury And my personal motto as a system tester: "It's my job to show that stuff is still broken and tell in it such a way that my head won't be chopped off and people stilltalk to me."
- omginternets 11y ago
  Hello! I agree with mrmondo insofar as Turtl is too immature for me at to me at the moment. That said, please post updates -- I'm on the lookout for Evernote alternatives, now that its demise seems imminent. I don't use any of the fancy evernote features, so if you're interested, this is what I'd require at a minimum: - Save and sync text between OS X and Android - Button to take a picture and insert it into a note That's really all I use.
Pxtl 11y ago
I don't see drawing/diagram support as a needed thing - at least not in my use-case. My ever-note is entirely full of text. But I agree that speed is critical. The most important features of a note taking program for me are speed and durability (in the database sense - no worries about data-loss). If it's long to navigate to the last viewed spot in my shopping list or my workout log, I'm annoyed.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> I'm sorry but I don't think you should call this an Evernote alternative. Everyone has to start somewhere. Being a new company, calling yourself an Evernote alternative says to me that you're either available everywhere or you will _eventually_ be available everywhere. Maybe not being available everywhere right now is too much of a down point for you but it may be fine for others. This strikes me as an MVP and it looks like a good start. Saying Evernote took forever to hit 100MB and this app just starting out at 100MB doesn't mean anything but you're implying it'll only balloon further. When they get a revenue stream and / or funding and go full native I would suspect that size would go down considerably. I think your points are fair but I think you're looking at this company as something far, far more than what it really is.

by smcleod 11y ago

s_q_b 11y ago

I'm seeing about 80% less power on a mid-2012 Macbook Air with a 2GHz Core i7 for Evernote vs. Turtl. I'm guessing more parallelization is even more beneficial on lower speed multi-core processors.

mrmondo 11y ago
If it is a JS app of some kind that would make sense, I've been ranting a lot about JS apps recently so I won't go into it here - needless to say they're anything but efficient in my experience. Edit: Also, I should note that I have many hundreds of notes in Evernote, where I created 15-20 in this app, I would have expected Evernote to need more resources to search such a large number of notes. ~/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote % du -sh . 608M .
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Turtl stores all notes in what amounts to Chrome's IndexedDB engine (encrypted...no plaintext data is stored on disk). So it really comes down to the efficiency of IndexedDB's storage engine when translating notes to disk space. We do utilize multiple core when encrypting/decrypting, but things like indexing and searching all take place on the same thread the app runs on. This is something that could be improved in the future.

triplesec 11y ago

TL;DR for parent comment: "It's not as mature as Evernote, and it has a bigger footprint." Therefore your comment is unfair: if provides a less complex evernote function that many could use. Neither of these is unfixable over time, as the product develops, and some may be a function of the increased security implementation. None of these criticisms stops the app being usable, as far as I can see.

biokoda 11y ago
> Neither of these is unfixable over time JS on desktop is never going to perform well.
- justinjlynn 11y ago
  maybe not well, but possibly well enough.
  - mrmondo 11y ago
    Not from what I've seen, after hosting a bunch of NodeJS based web-apps I can tell you it doesn't perform well on the server-side or on the desktop. It's a decent rapid prototyping language / tool - but it's taking what should (or perhaps shouldn't) be in a web browser, wrapping it up and hosting it somewhere that the designers of products often don't know much about the landscape.
    - marknutter 11y ago
      For the majority of users, it performs well enough. Step out from behind your own lens. For instance, the number of times I've heard someone complain about Slack's performance (that isn't a developer) is precisely zero.
      - mrmondo 11y ago
        I think my lens is actually quite large, I have 15 years of production experience hosting, building, deploying applications and build pipelines, currently I'm working across 20~ end user facing products in their various application life cycles, backed by hundreds of services running across many hundreds of instances. They scale from applications that turn over only 3-5RPM up to 8000 RPM throughout the day. We host and deploy Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, JS, Erlang, Go and Java apps. I can say without a doubt that the JS (in our case NodeJS) apps are by far the worst to work with, not just in regards to performance but also in regards to community quality. *Edit: clarification

orthecreedence 11y ago

Thanks for the honest feedback! The app IS a web frame, both on desktop an mobile. TBH it's pretty much the only way I can maintain it on 4 (and soon 5) different platforms efficiently. I will say this: Turtl will queue encryption/decryption in background threads so it does utilize cores while doing heavy processing. As far as how it utilizes cores in the main UI, that's really up to the underlying javascript engine, which most likely will be single-threaded unless instructed otherwise. > I'm really sorry to be quite harsh Not harsh at all. Turtl is a start, a goal. Evernote has so many features and so many use-cases for so many people. I agree saying it's a viable alternative right now isn't entirely true, but for those who value privacy over features, Turtl is worth a look.

mrmondo 11y ago
Great response, thanks for taking the time to read it, I always feel really quite guilty when someone puts a lot of hard work and passion into something they care about and I feel I need to point out problems - I am constantly conflicted between not saying anything and speaking up, in this case I spoke up because I absolutely agree with the need for Evernote-like products. Regardless of my technical opinions congratulations on launching your app publicly and I'm sure you learnt a lot along the way. *Edit: Typos
- jhaand 11y ago
  "The authors argue that the major problem in many negotiations is that people assume positions that are either Hard or Soft. They suggest that, rather than being either hard on the people and the problem, or soft on people and problem, it is possible to be soft on the people and hard on the problem. They call this approach Principled negotiation or Negotiation on its merits." Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William Ury And my personal motto as a system tester: "It's my job to show that stuff is still broken and tell in it such a way that my head won't be chopped off and people stilltalk to me."
omginternets 11y ago
Hello! I agree with mrmondo insofar as Turtl is too immature for me at to me at the moment. That said, please post updates -- I'm on the lookout for Evernote alternatives, now that its demise seems imminent. I don't use any of the fancy evernote features, so if you're interested, this is what I'd require at a minimum: - Save and sync text between OS X and Android - Button to take a picture and insert it into a note That's really all I use.

Pxtl 11y ago

I don't see drawing/diagram support as a needed thing - at least not in my use-case. My ever-note is entirely full of text. But I agree that speed is critical. The most important features of a note taking program for me are speed and durability (in the database sense - no worries about data-loss). If it's long to navigate to the last viewed spot in my shopping list or my workout log, I'm annoyed.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

> I'm sorry but I don't think you should call this an Evernote alternative. Everyone has to start somewhere. Being a new company, calling yourself an Evernote alternative says to me that you're either available everywhere or you will _eventually_ be available everywhere. Maybe not being available everywhere right now is too much of a down point for you but it may be fine for others. This strikes me as an MVP and it looks like a good start. Saying Evernote took forever to hit 100MB and this app just starting out at 100MB doesn't mean anything but you're implying it'll only balloon further. When they get a revenue stream and / or funding and go full native I would suspect that size would go down considerably. I think your points are fair but I think you're looking at this company as something far, far more than what it really is.