15 ms·

Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)

137 points by arishi 4y ago

lukewrites 4y ago
What got me hooked on Evernote was its web clipper. It did a great job of grabbing elements from webpages, retaining (or not!) their formatting. This made them easily searchable and nice to read, too. I used this to grab individual forum posts for things I cared about. I would happily pay for a subscription because of the amount of legacy data I have in there, but $90/year seems silly, my usage dropped way off once they restricted the number of devices, and at this point there are OSS options that are about as good. I probably should hire someone of fiverr for $90 or less to export/import my data.
lambda_dn 4y ago
Office 365, Google Keep, iCloud notes is the answer.
- neoromantique 4y ago
  And Obsidian for the privacy conscious
  - Ialdaboth 4y ago
    Obsidian is great for syncing my notes across several devices. It was the major challenge I've struggled with for several years before it.
    - toss1 4y ago
      Are you using the Obsidian subscription/cloud service, or have you made a system to sync directly, e.g., Windows <-> Android platforms? If the latter, could you share your solution (I took a quick crack at it, but the link structure seems to require nontrivial management?) TIA
      - magicseth 4y ago
        I've used Obsidian Git. It definnitely takes some set up to make it work, but once working, it is pretty reliable. It requires an occasional merge conflict resolution, and setting the right files to be ignored. I love that it is just folder with markdown files. https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
      - ranbato 4y ago
        I'm using SyncThing across Windows, Linux, and Android
  - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
    Tried Obsidian for couple of minutes, promptly deleted the app when I noticed I can't have special characters in the title of the note.
foolfoolz 4y ago
evernote was a feature not a product
- CharlesW 4y ago
  In what way? PIMs seem to be a popular product category.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    they also just come with your phone, so if all you do is "the same", you're just a feature, not a product, even if you package yourself as a product. (and even if when you launched that was not the case, times change drastically on mobile. Evernote very quickly became a feature, not a product)
hartator 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dboreham 4y ago
  tldr it's very hard to get people to pay for something they can live without.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
macspoofing 4y ago
Honestly, I don’t know what Evernote Corp. did during the last 10+ years of Evernote development. The feature set feels about the same.
- heydenberk 4y ago
  I'd argue it's worse. Slower, at least.
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  If only apps stayed the same over ten years. That would be a dream come true. Evernote got much slower and buggier in those ten years.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  They rewrote it from scratch as a sluggish web app, failed to address issues that have been annoyances since day 1, piled on dubious new features that just made it harder to open the damn thing up and write down the idea that just hit you, or to open up the note you're looking for at this very instant.
- itsangaris 4y ago
  Evernote had multiple chances to get back on track. Its decision to rewrite its multiple apps into a single web-based one was one of them. In theory having only one codebase to fix bugs and build new features in makes a ton of sense. Unfortunately the hard product work of simplifying the feature set and prioritizing server-side tech debt was overlooked. Therefore the new app was weighed down from the beginning because it had to support all these legacy systems. IMO the best move for Evernote is to rethink the UX and tech architecture from first principals and have existing users opt-in to migrate their data over. It's a tough decision to make but I don't see any meaningful progress being made otherwise.
rnmp 4y ago
Been building a tool[1] to replace my usage of Evernote. I agree that caring about the product and its vision is the only way to keep the quality and attention to detail afloat.
- rnmp 4y ago
  Missed the link! https://www.bleep.is https://www.bleep.is
dandigangi 4y ago
Dropped Evernote years ago sadly. Kind of reminds me of how Sketch didn't keep up w/ Figma compared to other note taking tools. Been using Notion for awhile but that initial setup can be painful. Usually Mac Notes or Obsidian is my quick notes followed by Notion for the deep stuff.
fragmede 4y ago
Evernote went with option 3, finding a buyer: https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-next-move-joining-bending-spoons/ https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-next-move-joining-bending...
INeedMoreRam 4y ago
I use and encourage Joplin instead of any privacy-breaching commercialized product such as Evernote, Notion, or OneNote.
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  I use the multimedia and handwriting touch capabilities of my tablets and phones. Since Joplin does not have handwriting support, nor image embeds, nor file embeds. This is not to single out that tool, since most cross-platform notetaking applications have the same problem or a similar permutation. I choose to be stuck with OneNote 2010 because: 1. It has local files I can back up and sync, no cloud account or online requirement (also more privacy from cloud scanning) 1. It supports embedding files so I can back up the notebooks and not have to go find every file scattered all throughout my hard drive in order to make those up two 1. I can hand write and have text be searched or OCRed 1. It has embedding support for images and audio and have them be interactive (you can see the image, play the video, listen to the sound right in the program) Writing such a program is a very difficult problem. If it were easy, we would be having all of these features and not just another round of markdown text file editors. Xournal++ is considering moving to a file format that would enable you to embed files that would be zipped up as part of the file format, since it already supports handwriting recognition and has basic text and good enough image display, I continued to watch it to see if it can take over my onenote use cases, but it's just not there yet.
  - INeedMoreRam 4y ago
    I’m able to embed images into the Joplin app - not sure how long ago you tried?
  - stavros 4y ago
    What do you mean by image/file embeds? You can embed images and files just fine.
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  I like Joplin, but it's a poor experience on iOS. Besides the material design theme feeling out of place, scrolling is weird/slow compared to other iOS apps, including webpages in Safari, and there's no gestures, so I have to reach all the way to the top to go back to the note list instead of swiping from the left of the screen like every other app I have installed. Although it's not open source like Joplin, I've switched over to Obsidian.
rcarmo 4y ago
It failed because it turned the app into bloat and killed multi-device syncing. Most of the decisions made regarding product features were user-hostile not just to the free tier, but also to paying users who did not want the "features" they kept pushing out.
- jwr 4y ago
  This is a very similar path to the one that Skitch and Dropbox took. In each case, instead of perfecting and maintaining a really good app, business pressures caused them to pursue growth at all costs. This is a common problem these days.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    > business pressures You mean greed.
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      also survival, but in the case of Evernote (which I still use)incompetence
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      We've codified greed in how tech businesses commonly operate. Once they take VC money, the expectation is constant growth. If you have a product with a limited market/audience there are only a few ways to achieve that: - Increase prices - which will drive some of your customers away. - Revenue through ads - which will drive some of your customers away. - New products - risky, and if successful it sometimes means the original product becomes abandonware. - New features to try to increase the audience for your product or monetize directly - what it seems like Evernote did. But not every product can have billions or even millions of users. So sometimes these all fail anyway. Basically investment, whether from VCs or an IPO, is often death for a small business serving a niche market.
  - productman1 4y ago
    Once companies hire Product Managers, it is usually downhill from there in 80% of cases. The problem is that the PMs are incentivized to deliver features, even if that is not the right thing to do. See: Postman.
vasac 4y ago
Last time I was using their Windows app it felt non-native in a bad way (some 7-8 years ago). Also, I managed to lose note content in their iPhone app just by opening note which contained large image. Image simply disappeared nowhere to be found either on phone or computer. After that happened for a second time I kinda switched to iOS Notes and later to Joplin.
- disqard 4y ago
  I experienced a similar data loss, which was very impactful: I was at the "fast-forward" session of SIGGRAPH, making notes on what I wanted to attend. Somewhere near the end of the session, EverNote crashed and took all of the data in such a way that it was neither on my device, nor on the cloud. That was a deal-breaker. I uninstalled the app and deleted my subscription. These days, I keep my notes as .md files and they stay in sync using Nextcloud. I've been using this for ~4 years now, and it works great!
baby 4y ago
Honestly Apple Notes works really well. It doesn't have much features, but its simplicity should be the baseline of any note taking app
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  I find the simplicity of Notes to be a big win. I don’t need to be able to publish a blog from it—I just need to know if I still need to pick up a bunch of kale or not. Notes satisfies my three must-have requirements: it’s on every device my wife and I use, it allows mixing checklists with free form text, and we can effortlessly share information with each other. I just checked and found that I have 1,321 total notes stored in iCloud. These range from my daily todo lists (invaluable for end of year performance review documents, saying nothing of just remembering what I’m supposed to do), to the all-important shared grocery list, which we will both update whenever we’re shopping at the grocery store.
- canadiantim 4y ago
  How do you get your notes out of apple notes though? They're like some sort of covetous demon who won't let your notes go once it consumes them. I literally went to the apple notes discord once and asked them directly and their response was basically "Apple Notes isn't design to be used for more than 100 notes"... so be very very careful about choosing to use Apple Notes cause you may never get your notes out of there
  - halpmeh 4y ago
    Where exactly are my notes supposed to be going?
    - foobarian 4y ago
      A local filesystem directory with text files would be a good start.
    - FearlessNebula 4y ago
      Many options, should you decide to leave the Apple ecosystem
SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
Still looking for viable replacement: * Joplin had some issues I've checked year ago. * Apple notes while I have iPhone there's no Windows app. * OneNote is just trully horrendous app. * Obsidian just can't convince myself. I'm forcing myself to use it work, while it works, it's not something I enjoy doing. * Notion is odd, everything is a block and sometimes formatting is just meh... * Google keep is just simple note and that's it(unless something has changed). Any worthy apps to look at besides those?
- mahathu 4y ago
  I love, love LOVE TickTick. It is a note-taking and todo list app and everything is so frictionless like I've never seen before. Also supports markdown notes. I'm only concerned that it looks like a Chinese Todoist clone. The about page doesn't is suspiciously elusive.
  - SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
    Would you mind sharing url? Hard to find with all the urls coming from TikTok. :D
    - ca7 4y ago
      My guess is they are referring to TickTick: https://ticktick.com/ https://ticktick.com/
    - mahathu 4y ago
      Yes exactly, my bad, I meant TickTick!
- proee 4y ago
  NotePlan is my favorite
- arcbyte 4y ago
  What kind of notes do you take? I've used OneNote for like 12 years now I think and I love it. It's where my school notes are and every note I've taken in my career since then. My personal diaries and life notes. Everything is in it. I've been looking at Obsidian as well because I like the idea of self hosting but aside from that I've never seen a reason to leave. So back to my question, what kind of notes do you take?
c-smile 4y ago
Except of few ideological mistakes, I would say, quite a lot of time was wasted on doubtful technical decisions ... One year was wasted on trying to make it as WPF application, .NET all that ... 5, if not more, years were wasted on making it work as Electron'ish like application (CEF was integrated). Evernote is a typical companion application - the thing that sits in tray and pops up as quickly as possible when needed. Management read once that "Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil" but missed the critical point - this kind of application MUST be lightweight or dead. The elephant was born instead.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  > Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil Means don't drop down to asm to save a few cycles. It doesnt mean "dont fill your 10fps GUI app with crap". Today, it more or less should be killed-off as a phrase. There isn't anyone optimizing anything, let alone "prematurely"
  - c-smile 4y ago
    It could be interpreted that way too. But usually managers interpret it this way: let's mold it now from that pile of shit and firewood and think about concrete foundation later. VC driven development they say. It makes sense in some cases of course. But not in cases when concrete foundation is the cornerstone feature of the application. That kind of application shall serve users during whole their lifetime. And so application core shall not rely on particular OS and its features.
  - pradn 4y ago
    > There isn't anyone optimizing anything, let alone "prematurely" Yes, but in a slightly different way than one might think at initial read of this. Most of the performance choices for a user-facing application have been made by the time the language and UI framework are decided. And these are just chosen out of inertia, to conform to a company standard or to use what you already know. There's little one can do to make a WPF or CEF application super responsive.
    - 4y ago
newbieuser 4y ago
Although evernote is in the category of the lightest must-have app, it's an extremely bloated app. too bloated in terms of features. I really wonder what percentage of users use all the features.
Cupertino95014 4y ago
I never installed it, because there are too many other ways to make notes. They were solving a problem that was already solved, albeit imperfectly. I can send an email to myself. If it's a person's info, I can put them in Contacts. Or I can have a Google Doc called "Notes" where I write stuff. All of those have interfaces I already know. One can validly object that all of those methods have drawbacks. But they've worked well enough for me that I wasn't wishing for Evernote and one more thing to learn.
Quarrelsome 4y ago
I find this an interesting reflection of an org I used to work for. Originally successful product allowed to stagnate over the course of decades with all the energy being sucked up by new shiny bolt-ons while the core business need and core product is never re-imagined to fit in with modern industry trends. On reflection it always looks kinda daft that this can end up happening but I think (at least in my case) its easy for orgs to lose sight of their product's failings which can be compacted by the need to always hype up their product in public and this bleeds into private and into strategy.
- foobarian 4y ago
  How would you design the org to avoid this? You basically need to disband the team once the product is done. How do game studios manage it?
  - Quarrelsome 4y ago
    > How would you design the org to avoid this? I don't know but it feels like a relatively common theme and perhaps there are factors that control its prevalence. I would tentatively suggest that refreshing decision making structures from time to time might help mitigate against complacency but you might also be rolling a dice if you're force-replacing to keep fresh. Perhaps its more to do with how a business will diversify strategically without diversifying organisationally? I feel like there should be some form of conflict when resource is split from core product into diversification products (e.g. like Evernote food or Evernote market) and perhaps the absence of that conflict is a contributing factor to the speed at which the rot can set in. Also maybe there's something to say about having a clear roadmap and never thinking the core product is done. Some of the most successful products I've seen seem to have some sort of force that is always seeking to iteratively improve it.
  - Kye 4y ago
    They hire a bunch of people leading up to release, fire them, and start the cycle over on the next one. Same with the VFX industry: it's not unheard of for them to produce a record-breaking movie and shut down between then and the awards shows. I don't think most tech workers would tolerate it.
paulpauper 4y ago
Dropbox was better. There was/is no need for Evernote to exist.
thecodrr 4y ago
Shameless plug but for the past 2 years we have slowly been working to replace Evernote with Notesnook [1]. Sounds weird to say "replace Evernote" when Evernote is absolute shit (no offense) but one of the main reasons we went this route is because Evernote did one thing right: It made personal note taking approachable & actually fun. Nowadays, a lot of the modern note taking apps (Notion, Slite etc.) are focused on the "enterprise user" i.e. they prioritize business focused note taking with features like collaborations, integrations etc. Private & personal note taking is no longer the hype which, in my opinion, is really sad. I might be mistaken in my viewpoint however, of later I have noticed a huge trend toward providing user experiences that target a team workflow. Personal workflows are an afterthought, at best. For some tools this works out but for note taking apps I think it creates a huge void. Not everyone wants a thousands ways to integrate, publish whole websites, buy & sell, and create presentations using their notes app. [1] https://notesnook.com/ https://notesnook.com/
- hosh 4y ago
  Do you guys optimize for local-first? Can I drop in to start editing without having to wait for network lag or sync? Is multi-device syncing rock solid? Can I add pictures and links to other entries? Can I import my existing Evernote notes? If I wanted a team workflow, I'd use Google Docs and Notion. This is for just personal note and knowledge base I can tap into quickly via my phone.
  - thecodrr 4y ago
    > Do you guys optimize for local-first? Can I drop in to start editing without having to wait for network lag or sync? Is multi-device syncing rock solid? Yep. Everything is offline-first stored right on your device. Syncing works mostly well but there a few rough edges which we are sorting out. > Can I import my existing Evernote notes? Yes. We have an official importer: https://importer.notesnook.com/ https://importer.notesnook.com/
- prometheus76 4y ago
  The one feature I loved in Evernote (when I was using it as a paid customer a few years ago) was that I could upload a pdf and it would be indexed for search. I ended up using Evernote as an extensive pdf library with very rapid search of all my pdfs. Does notesnook offer anything like that?
JohnTHaller 4y ago
Evernote always felt like a product that was wasting its potential. Years ago I approached them about doing a portable version for PortableApps.com, with us doing the portablization for free. They refused and said they were happy with their proprietary portable version that only worked within Ceedo (a closed source portable virtualization platform that was fee-based for most use cases). Ceedo never gained traction and was discontinued.
bsnnkv 4y ago
Over the years I've realized that I don't actually care for or need the "note taking" part of applications like these. What I need is a textual data store that can be efficiently and effectively indexed, searched and (automatically) tagged, and for the ability to quickly filter streams and feeds of targeted information from that data store (with the option to share them publicly via RSS - my public feeds are in my profile for the curious). It needs to be able to contain the 3 primary text-based sources of information I consume (with all of the table-stakes additional metadata): highlights from webpages, internet commentary, and highlights from eBooks. Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily.
- jacques-noris 4y ago
  This is the same use case I have, I use Evernote notably because of the excellent web scraper. Can you share more about your software?
  - bsnnkv 4y ago
    I don't want to derail the comments on this post too much, but it's called Notado (another commenter has already linked it) and I have posted about it a few times on HN before (all in my submissions history). There are quite a few high-quality discussion threads on those previous posts that are worth checking out if you're interested in learning more!
    - jacques-noris 4y ago
      Thanks, I’ll check it out
- isaacaggrey 4y ago
  > Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily. Based on your profile, I presume you're talking about https://notado.app/ https://notado.app/?
debacle 4y ago
Evernote raised too much money. End of story.
BiggsHoson 4y ago
I've tried a number of alternatives and keep coming back to Evernote's legacy apps (Windows and Android). The features I use are just right, and syncing just works, always. A key feature for me is being able to (with the legacy desktop app) open multiple notes at once, something that I've not seen anywhere else. (I assume this is because the legacy app is a native Windows executable, whereas multiple windows are not supported in the cross-platform frameworks everyone uses nowadays. I may be wrong.) On a new tablet I was forced to install their new app, and I find it just OK. I don't like it as much as the older one, but it's usable. Once Evernote shuts off the legacy apps, I will be searching for an alternative once again.
- longrod 4y ago
  Most features that appear to only be available in native apps can quite trivially be added using any cross-platform framework like Electron. Multiple windows is not something the is platform-restricted i.e. even web apps can do it if they try. Have you given Notesnook a try? While it doesn't have multi window support they have it on their roadmap: https://notesnook.com/roadmap https://notesnook.com/roadmap
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  I've been a regular Evernote paying user since the mid-naughts, using it mostly as a document archive (the built-in OCR is nice) ... but usage kicked off for me when I switched my main workhorse to a MacBook Pro two months ago. I guess it's mostly related to Evernote suddenly being fast.
cpach 4y ago
Am I the only one who still pays for and like Evernote? (: I don’t love it, it’s too bloated for that. But it still works (if not optimally). I could switch, but doing research to find an alternative and then migrate would take quite a lot of time, and time is always a constrained resource.
- pqs 4y ago
  I pay for it, I use it every day, I love it and I can't find the time to switch. I used it for my personal stuff and to coordinate the work with my 3 people team. It's great, albeit slow. The Android app doesn't work well on my phone. Never syncs.
- scioto 4y ago
  I paid for Evernote when it had the silver/mid tier, and it was about $35/yr. Then they got rid of that tier, and now it's $80/yr. for Personal. So I switched over to Joplin[1]. -- [1] https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
  - criddell 4y ago
    If you ask, there's still a $35 / year tier called Evernote Plus. I'm on it and that feels like a fair price however I'm not going to be renewing. I've been meaning to get off it ever since the Windows client turned into a slow, bloated mess and this year I'll probably finally do it.
    - SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
      Same, my subscription runs out in January, I will not be renewing after past year mess..
revskill 4y ago
Business/Product managers don't know what "do one thing and do it well" means.
smoovb 4y ago
I was a paying user and they switched plans, removed me. Bloat, constant unwanted change killed it for me. I now use a mix of Notes, Joplin, Notion, Paper and Google Docs.
mkl95 4y ago
Evernote was the first note taking app I ever used. It was simple and effective. It turned into an unusable monstrosity at some point.
- SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
  Literally that. Ever since they've redesigned app I have found myself using less & less which leads to more chaotic life :-(
booleandilemma 4y ago
For me it was the constant nagging to pay for it. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, but even after I paid for their silver tier (or whatever it was called) they then started to nag me to upgrade to the gold one. No respect for their paying customers.
beauHD 4y ago
I've been using Standard Notes[0] and haven't looked back. [0] https://standardnotes.com/ https://standardnotes.com/
nsxwolf 4y ago
I migrated to Apple Notes once I got an Apple Pencil and noticed simply touching it to the screen while off would instantly let me start taking a note like it was a piece of paper. There was no way to get that level of integration with Evernote, so I switched immediately.
mc32 4y ago
When people start going from EverNote to OneNote, that's an indication you've one-upped Microsoft in terms of un-usablity. Not to say all MS products are bad (Office is good) but the well-berated Teams is an example of a monstrosity that should be more usable.
- throwaway2203 4y ago
  I actually just joined a company that uses Teams and I REALLY love it as a Zoom replacement. It's a less great IM replacement for Slack, but the outlook integration, videochat quality, recordings, transcripts, chat (within meetings) is top notch.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    Experienced with MS Teams are varying a lot. I have exactly one setup, that works and I do not dare to change it, for the pain I had when trying anything else. Teams would not recognize my headphones. Only USB headset with integrated soundcard would work. All other programs did not have a problem using simply my headphones. This meant, that I could not use my 40€ mic with one turn of a switch on my aufio hub and have to have 2 headphones/sets lying around on my desk, only because of teams. I have barely a workday, on which none of my coworkers are experiencing Teams issues. Mic not working, no sound, suddenly muted, suddenly crashed the whole thing, shown status of people and even oneself is wildly wrong, not being able to set status properly either to fix it ... All these are still a thing. Welcome to 2022.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  Some people enjoy OneNote, it may not be bad.
Baeocystin 4y ago
I am grateful for whichever Googler who has managed to keep Keep up, running, unworsened and uncancelled over the years. Sometimes a product is enough as it is, and man does the modern software world have a problem with recognizing that.
- Kye 4y ago
  Blogger is in a similar spot. It gets updates every few years to keep track of major changes in web technology, but nothing radical.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Me too. I know Keep is going to get cancelled but I use it so much.
- pradn 4y ago
  Keep is my favorite Google product. It opens instantly on iOS, makes it dead easy to create notes, and has a good search feature. It's easy to access on the web since I'm always logged into my Google account anyway. I find iCloud's web presence a bit finicky b/c I have to usually log in again every time. A wishlist for Keep: * An API. I'd love to use Keep as a durable data store for all my notes. I want o be able to dump snippets collected from a Chrome extension or a PDF reader in there. Their current API provides just a few enterprise access knobs, and not the full data-plane API I'm asking for. * A better search in the sidebar companion app they have for Gmail, Calendar, etc. For some reason, search in the Keep sidebar doesn't return the same results as with the main Keep web or iOS apps.
AtNightWeCode 4y ago
You just can't make this shit up. Evernote was basically a no-service from the get-go. It was an app built around the fact that sooner or later they would force users to pay. Popular around that point in time. Slack, Miro and so on had similar plans. At least Slack kinda works without paying.
voiper1 4y ago
I really wanted to finally use Obsidian to start collecting possible DIY and art projects... and was unable to get thumbnails. Along with useful (if slow) web clipping extensions, evernote is great for saving, tagging, and searching for visual information.
jmyeet 4y ago
My take? Evernote failed because it's a Feature, Not a Company ("FNAC") [1]. There are lots of examples of this. Just because something is a good idea doesn't make it a viable standalone business. Evernote was early in this space but it already competed with (for eample) sending yourself emails. Nowadays there are all sorts of alternatives like Apple has a note-taking app on their devices, which is just free (it might use storage but that's a minor issue). Likewise, you can use Google Apps. Evernote's attempts to make it a business by introducing the friction of a subscription to get syncing beyond 2 devices (and other variants I'm forgetting I'm sure) just exposed this FNAC problem. Now could this have been leveraged to build a sustainable business of which note syncing was a part? Maybe. But that's not exactly easy either. [1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-a-company-1b904fd53d2f?gi=b3da2a4a2a3b https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-...
jxdxbx 4y ago
I'm interested in an app that I can just throw a million disorganized documents (PDFs, word files, text files) at, and have it draw insights and help me write. There have allegedly been apps like this since forever but none of them ever really work. Devon Think is bad. Evernote is bad. OneNote is bad. Notion is bad. Men is bad. They all want data to be in tiny little chunks or formatted and tagged just so. Or they ignore it. All deal killers. I need to be able to just give the thing decades of emails and giant PDF folders and make sense of it.
- mmplxx 4y ago
  > just give the thing decades of emails and giant PDF folders and make sense of it. just?
- leobg 4y ago
  I may be able to help. Would you email me? Contact info in bio.
smm11 4y ago
OneDrive
shashanoid 4y ago
ggregoire 4y ago
The main reason why I switched from Evernote to Notion like 5 years ago or so was because syncing 3 devices on Notion was free. I just checked the pricing page on Evernote and you still need to get the paid plan to sync more than 2 devices. https://evernote.com/compare-plans https://evernote.com/compare-plans https://www.notion.so/pricing https://www.notion.so/pricing
twblalock 4y ago
They let the software become buggy and unreliable. It's that simple. In the meantime, other notetaking apps came along that were able to compete, and a lot of them are free. There is clearly still demand for this kind of software. I don't think it mattered that Evernote was selling branded Moleskines and wallets -- that was a weird thing to do, but I have a hard time believing that sucked away all the resources from engineering for the core app.
csours 4y ago
Obligatory mention of the Memex and Vannevar Bush's essay 'As We May Think' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m... HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=memex https://hn.algolia.com/?q=memex https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=as%20we%20may%20think&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
nelsonenzo 4y ago
I stopped using evernote after their drastic UI change (which was universally loathed), and I got tired of it not supporting markdown or code snippets. While I found the product useful for keeping tech notes, I was constantly getting tripped up by the formatting. It became clear to me this was aimed at journalist rather than software developers. While I support journalist having a product that is a good fit for them, from a business perspective I think they were chasing a relatively poor demographic with a shrinking user base. It's a shame though, it was a great product I was otherwise happy to pay for.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
Evernote absolutely did realize its potential. The problem is that they threw everything into the trash afterwards with their decisions. It's what happens when you don't care about building a decent product.
diveandfight 4y ago
Not seeing many mentions of Simplenote. Does anyone else find it sufficient (syncing, web-app, tags, search, *no-payment)?
- mcherm 4y ago
  Yes. It provides exactly what I need: text notes, reliably saved to the cloud, which are searchable. Being free ($) is a nice bonus but not required; being not-free (open source) a minor negative.
dang 4y ago
Related ongoing thread: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623402 - Nov 2022 (113 comments)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 4y ago
Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19552221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19552221
flexdinesh 4y ago
For it was the unnecessary feature bloat and the terrible performance made it painful to do what I want - write at the speed of my thoughts, write often and search often. It took me a few days to move thousands of my notes to bear but it was worth it.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Seems to me it has the same issues IoT does: too many walled gardens, not enough open interop and standards. At some point we'll just start recording our entire lives. Security, storage, indexing, access-from-anywhere, and autotagging will be the keys. Anyone working on that?
- cudgy 4y ago
  The CIA?

137 points by arishi 4y ago

What got me hooked on Evernote was its web clipper. It did a great job of grabbing elements from webpages, retaining (or not!) their formatting. This made them easily searchable and nice to read, too. I used this to grab individual forum posts for things I cared about. I would happily pay for a subscription because of the amount of legacy data I have in there, but $90/year seems silly, my usage dropped way off once they restricted the number of devices, and at this point there are OSS options that are about as good. I probably should hire someone of fiverr for $90 or less to export/import my data.

lambda_dn 4y ago

Office 365, Google Keep, iCloud notes is the answer.

neoromantique 4y ago
And Obsidian for the privacy conscious
- Ialdaboth 4y ago
  Obsidian is great for syncing my notes across several devices. It was the major challenge I've struggled with for several years before it.
  - toss1 4y ago
    Are you using the Obsidian subscription/cloud service, or have you made a system to sync directly, e.g., Windows <-> Android platforms? If the latter, could you share your solution (I took a quick crack at it, but the link structure seems to require nontrivial management?) TIA
    - magicseth 4y ago
      I've used Obsidian Git. It definnitely takes some set up to make it work, but once working, it is pretty reliable. It requires an occasional merge conflict resolution, and setting the right files to be ignored. I love that it is just folder with markdown files. https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
    - ranbato 4y ago
      I'm using SyncThing across Windows, Linux, and Android
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
  Tried Obsidian for couple of minutes, promptly deleted the app when I noticed I can't have special characters in the title of the note.

foolfoolz 4y ago

evernote was a feature not a product

CharlesW 4y ago
In what way? PIMs seem to be a popular product category.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  they also just come with your phone, so if all you do is "the same", you're just a feature, not a product, even if you package yourself as a product. (and even if when you launched that was not the case, times change drastically on mobile. Evernote very quickly became a feature, not a product)

hartator 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dboreham 4y ago
tldr it's very hard to get people to pay for something they can live without.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

macspoofing 4y ago

Honestly, I don’t know what Evernote Corp. did during the last 10+ years of Evernote development. The feature set feels about the same.

heydenberk 4y ago
I'd argue it's worse. Slower, at least.
happytoexplain 4y ago
If only apps stayed the same over ten years. That would be a dream come true. Evernote got much slower and buggier in those ten years.
egypturnash 4y ago
They rewrote it from scratch as a sluggish web app, failed to address issues that have been annoyances since day 1, piled on dubious new features that just made it harder to open the damn thing up and write down the idea that just hit you, or to open up the note you're looking for at this very instant.
itsangaris 4y ago
Evernote had multiple chances to get back on track. Its decision to rewrite its multiple apps into a single web-based one was one of them. In theory having only one codebase to fix bugs and build new features in makes a ton of sense. Unfortunately the hard product work of simplifying the feature set and prioritizing server-side tech debt was overlooked. Therefore the new app was weighed down from the beginning because it had to support all these legacy systems. IMO the best move for Evernote is to rethink the UX and tech architecture from first principals and have existing users opt-in to migrate their data over. It's a tough decision to make but I don't see any meaningful progress being made otherwise.

rnmp 4y ago

Been building a tool[1] to replace my usage of Evernote. I agree that caring about the product and its vision is the only way to keep the quality and attention to detail afloat.

rnmp 4y ago
Missed the link! https://www.bleep.is https://www.bleep.is

dandigangi 4y ago

Dropped Evernote years ago sadly. Kind of reminds me of how Sketch didn't keep up w/ Figma compared to other note taking tools. Been using Notion for awhile but that initial setup can be painful. Usually Mac Notes or Obsidian is my quick notes followed by Notion for the deep stuff.

fragmede 4y ago

Evernote went with option 3, finding a buyer: https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-next-move-joining-bending-spoons/ https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-next-move-joining-bending...

INeedMoreRam 4y ago

I use and encourage Joplin instead of any privacy-breaching commercialized product such as Evernote, Notion, or OneNote.

Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
I use the multimedia and handwriting touch capabilities of my tablets and phones. Since Joplin does not have handwriting support, nor image embeds, nor file embeds. This is not to single out that tool, since most cross-platform notetaking applications have the same problem or a similar permutation. I choose to be stuck with OneNote 2010 because: 1. It has local files I can back up and sync, no cloud account or online requirement (also more privacy from cloud scanning) 1. It supports embedding files so I can back up the notebooks and not have to go find every file scattered all throughout my hard drive in order to make those up two 1. I can hand write and have text be searched or OCRed 1. It has embedding support for images and audio and have them be interactive (you can see the image, play the video, listen to the sound right in the program) Writing such a program is a very difficult problem. If it were easy, we would be having all of these features and not just another round of markdown text file editors. Xournal++ is considering moving to a file format that would enable you to embed files that would be zipped up as part of the file format, since it already supports handwriting recognition and has basic text and good enough image display, I continued to watch it to see if it can take over my onenote use cases, but it's just not there yet.
- INeedMoreRam 4y ago
  I’m able to embed images into the Joplin app - not sure how long ago you tried?
- stavros 4y ago
  What do you mean by image/file embeds? You can embed images and files just fine.
nvrspyx 4y ago
I like Joplin, but it's a poor experience on iOS. Besides the material design theme feeling out of place, scrolling is weird/slow compared to other iOS apps, including webpages in Safari, and there's no gestures, so I have to reach all the way to the top to go back to the note list instead of swiping from the left of the screen like every other app I have installed. Although it's not open source like Joplin, I've switched over to Obsidian.

rcarmo 4y ago

It failed because it turned the app into bloat and killed multi-device syncing. Most of the decisions made regarding product features were user-hostile not just to the free tier, but also to paying users who did not want the "features" they kept pushing out.

jwr 4y ago
This is a very similar path to the one that Skitch and Dropbox took. In each case, instead of perfecting and maintaining a really good app, business pressures caused them to pursue growth at all costs. This is a common problem these days.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  > business pressures You mean greed.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    also survival, but in the case of Evernote (which I still use)incompetence
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    We've codified greed in how tech businesses commonly operate. Once they take VC money, the expectation is constant growth. If you have a product with a limited market/audience there are only a few ways to achieve that: - Increase prices - which will drive some of your customers away. - Revenue through ads - which will drive some of your customers away. - New products - risky, and if successful it sometimes means the original product becomes abandonware. - New features to try to increase the audience for your product or monetize directly - what it seems like Evernote did. But not every product can have billions or even millions of users. So sometimes these all fail anyway. Basically investment, whether from VCs or an IPO, is often death for a small business serving a niche market.
- productman1 4y ago
  Once companies hire Product Managers, it is usually downhill from there in 80% of cases. The problem is that the PMs are incentivized to deliver features, even if that is not the right thing to do. See: Postman.

vasac 4y ago

Last time I was using their Windows app it felt non-native in a bad way (some 7-8 years ago). Also, I managed to lose note content in their iPhone app just by opening note which contained large image. Image simply disappeared nowhere to be found either on phone or computer. After that happened for a second time I kinda switched to iOS Notes and later to Joplin.

disqard 4y ago
I experienced a similar data loss, which was very impactful: I was at the "fast-forward" session of SIGGRAPH, making notes on what I wanted to attend. Somewhere near the end of the session, EverNote crashed and took all of the data in such a way that it was neither on my device, nor on the cloud. That was a deal-breaker. I uninstalled the app and deleted my subscription. These days, I keep my notes as .md files and they stay in sync using Nextcloud. I've been using this for ~4 years now, and it works great!

baby 4y ago

Honestly Apple Notes works really well. It doesn't have much features, but its simplicity should be the baseline of any note taking app

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
I find the simplicity of Notes to be a big win. I don’t need to be able to publish a blog from it—I just need to know if I still need to pick up a bunch of kale or not. Notes satisfies my three must-have requirements: it’s on every device my wife and I use, it allows mixing checklists with free form text, and we can effortlessly share information with each other. I just checked and found that I have 1,321 total notes stored in iCloud. These range from my daily todo lists (invaluable for end of year performance review documents, saying nothing of just remembering what I’m supposed to do), to the all-important shared grocery list, which we will both update whenever we’re shopping at the grocery store.
canadiantim 4y ago
How do you get your notes out of apple notes though? They're like some sort of covetous demon who won't let your notes go once it consumes them. I literally went to the apple notes discord once and asked them directly and their response was basically "Apple Notes isn't design to be used for more than 100 notes"... so be very very careful about choosing to use Apple Notes cause you may never get your notes out of there
- halpmeh 4y ago
  Where exactly are my notes supposed to be going?
  - foobarian 4y ago
    A local filesystem directory with text files would be a good start.
  - FearlessNebula 4y ago
    Many options, should you decide to leave the Apple ecosystem

SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago

Still looking for viable replacement: * Joplin had some issues I've checked year ago. * Apple notes while I have iPhone there's no Windows app. * OneNote is just trully horrendous app. * Obsidian just can't convince myself. I'm forcing myself to use it work, while it works, it's not something I enjoy doing. * Notion is odd, everything is a block and sometimes formatting is just meh... * Google keep is just simple note and that's it(unless something has changed). Any worthy apps to look at besides those?

mahathu 4y ago
I love, love LOVE TickTick. It is a note-taking and todo list app and everything is so frictionless like I've never seen before. Also supports markdown notes. I'm only concerned that it looks like a Chinese Todoist clone. The about page doesn't is suspiciously elusive.
- SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
  Would you mind sharing url? Hard to find with all the urls coming from TikTok. :D
  - ca7 4y ago
    My guess is they are referring to TickTick: https://ticktick.com/ https://ticktick.com/
  - mahathu 4y ago
    Yes exactly, my bad, I meant TickTick!
proee 4y ago
NotePlan is my favorite
arcbyte 4y ago
What kind of notes do you take? I've used OneNote for like 12 years now I think and I love it. It's where my school notes are and every note I've taken in my career since then. My personal diaries and life notes. Everything is in it. I've been looking at Obsidian as well because I like the idea of self hosting but aside from that I've never seen a reason to leave. So back to my question, what kind of notes do you take?

c-smile 4y ago

Except of few ideological mistakes, I would say, quite a lot of time was wasted on doubtful technical decisions ... One year was wasted on trying to make it as WPF application, .NET all that ... 5, if not more, years were wasted on making it work as Electron'ish like application (CEF was integrated). Evernote is a typical companion application - the thing that sits in tray and pops up as quickly as possible when needed. Management read once that "Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil" but missed the critical point - this kind of application MUST be lightweight or dead. The elephant was born instead.

mjburgess 4y ago
> Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil Means don't drop down to asm to save a few cycles. It doesnt mean "dont fill your 10fps GUI app with crap". Today, it more or less should be killed-off as a phrase. There isn't anyone optimizing anything, let alone "prematurely"
- c-smile 4y ago
  It could be interpreted that way too. But usually managers interpret it this way: let's mold it now from that pile of shit and firewood and think about concrete foundation later. VC driven development they say. It makes sense in some cases of course. But not in cases when concrete foundation is the cornerstone feature of the application. That kind of application shall serve users during whole their lifetime. And so application core shall not rely on particular OS and its features.
- pradn 4y ago
  > There isn't anyone optimizing anything, let alone "prematurely" Yes, but in a slightly different way than one might think at initial read of this. Most of the performance choices for a user-facing application have been made by the time the language and UI framework are decided. And these are just chosen out of inertia, to conform to a company standard or to use what you already know. There's little one can do to make a WPF or CEF application super responsive.
  - 4y ago

newbieuser 4y ago

Although evernote is in the category of the lightest must-have app, it's an extremely bloated app. too bloated in terms of features. I really wonder what percentage of users use all the features.

Cupertino95014 4y ago

I never installed it, because there are too many other ways to make notes. They were solving a problem that was already solved, albeit imperfectly. I can send an email to myself. If it's a person's info, I can put them in Contacts. Or I can have a Google Doc called "Notes" where I write stuff. All of those have interfaces I already know. One can validly object that all of those methods have drawbacks. But they've worked well enough for me that I wasn't wishing for Evernote and one more thing to learn.

Quarrelsome 4y ago

I find this an interesting reflection of an org I used to work for. Originally successful product allowed to stagnate over the course of decades with all the energy being sucked up by new shiny bolt-ons while the core business need and core product is never re-imagined to fit in with modern industry trends. On reflection it always looks kinda daft that this can end up happening but I think (at least in my case) its easy for orgs to lose sight of their product's failings which can be compacted by the need to always hype up their product in public and this bleeds into private and into strategy.

foobarian 4y ago
How would you design the org to avoid this? You basically need to disband the team once the product is done. How do game studios manage it?
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  > How would you design the org to avoid this? I don't know but it feels like a relatively common theme and perhaps there are factors that control its prevalence. I would tentatively suggest that refreshing decision making structures from time to time might help mitigate against complacency but you might also be rolling a dice if you're force-replacing to keep fresh. Perhaps its more to do with how a business will diversify strategically without diversifying organisationally? I feel like there should be some form of conflict when resource is split from core product into diversification products (e.g. like Evernote food or Evernote market) and perhaps the absence of that conflict is a contributing factor to the speed at which the rot can set in. Also maybe there's something to say about having a clear roadmap and never thinking the core product is done. Some of the most successful products I've seen seem to have some sort of force that is always seeking to iteratively improve it.
- Kye 4y ago
  They hire a bunch of people leading up to release, fire them, and start the cycle over on the next one. Same with the VFX industry: it's not unheard of for them to produce a record-breaking movie and shut down between then and the awards shows. I don't think most tech workers would tolerate it.

paulpauper 4y ago

Dropbox was better. There was/is no need for Evernote to exist.

thecodrr 4y ago

Shameless plug but for the past 2 years we have slowly been working to replace Evernote with Notesnook [1]. Sounds weird to say "replace Evernote" when Evernote is absolute shit (no offense) but one of the main reasons we went this route is because Evernote did one thing right: It made personal note taking approachable & actually fun. Nowadays, a lot of the modern note taking apps (Notion, Slite etc.) are focused on the "enterprise user" i.e. they prioritize business focused note taking with features like collaborations, integrations etc. Private & personal note taking is no longer the hype which, in my opinion, is really sad. I might be mistaken in my viewpoint however, of later I have noticed a huge trend toward providing user experiences that target a team workflow. Personal workflows are an afterthought, at best. For some tools this works out but for note taking apps I think it creates a huge void. Not everyone wants a thousands ways to integrate, publish whole websites, buy & sell, and create presentations using their notes app. [1] https://notesnook.com/ https://notesnook.com/

hosh 4y ago
Do you guys optimize for local-first? Can I drop in to start editing without having to wait for network lag or sync? Is multi-device syncing rock solid? Can I add pictures and links to other entries? Can I import my existing Evernote notes? If I wanted a team workflow, I'd use Google Docs and Notion. This is for just personal note and knowledge base I can tap into quickly via my phone.
- thecodrr 4y ago
  > Do you guys optimize for local-first? Can I drop in to start editing without having to wait for network lag or sync? Is multi-device syncing rock solid? Yep. Everything is offline-first stored right on your device. Syncing works mostly well but there a few rough edges which we are sorting out. > Can I import my existing Evernote notes? Yes. We have an official importer: https://importer.notesnook.com/ https://importer.notesnook.com/
prometheus76 4y ago
The one feature I loved in Evernote (when I was using it as a paid customer a few years ago) was that I could upload a pdf and it would be indexed for search. I ended up using Evernote as an extensive pdf library with very rapid search of all my pdfs. Does notesnook offer anything like that?

JohnTHaller 4y ago

Evernote always felt like a product that was wasting its potential. Years ago I approached them about doing a portable version for PortableApps.com, with us doing the portablization for free. They refused and said they were happy with their proprietary portable version that only worked within Ceedo (a closed source portable virtualization platform that was fee-based for most use cases). Ceedo never gained traction and was discontinued.

bsnnkv 4y ago

Over the years I've realized that I don't actually care for or need the "note taking" part of applications like these. What I need is a textual data store that can be efficiently and effectively indexed, searched and (automatically) tagged, and for the ability to quickly filter streams and feeds of targeted information from that data store (with the option to share them publicly via RSS - my public feeds are in my profile for the curious). It needs to be able to contain the 3 primary text-based sources of information I consume (with all of the table-stakes additional metadata): highlights from webpages, internet commentary, and highlights from eBooks. Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily.

jacques-noris 4y ago
This is the same use case I have, I use Evernote notably because of the excellent web scraper. Can you share more about your software?
- bsnnkv 4y ago
  I don't want to derail the comments on this post too much, but it's called Notado (another commenter has already linked it) and I have posted about it a few times on HN before (all in my submissions history). There are quite a few high-quality discussion threads on those previous posts that are worth checking out if you're interested in learning more!
  - jacques-noris 4y ago
    Thanks, I’ll check it out
isaacaggrey 4y ago
> Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily. Based on your profile, I presume you're talking about https://notado.app/ https://notado.app/?

debacle 4y ago

Evernote raised too much money. End of story.

BiggsHoson 4y ago

I've tried a number of alternatives and keep coming back to Evernote's legacy apps (Windows and Android). The features I use are just right, and syncing just works, always. A key feature for me is being able to (with the legacy desktop app) open multiple notes at once, something that I've not seen anywhere else. (I assume this is because the legacy app is a native Windows executable, whereas multiple windows are not supported in the cross-platform frameworks everyone uses nowadays. I may be wrong.) On a new tablet I was forced to install their new app, and I find it just OK. I don't like it as much as the older one, but it's usable. Once Evernote shuts off the legacy apps, I will be searching for an alternative once again.

longrod 4y ago
Most features that appear to only be available in native apps can quite trivially be added using any cross-platform framework like Electron. Multiple windows is not something the is platform-restricted i.e. even web apps can do it if they try. Have you given Notesnook a try? While it doesn't have multi window support they have it on their roadmap: https://notesnook.com/roadmap https://notesnook.com/roadmap
DocTomoe 4y ago
I've been a regular Evernote paying user since the mid-naughts, using it mostly as a document archive (the built-in OCR is nice) ... but usage kicked off for me when I switched my main workhorse to a MacBook Pro two months ago. I guess it's mostly related to Evernote suddenly being fast.

cpach 4y ago

Am I the only one who still pays for and like Evernote? (: I don’t love it, it’s too bloated for that. But it still works (if not optimally). I could switch, but doing research to find an alternative and then migrate would take quite a lot of time, and time is always a constrained resource.

pqs 4y ago
I pay for it, I use it every day, I love it and I can't find the time to switch. I used it for my personal stuff and to coordinate the work with my 3 people team. It's great, albeit slow. The Android app doesn't work well on my phone. Never syncs.
scioto 4y ago
I paid for Evernote when it had the silver/mid tier, and it was about $35/yr. Then they got rid of that tier, and now it's $80/yr. for Personal. So I switched over to Joplin[1]. -- [1] https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
- criddell 4y ago
  If you ask, there's still a $35 / year tier called Evernote Plus. I'm on it and that feels like a fair price however I'm not going to be renewing. I've been meaning to get off it ever since the Windows client turned into a slow, bloated mess and this year I'll probably finally do it.
  - SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
    Same, my subscription runs out in January, I will not be renewing after past year mess..

revskill 4y ago

Business/Product managers don't know what "do one thing and do it well" means.

smoovb 4y ago

I was a paying user and they switched plans, removed me. Bloat, constant unwanted change killed it for me. I now use a mix of Notes, Joplin, Notion, Paper and Google Docs.

mkl95 4y ago

Evernote was the first note taking app I ever used. It was simple and effective. It turned into an unusable monstrosity at some point.

SUPERSLEDZ 4y ago
Literally that. Ever since they've redesigned app I have found myself using less & less which leads to more chaotic life :-(

booleandilemma 4y ago

For me it was the constant nagging to pay for it. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, but even after I paid for their silver tier (or whatever it was called) they then started to nag me to upgrade to the gold one. No respect for their paying customers.

beauHD 4y ago

I've been using Standard Notes[0] and haven't looked back. [0] https://standardnotes.com/ https://standardnotes.com/

nsxwolf 4y ago

I migrated to Apple Notes once I got an Apple Pencil and noticed simply touching it to the screen while off would instantly let me start taking a note like it was a piece of paper. There was no way to get that level of integration with Evernote, so I switched immediately.

mc32 4y ago

When people start going from EverNote to OneNote, that's an indication you've one-upped Microsoft in terms of un-usablity. Not to say all MS products are bad (Office is good) but the well-berated Teams is an example of a monstrosity that should be more usable.

throwaway2203 4y ago
I actually just joined a company that uses Teams and I REALLY love it as a Zoom replacement. It's a less great IM replacement for Slack, but the outlook integration, videochat quality, recordings, transcripts, chat (within meetings) is top notch.
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  Experienced with MS Teams are varying a lot. I have exactly one setup, that works and I do not dare to change it, for the pain I had when trying anything else. Teams would not recognize my headphones. Only USB headset with integrated soundcard would work. All other programs did not have a problem using simply my headphones. This meant, that I could not use my 40€ mic with one turn of a switch on my aufio hub and have to have 2 headphones/sets lying around on my desk, only because of teams. I have barely a workday, on which none of my coworkers are experiencing Teams issues. Mic not working, no sound, suddenly muted, suddenly crashed the whole thing, shown status of people and even oneself is wildly wrong, not being able to set status properly either to fix it ... All these are still a thing. Welcome to 2022.
speedgoose 4y ago
Some people enjoy OneNote, it may not be bad.

Baeocystin 4y ago

I am grateful for whichever Googler who has managed to keep Keep up, running, unworsened and uncancelled over the years. Sometimes a product is enough as it is, and man does the modern software world have a problem with recognizing that.

Kye 4y ago
Blogger is in a similar spot. It gets updates every few years to keep track of major changes in web technology, but nothing radical.
xeromal 4y ago
Me too. I know Keep is going to get cancelled but I use it so much.
pradn 4y ago
Keep is my favorite Google product. It opens instantly on iOS, makes it dead easy to create notes, and has a good search feature. It's easy to access on the web since I'm always logged into my Google account anyway. I find iCloud's web presence a bit finicky b/c I have to usually log in again every time. A wishlist for Keep: * An API. I'd love to use Keep as a durable data store for all my notes. I want o be able to dump snippets collected from a Chrome extension or a PDF reader in there. Their current API provides just a few enterprise access knobs, and not the full data-plane API I'm asking for. * A better search in the sidebar companion app they have for Gmail, Calendar, etc. For some reason, search in the Keep sidebar doesn't return the same results as with the main Keep web or iOS apps.

AtNightWeCode 4y ago

You just can't make this shit up. Evernote was basically a no-service from the get-go. It was an app built around the fact that sooner or later they would force users to pay. Popular around that point in time. Slack, Miro and so on had similar plans. At least Slack kinda works without paying.

voiper1 4y ago

I really wanted to finally use Obsidian to start collecting possible DIY and art projects... and was unable to get thumbnails. Along with useful (if slow) web clipping extensions, evernote is great for saving, tagging, and searching for visual information.

jmyeet 4y ago

My take? Evernote failed because it's a Feature, Not a Company ("FNAC") [1]. There are lots of examples of this. Just because something is a good idea doesn't make it a viable standalone business. Evernote was early in this space but it already competed with (for eample) sending yourself emails. Nowadays there are all sorts of alternatives like Apple has a note-taking app on their devices, which is just free (it might use storage but that's a minor issue). Likewise, you can use Google Apps. Evernote's attempts to make it a business by introducing the friction of a subscription to get syncing beyond 2 devices (and other variants I'm forgetting I'm sure) just exposed this FNAC problem. Now could this have been leveraged to build a sustainable business of which note syncing was a part? Maybe. But that's not exactly easy either. [1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-a-company-1b904fd53d2f?gi=b3da2a4a2a3b https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-...

jxdxbx 4y ago

I'm interested in an app that I can just throw a million disorganized documents (PDFs, word files, text files) at, and have it draw insights and help me write. There have allegedly been apps like this since forever but none of them ever really work. Devon Think is bad. Evernote is bad. OneNote is bad. Notion is bad. Men is bad. They all want data to be in tiny little chunks or formatted and tagged just so. Or they ignore it. All deal killers. I need to be able to just give the thing decades of emails and giant PDF folders and make sense of it.

mmplxx 4y ago
> just give the thing decades of emails and giant PDF folders and make sense of it. just?
leobg 4y ago
I may be able to help. Would you email me? Contact info in bio.

smm11 4y ago

OneDrive

shashanoid 4y ago

ggregoire 4y ago

The main reason why I switched from Evernote to Notion like 5 years ago or so was because syncing 3 devices on Notion was free. I just checked the pricing page on Evernote and you still need to get the paid plan to sync more than 2 devices. https://evernote.com/compare-plans https://evernote.com/compare-plans https://www.notion.so/pricing https://www.notion.so/pricing

twblalock 4y ago

They let the software become buggy and unreliable. It's that simple. In the meantime, other notetaking apps came along that were able to compete, and a lot of them are free. There is clearly still demand for this kind of software. I don't think it mattered that Evernote was selling branded Moleskines and wallets -- that was a weird thing to do, but I have a hard time believing that sucked away all the resources from engineering for the core app.

csours 4y ago

Obligatory mention of the Memex and Vannevar Bush's essay 'As We May Think' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m... HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=memex https://hn.algolia.com/?q=memex https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=as%20we%20may%20think&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

nelsonenzo 4y ago

I stopped using evernote after their drastic UI change (which was universally loathed), and I got tired of it not supporting markdown or code snippets. While I found the product useful for keeping tech notes, I was constantly getting tripped up by the formatting. It became clear to me this was aimed at journalist rather than software developers. While I support journalist having a product that is a good fit for them, from a business perspective I think they were chasing a relatively poor demographic with a shrinking user base. It's a shame though, it was a great product I was otherwise happy to pay for.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

Evernote absolutely did realize its potential. The problem is that they threw everything into the trash afterwards with their decisions. It's what happens when you don't care about building a decent product.

diveandfight 4y ago

Not seeing many mentions of Simplenote. Does anyone else find it sufficient (syncing, web-app, tags, search, *no-payment)?

mcherm 4y ago
Yes. It provides exactly what I need: text notes, reliably saved to the cloud, which are searchable. Being free ($) is a nice bonus but not required; being not-free (open source) a minor negative.

dang 4y ago

Related ongoing thread: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623402 - Nov 2022 (113 comments)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nashashmi 4y ago

Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19552221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19552221

flexdinesh 4y ago

For it was the unnecessary feature bloat and the terrible performance made it painful to do what I want - write at the speed of my thoughts, write often and search often. It took me a few days to move thousands of my notes to bear but it was worth it.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Seems to me it has the same issues IoT does: too many walled gardens, not enough open interop and standards. At some point we'll just start recording our entire lives. Security, storage, indexing, access-from-anywhere, and autotagging will be the keys. Anyone working on that?

cudgy 4y ago
The CIA?