7 ms·

And to think that at one point Evernote was THE note taking app. So much wasted potential.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
On the other hand, it should be possible for software to be done. I have never used Evernote, but I am not sure how much innovation is required in the note-taking space.
- ktta 3y ago
  Software is never done if the software it runs on is never done. Making that transition is not easy, and tech debt can accumulate to the point where you have to make substantial changes. In the meantime, UI standards/tastes change. Now you're at the right spot for a re-write
  - smaudet 3y ago
    Its usually driven actually mostly by hardware. Which is driven by games (and now apparently AI). Hardware gets better so UI gets more glittery, everyone tries to "stand out" by looking/working best, so the UI "taste" changes. Or hardware form factor changes, so everything needs re-written to support it, etc. Next hardware re-write will be some mix of AI/low power. None of the "green" energy stuff will deliver in time, nuclear won't happen in a way that is both safe and any-time-soon, and meanwhile power-hungry AIs will be battling for cpu cycles and watts with other devices. Your devices will be very low power and the majority of modern software will be laughably ill-equipped to handle that. Or it will run on giant mainframes that look nothing like x86 desktops or even server farms, more like specialized super computers.
- Kadin 3y ago
  Perhaps, but setting aside the philosophical point, Evernote was nowhere near "done". Their 'new' client software (Electron-based, of course) never even achieved feature parity with their 'legacy' client software. The mobile app wasn't exactly screamingly performant, to put it nicely. Really basic core use cases, like creating a note, typing in a title and some content, tagging it with a keyword, and saving it, required a lot more clicks than it seemed to me like it should. Hierarchical tags, while technically supported, seemed like a weird add-on that never got full support. And Penultimate -- their tablet-centric app that stored data in your Evernote account -- hasn't been updated in several years; I'm actually impressed it continues to work. There's plenty of room where they could have built new features, if they'd wanted to. Off the top of my head, I'd have liked to see Markdown support instead of their quasi-HTML WYSIWYG editor (some versions of the thick client had a subset of Markdown-like syntax but others didn't). Penultimate would have been great if it had on-device OCR / handwriting recognition, or even just a way of tagging specific pages or page-regions with keywords. I think there's a lot of room in the notetaking space. I'm still waiting for an app that isn't a glorified text editor or a drawing program, but also doesn't lock your data into some unparsable binary format or obscure graph database behind the scenes. I want to take notes, using a pen, on a tablet, that might or might not be text, and then I want to annotate the shit out of those notes and keyword them and cross-reference them, and I want the whole thing to be searchable and I want the handwriting recognition to not suck, and I want all of this to be encrypted at rest and in transit, and I want native clients for all major desktop and mobile operating systems. So, yeah, I don't think notetaking is done quite yet.
  - tempestn 3y ago
    One could argue that their legacy apps were pretty close to done though. If they'd just maintained them rather than switching to the current garbage, they'd probably have a lot happier customers now.
  - mesoman 3y ago
    They partly broke hierarchical tags with the rewrite. If you have a tag hierarchy a.b.c and you put a note at a or b, it will not show up in the tag list. That ruined my main organizational tool. And the limited depth of notebooks has always been just wrong, which is why I use hierarchical tags.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Any note taking software that was “done” quickly becomes not done when users requirements change. Taking notes is no longer enough. I now want to talk to my phone and have it find the note that included the info I want. Not just basic text search, but it should understand the meaning of the notes.
- miked85 3y ago
  > it should be possible for software to be done Not if you ask product managers
- ilyt 3y ago
  Well it was clearly too "done" coz they decided to rewrite everything in Electron
wkat4242 3y ago
Yeah and now we only really have OneNote, the web version of which still really sucks. You can't even search a whole notebook, just a section. And it needs to reload every day.
- ycombinete 3y ago
  OneNote 2016 was revolutionary for me. Since then I’ve found it less and less usable with each new update. I think the tension between having a good web app and a good desktop app with the same interface is difficult to resolve.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yes the simplified version that MS made was also much much crappier. The tabs for the different notebook disappeared and much of the functionality too :'( The syncing with Sharepoint also works pretty crap. I preferred when the database was just stored locally and I could choose where to store it. I'd love to get a new application just like this that works like the old OneNote. Without a whole cloud backing it which locks in my information (e.g. Evernote, Notion etc). Just a file (or collection of files) I can store locally or even in a local git server or whatever. But with options for attachments and cross platform. I haven't really found anything good. Most of the things are not WYSIWYG but markdown with a double pane (one for the input and one for rendered) which I don't like - I'm not a dev so I don't really idolise markdown or have the muscle memory for it.
    - ycombinete 3y ago
      I’ve looked and it seems that one can still install the old 2016 OneNote. I still have a cd key out there somewhere. I’m going to give this a go. I still manage to save my modern OneNote files locally. I save them to my Dropbox for syncing.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        You can of course yes but it's not really being updated anymore. And I don't just use windows these days so it's not really an option for me.
fastball 3y ago
I think it was mostly THE note-taking app because it was effectively the first serious contender. In retrospect it was never a particularly inspired app.

On the other hand, it should be possible for software to be done. I have never used Evernote, but I am not sure how much innovation is required in the note-taking space.

ktta 3y ago
Software is never done if the software it runs on is never done. Making that transition is not easy, and tech debt can accumulate to the point where you have to make substantial changes. In the meantime, UI standards/tastes change. Now you're at the right spot for a re-write
- smaudet 3y ago
  Its usually driven actually mostly by hardware. Which is driven by games (and now apparently AI). Hardware gets better so UI gets more glittery, everyone tries to "stand out" by looking/working best, so the UI "taste" changes. Or hardware form factor changes, so everything needs re-written to support it, etc. Next hardware re-write will be some mix of AI/low power. None of the "green" energy stuff will deliver in time, nuclear won't happen in a way that is both safe and any-time-soon, and meanwhile power-hungry AIs will be battling for cpu cycles and watts with other devices. Your devices will be very low power and the majority of modern software will be laughably ill-equipped to handle that. Or it will run on giant mainframes that look nothing like x86 desktops or even server farms, more like specialized super computers.
Kadin 3y ago
Perhaps, but setting aside the philosophical point, Evernote was nowhere near "done". Their 'new' client software (Electron-based, of course) never even achieved feature parity with their 'legacy' client software. The mobile app wasn't exactly screamingly performant, to put it nicely. Really basic core use cases, like creating a note, typing in a title and some content, tagging it with a keyword, and saving it, required a lot more clicks than it seemed to me like it should. Hierarchical tags, while technically supported, seemed like a weird add-on that never got full support. And Penultimate -- their tablet-centric app that stored data in your Evernote account -- hasn't been updated in several years; I'm actually impressed it continues to work. There's plenty of room where they could have built new features, if they'd wanted to. Off the top of my head, I'd have liked to see Markdown support instead of their quasi-HTML WYSIWYG editor (some versions of the thick client had a subset of Markdown-like syntax but others didn't). Penultimate would have been great if it had on-device OCR / handwriting recognition, or even just a way of tagging specific pages or page-regions with keywords. I think there's a lot of room in the notetaking space. I'm still waiting for an app that isn't a glorified text editor or a drawing program, but also doesn't lock your data into some unparsable binary format or obscure graph database behind the scenes. I want to take notes, using a pen, on a tablet, that might or might not be text, and then I want to annotate the shit out of those notes and keyword them and cross-reference them, and I want the whole thing to be searchable and I want the handwriting recognition to not suck, and I want all of this to be encrypted at rest and in transit, and I want native clients for all major desktop and mobile operating systems. So, yeah, I don't think notetaking is done quite yet.
- tempestn 3y ago
  One could argue that their legacy apps were pretty close to done though. If they'd just maintained them rather than switching to the current garbage, they'd probably have a lot happier customers now.
- mesoman 3y ago
  They partly broke hierarchical tags with the rewrite. If you have a tag hierarchy a.b.c and you put a note at a or b, it will not show up in the tag list. That ruined my main organizational tool. And the limited depth of notebooks has always been just wrong, which is why I use hierarchical tags.
Gigachad 3y ago
Any note taking software that was “done” quickly becomes not done when users requirements change. Taking notes is no longer enough. I now want to talk to my phone and have it find the note that included the info I want. Not just basic text search, but it should understand the meaning of the notes.
miked85 3y ago
> it should be possible for software to be done Not if you ask product managers
ilyt 3y ago
Well it was clearly too "done" coz they decided to rewrite everything in Electron

wkat4242 3y ago

Yeah and now we only really have OneNote, the web version of which still really sucks. You can't even search a whole notebook, just a section. And it needs to reload every day.

ycombinete 3y ago
OneNote 2016 was revolutionary for me. Since then I’ve found it less and less usable with each new update. I think the tension between having a good web app and a good desktop app with the same interface is difficult to resolve.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yes the simplified version that MS made was also much much crappier. The tabs for the different notebook disappeared and much of the functionality too :'( The syncing with Sharepoint also works pretty crap. I preferred when the database was just stored locally and I could choose where to store it. I'd love to get a new application just like this that works like the old OneNote. Without a whole cloud backing it which locks in my information (e.g. Evernote, Notion etc). Just a file (or collection of files) I can store locally or even in a local git server or whatever. But with options for attachments and cross platform. I haven't really found anything good. Most of the things are not WYSIWYG but markdown with a double pane (one for the input and one for rendered) which I don't like - I'm not a dev so I don't really idolise markdown or have the muscle memory for it.
  - ycombinete 3y ago
    I’ve looked and it seems that one can still install the old 2016 OneNote. I still have a cd key out there somewhere. I’m going to give this a go. I still manage to save my modern OneNote files locally. I save them to my Dropbox for syncing.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      You can of course yes but it's not really being updated anymore. And I don't just use windows these days so it's not really an option for me.

fastball 3y ago

I think it was mostly THE note-taking app because it was effectively the first serious contender. In retrospect it was never a particularly inspired app.