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I really love Evernote. It has absolutely changed my life for the better. Every single significant piece of paper in my life, be it physical (e.g., parking tick

by veidr 14y ago

I really love Evernote. It has absolutely changed my life for the better. Every single significant piece of paper in my life, be it physical (e.g., parking ticket) or virtual (e.g., airline e-ticket) in my life goes into a feed scanner which directly inputs it to Evernote, then into the shredder. It has spared a lot of cumulative hours of my life from being wasted on crap-work. Having said that, the Mac app totally SUCKS. Big time. It abruptly loses the cursor and keyboard focus so you can't type. It sometimes pauses for a looooong time. It crashes. Outlining is buggy. Keyboard shortcuts buck the standard Mac conventions. It has egregious design flaws, including completely wrong/insane behavior for the basic functionality of creating a new note (Cmd-N opens an insanely huge bloated master-detail view of all your notes, search field, notbook list, multiple toolbars, and activity monitor, requiring that you find the new untitled note in all that crap, double click it to open the new note in a note window, and then close that bloated behemoth (necessary even if you don't mind a huge unnecessary second window being open, because several editing operations cause crashes when two views on a note are open simultaneously)). It is one of those apps where the actual function is so beneficial/important that you deal with the app itself being a total piece of crap. So I look forward to a major new version, although pre-announcing software that isn't available is annoying, and there's not much in this post to indicate whether or not the severe problems with Evernote 3 have been fixed in addition to adding all the glitz.

larsberg 14y ago
The two biggest bugs/issues I've had with Evernote are: 1) The sync/merge sucks. Despite having a common baseline, if there's any sort of conflict (usually due to one of my machines "forgetting" to sync every 5 minutes), you just get two copies of head and have to do a baseless merge by hand. 2) If you're not subscribed to premium, the mobile app seems to actively remove notes that you had already downloaded if you're offline for a while. I got quite the surprise when I had planned out lots of day trips in Japan, switched between two notes to check on tomorrow's itinerary, and then got a, "you need to upgrade!" message for the one I was just reading. It's also kind of sad that the iPad version doesn't have even basic handwriting input with OCR and text search, ala OneNote for tablet PCs from ~2002.
jwr 14y ago
I tried to use Evernote, many times. I tried hard. But I just can't — there are seemingly minor problems with the Mac app and the iOS app that just make it unpleasant and annoying to use it on a daily basis. I now keep my PDFs in Yep, other notes in Yojimbo, and suffer those apps' limitations — I still prefer them over Evernote. Also, my trust in the company did not improve after I saw what they did to Skitch. A great app was basically ruined. So, until they hire a decent usability & UI design expert and start seriously improving the usability of their apps — I'll wait.
- veidr 14y ago
  I understand. I also prefer the UI of Yep or Yojimbo (or any of a bunch of other programs). However, the cloud-tastic fact that all my notes are available everywhere outweighs the interface problems for me. (Even though I desperately would like a better UI.) The thing about apps with UI problems like this is that users can overlook the flaws at first, if the app is really useful. But with time, if the program is something you use every day, one comes to develop a deep-seated dislike, almost a hatred. Or at least I do. Therefore, I am inclined to try out every single would-be Evernote competitor, where if their software didn't have such sharp, sucky edges, I would not have time to do that. This is why I think making shoddy software can be really harmful to a company in the long term, even if it is presently popular and successful. If something else came along with the key features of Evernote wrapped in a less sucky package, I would jump ship instantly. However, for me those key features are a.) one-step scanning paper to the cloud, b.) one-step print anything as PDF to the cloud, c.) API to get data out so I'm not locked in, d.) reasonably fast and robust search across hundreds of thousands of documents, and e.) Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web apps to interface. So far at least, there's nothing else.
- VLM 14y ago
  "there are seemingly minor problems with the Mac app " Depressingly my solution was to uninstall the mac app and use the web interface. As a workflow its very much like my Palm3 from 1997, heavy editing and importing on the desktop and magically all my data is accessible from my little android phone when necessary. Its part of the eternal wheel of IT, there's nothing new under the sun in IT. If you loved your Palm PDA in the late 90s (I did) then Evernote is basically the modernized version.

by veidr 14y ago

larsberg 14y ago

The two biggest bugs/issues I've had with Evernote are: 1) The sync/merge sucks. Despite having a common baseline, if there's any sort of conflict (usually due to one of my machines "forgetting" to sync every 5 minutes), you just get two copies of head and have to do a baseless merge by hand. 2) If you're not subscribed to premium, the mobile app seems to actively remove notes that you had already downloaded if you're offline for a while. I got quite the surprise when I had planned out lots of day trips in Japan, switched between two notes to check on tomorrow's itinerary, and then got a, "you need to upgrade!" message for the one I was just reading. It's also kind of sad that the iPad version doesn't have even basic handwriting input with OCR and text search, ala OneNote for tablet PCs from ~2002.

jwr 14y ago

I tried to use Evernote, many times. I tried hard. But I just can't — there are seemingly minor problems with the Mac app and the iOS app that just make it unpleasant and annoying to use it on a daily basis. I now keep my PDFs in Yep, other notes in Yojimbo, and suffer those apps' limitations — I still prefer them over Evernote. Also, my trust in the company did not improve after I saw what they did to Skitch. A great app was basically ruined. So, until they hire a decent usability & UI design expert and start seriously improving the usability of their apps — I'll wait.

veidr 14y ago
I understand. I also prefer the UI of Yep or Yojimbo (or any of a bunch of other programs). However, the cloud-tastic fact that all my notes are available everywhere outweighs the interface problems for me. (Even though I desperately would like a better UI.) The thing about apps with UI problems like this is that users can overlook the flaws at first, if the app is really useful. But with time, if the program is something you use every day, one comes to develop a deep-seated dislike, almost a hatred. Or at least I do. Therefore, I am inclined to try out every single would-be Evernote competitor, where if their software didn't have such sharp, sucky edges, I would not have time to do that. This is why I think making shoddy software can be really harmful to a company in the long term, even if it is presently popular and successful. If something else came along with the key features of Evernote wrapped in a less sucky package, I would jump ship instantly. However, for me those key features are a.) one-step scanning paper to the cloud, b.) one-step print anything as PDF to the cloud, c.) API to get data out so I'm not locked in, d.) reasonably fast and robust search across hundreds of thousands of documents, and e.) Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web apps to interface. So far at least, there's nothing else.
VLM 14y ago
"there are seemingly minor problems with the Mac app " Depressingly my solution was to uninstall the mac app and use the web interface. As a workflow its very much like my Palm3 from 1997, heavy editing and importing on the desktop and magically all my data is accessible from my little android phone when necessary. Its part of the eternal wheel of IT, there's nothing new under the sun in IT. If you loved your Palm PDA in the late 90s (I did) then Evernote is basically the modernized version.