What’s New in Evernote 5
evernote.com
evernote.com
On the opposite end of the spectrum is something like Trello or Workflowy. They decided on several core abstractions: cards for Trello and nodes for Workflowy. Then, as the user, you figure out how to bend those core components to fit your needs. And the product itself remains incredibly basic.
I realize there's also a danger in abstracting things away too far, but it just seems like the other direction degrades into feature chaos way too quickly.
(sorry if this sounds like an advertisement but it's great to actually have a to-do list manager that I actually like)
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.
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.
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.
Evernote's persistent mediocrity might just be a significant factor in the coming tablet wars. Microsoft has Onenote which is excellent.
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.
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.
If I had to do it over again, I could do it in google drive or dropbox but evernote always seems to have that one killer feature (out of the 100s of useless ones) that I just can't live without. Evernote 0.00001 would be a no brainer I'd drop it like a hot potato, but each user has a different killer feature they'd can't do without...
I also make one EN notebook per major project and upload "everything" into it as a centralized location. GTD events in the form of a note flow back and forth from my projects to the GTD system as required.
It seems like it has lots of features and call do all this stuff, but no real direction. What is it?
I think they could benifit by having some use cases, hot to use evernote for receipts, evernote for ideas, evernote for shopping lists, that sort of thing.
All of that and other stuff :) I use most of the features, the only thing I wish it did have is a Delicious style tag cloud to make navigating those tags quicker, and a native Linux client.
I take notes. Those notes sync to my work and home PC's my phone, my iPad and are available in a web app.
Those note can contain images and rich formatting such as tables.
I also keep my todo list in it, as notes can contain check boxes.
I keep my notes in hierarchical "Notebooks" (folders).
Finally I can search through all my notes.
All of the above make it a really excellent note app, not quite as good as OneNote but the syncing in Evernote is vastly better then OneNote's.
I know that other people scan documents into it, and that Evernote will OCR hand writing and make it searchable but that isn't my use case. You can also send emails, PDFs etc to it but once more I don't use this.
I tried it for typing notes, but its strength is copy and paste, not formatted text entry, so I keep Notational Velocity for actual notes.
Evernote really needs to focus on app stability. For example, the current IOS app crashes constantly and has a glitchy interface. Over the years, feature growth has been very messy from a UX perspective so it is good to see they are working on a fresh approach.
I have been using Evernote since before it was a cloud app and I always loved the cross platform support with the same data file. Once it became a cloud platform, the broad platform support of mobile devices is truly fantastic: BlackBerry at work, personal iPhone and iPad, Linux desktop (Web app / email address to add notes), Windows 7 & 8 on VMware, and it works great on my Nexus 7.
Evernote is a key part of my workflow and daily life and I found my investment in time figuring it out has paid off immensely.
I always wondered why they never seem to highlight their best feature, which is the ability to search text in images or scanned documents. That has been a huge timesaver in the past. One day I'll put all my important documents in there.
Evernote have done an amazing job of creating the core experience for creating, retrieving and synchronizing notes across devices. I don't know what lessons their product team has learned along the way, but I wonder why they are drifting away from their core strength.
I really hoped that Mozilla would diversify and offer something in this regard. No such luck though.
Personally, I can't seem to get into Evernote in a serious way. Springpad, probably.
Something I like with Evernote is that it is quick to edit a note while on Springpad it seems painful to do, especially if you want to follow your progress on a note/task using comments. I don't like the social comments as it does not seem to be effective, I would like to edit the note itself.
Any idea?