I've never been able to get into Evernote. I think my problem with their approach to design is that they try to solve all of these random different use cases with random different features. And when you do that, you end up with a really fragmented app and features that never get touched by 99% of users. (Those Firefox heatmaps come to mind.)

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.