Does Evernote for Windows have a release life-cycle? When?

[Pavel Sapehin 35]

Hi,

Evernote for Windows 6.21 GA was released almost 2 months ago (September 25, 2019). And I became a bit paranoid and clicking on "Check for Updates" button more often 

Does Evernote for Windows have a release life-cycle? Most agile teams using 2 weeks iterations (arguably). One month seems acceptable too. But is it longer than 2 months? Seriously?

[gazumped 11,652]

41 minutes ago, Pavel Sapehin said:

Hi,

Evernote for Windows 6.21 GA was released almost 2 months ago (September 25, 2019). And I became a bit paranoid and clicking on "Check for Updates" button more often 

Does Evernote for Windows have a release life-cycle? Most agile teams using 2 weeks iterations (arguably). One month seems acceptable too. But is it longer than 2 months? Seriously?

Hi.  I use Tools > Options > General to set Evernote to notify me automatically when updates are available.  I never timed the interval between new versions - I get Betas which tend to be fairly frequent - of the order of once per month - and I'm currently on a 6.22 prerelease. 

If you follow the blog posts you'll know that Evernote has been having a major consolidation phase for the past year - making what they have work better - so possibly there's no great need for urgency to rush out 'fixes' for things or launch new features until the underlying structure is solid.

If 6.21 is working for you,  I'd recommend sitting back and enjoying it while 6.22 is in the pipeline.  The update seems to fix a few issues with links and shared notes,  but there's nothing major to see here (that I'm aware of....) ☺️

 

[Pavel Sapehin 35]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  I use Tools > Options > General to set Evernote to notify me automatically when updates are available.  I never timed the interval between new versions - I get Betas which tend to be fairly frequent - of the order of once per month - and I'm currently on a 6.22 prerelease. 

If you follow the blog posts you'll know that Evernote has been having a major consolidation phase for the past year - making what they have work better - so possibly there's no great need for urgency to rush out 'fixes' for things or launch new features until the underlying structure is solid.

If 6.21 is working for you,  I'd recommend sitting back and enjoying it while 6.22 is in the pipeline.  The update seems to fix a few issues with links and shared notes,  but there's nothing major to see here (that I'm aware of....) ☺️

 

The option "Automatically check for updates" was always turned on for me. Often, I didn't receive the notification but after clicking the "Check for updates" button an update was detected. Most likely, an automatic update has a delay or unstable on some network connections.

The consolidation phase may be a good reason. Though, it would be nice to know that for sure. Maybe a bit more transparency would be great. Especially due to such long release phases. Beta releases may not be a good option for everyone due to risks. That is why it's called "beta", huh?

And thanks for sharing some update fixes! Links and shared notes are pretty important features, I believe the team made a good choice.

[CalS 5,280]

Public releases as I have installed them this year.

[jefito 5,589]

7 hours ago, Pavel Sapehin said:

Does Evernote for Windows have a release life-cycle? Most agile teams using 2 weeks iterations (arguably). One month seems acceptable too. But is it longer than 2 months? Seriously?

There are any number of variants on agile methodologies, but there's no set rules on when releases go out to the public (and is Evernote using an agile methodology at all? You tell me.).  Many companies release to the public for various reasons (a critical bug was fixed, an important new feature was added, etc., a set yearly/quarterly/etc.  milestone). My company does two major releases a year, but we make available the previous version with bugfixes (but generally with no new features) as a convenience to our customers with the caveat that it's at their own risk. We do official betas, as well. Other companies certainly vary.

Seriously.

[Pavel Sapehin 35]

12 hours ago, jefito said:

There are any number of variants on agile methodologies, but there's no set rules on when releases go out to the public (and is Evernote using an agile methodology at all? You tell me.)

Those kinds of questions should be addressed to Evernote staff.

What I'd like to raise here is an awareness of this "issue" and understand it better. Whether it's an agile or a waterfall with milestones. What matters is an outcome. Evernote is a subscription-based service and it is a pretty expensive one in the long term. For one person it costs around 750$ per 10 years on a premium tier. For 1 million premium users it costs around 750 000 000$ per 10 years. If someone doesn't like the numbers he can use free tier or doesn't use Evernote at all. And, sure, developers aren't cheap today. But aren't the users who pay for it is the most important part here? Aren't they the reason why this even possible? Many people rely on this product and appreciate it (including me). And with this appreciation comes responsibility - you care about it. But you can't care about something that is not certain or doesn't provide the feedback because it's too risky. Longer releases or the lack of transparency make me feel like I'm losing "control" of my small "investments". It doesn't say that long releases don't make sense. The Evernote team made this great product. They managed to do something from nothing. But it doesn't mean it can't be better.

[jefito 5,589]

8 hours ago, Pavel Sapehin said:

What I'd like to raise here is an awareness of this "issue" and understand it better. Whether it's an agile or a waterfall with milestones. What matters is an outcome.

<snipped for brevity>

 Generally they've not released much information about upcoming bugfixes or schedules/timelines at all, and certainly in no organized fashion. Sometimes someone from the staff will pop in and explain rationales for certain features, which is always welcome (and usually interesting/informative/enjoyable), but again, not really in any organized way. That's more or less how they've been doing it for as long as I've used Evernote and inhabited this forum (10+ years). Sure it could be better, but it's not bad enough that I worry about it all that much. My needs in Evernote are relatively simple and reasonably well satisfied by the current version. That being the case, though, of course there's risk in committing yourself to a software application, or really, to anything in life. In the case of Evernote, there are precautions a user can take to manage risk around preserving the content they've collected/generated. Smart users do that, because there are practically no guarantees in the world of personal software, even in the face of clear, organized communications from the vendor. 

On 11/26/2019 at 8:01 AM, Pavel Sapehin said:

The consolidation phase may be a good reason. Though, it would be nice to know that for sure. Maybe a bit more transparency would be great. Especially due to such long release phases. Beta releases may not be a good option for everyone due to risks. That is why it's called "beta", huh?

They've communicated about this a fair amount already; a lot of the thrust there is to be able to offer better compatibility of functionality and user experience across the different devices/platforms that they support.Some sources:

• The "Behind the Scenes" video series: https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/306-behind-the-scenes-series/
• Posts by @Ian Small
• Evernote News blog posts by Iam Small

[CalS 5,280]

12 hours ago, Pavel Sapehin said:

What I'd like to raise here is an awareness of this "issue" and understand it better. Whether it's an agile or a waterfall with milestones. What matters is an outcome.

I guess based upon the last few years i would focus on an outcome of content as opposed to timing.  Frequent releases with nothing of value in them doesn't do much for me. 

EN is kind of like the Office product set for me at this point.  There are some things I would like to see incorporated into the product but I can use it just fine as is.  In EN's case I'm more concerned there may be changes that negatively impact how I use the Windows desktop.  Based upon what I see in the Preview version.  Could be just my use case, but that concerns me more than the frequency of the updates.

[PinkElephant 8,066]

Much is said already ...

EN as a multi-platform service is driver and driven at the same time. If I take MacOS and iOS as one, then there is the Apple ecosystem, Windows and Android, each on their own release timetable. Plus there is maybe one day Linux, and not to forget in the background the EN-own backend running the server-based services.

Thus I think that currently EN is more driven, because the solutions and code base are special for each platform, and have to follow the release pattern of the platform. There is probably not much autonomy in when to release an new version of an EN client - most time you have to be ready when a new OS version is rolled out, and that is it. For proof, see the issue about the early release of Safari 13, which killed WebClipper for MacOS for 4 weeks.

Often it will not be possible to roll out a feature at the same time for all clients, because it will interfere with the release schedule of the OS. As an example see the issue of dark mode - here EN depends on the OS to get it done.

If EN succeeds in creating a unified client that runs on all platforms, they maybe can get back to create their own release schedule. It would be nice to have better orientation, but I think for the time being the videos and postings from the CEO must do.

[dcon 166]

On 11/26/2019 at 2:40 AM, Pavel Sapehin said:

Does Evernote for Windows have a release life-cycle?

When I was there (left last June), we had 2 week sprints and aimed at a 6 week release cadence (sometimes longer). At the time I left, E4W was being prioritized lower so work could progress on the new (multiplatform) version - I haven't been following that, but I believe it's in Beta.