Beta wasn't so bad; why is the final version worse? And what is this Electron thing?

[LateToTheGame 31]

I was a late adopter of the iOS Beta, and never fully tested it. Rather, I just used it for my work flow and although it bit buggy, it seemed fine overall. I liked the nested tag structure, as well as tag search that suggested other tags (on notes that have multiple tags). Why -- when the final version was released -- do we see so many new problems? Did they add a bunch of new features in the final version?

And what is this electron technology that some on the forums state is the underlying problem? A way to integrate multiple platforms that slows performance and creates coding challenges?? Is this really unproven and highly complex technology that the bank has been bet on? Can we expect all this to get sorted out in short order?

[WilliamL 654]

Personally I think the electron argument is a little unfair. This isn’t some terrible software that shall cripple Evernote, its the same software platform that the much exalted notion uses, Facebook messenger, Microsoft teams and many many more use. Are there issues with the current iOS app, absolutely, but these I think are for Evernote to fix - and quickly hopefully, they need to show true agility here and urgent transparency because they need to get on top of the concern being expressed. 
 

im not concerned by electron though, as long as we get an app that works, others are clearly implementing it well. 

[Chris_W 67]

You'll find differing opinions on Electron (Electron is Cancer, Is Electron good or bad for the app industry?, What Is Electron and Why Is It So Polarizing?). 

Basically these apps are websites wrapped in a Chrome based browser window. They are easier for developers to create than native apps and they look very similar on all platforms. Evernote states that this will make it easier to roll out new features and speed up development.

The downside is that the user experience is worse than native apps. They are very heavy on resources and slow. They don't really fit into the operating system, they look off and behave unexpectedly. 

If you always have the latest and fastest hardware, they can feel acceptable, but on older devices their shortcomings will become much more apparent. In my case, I have a 2019 top of the line iMac and found that the performance of the Evernote Preview was unacceptable. High CPU usage for basic things like changing notes. The fans were noticeable most of the time when Evernote was open, even in the background without doing anything.

One recent example of how bad things can go using Electron is the backup software Arq. They released a major rewrite based on it in April (version 6) and the problems people were having were so bad, Arq suspended their official Twitter account and subreddit because of the negative backlash. Fast forward to this month, they just announced their next major version (7), just 5 months after the last, going back to a native UI, because it's "got better keyboard navigation, it’s more intuitive, has a smaller disk footprint, and supports drag-and-drop to easily restore files to your desktop or a Finder window. It just feels better."

To me, it's a bit ironic that Evernote released its iOS version update shortly after iOS 14 dropped because it made the missing platform specific features so much more apparent. Watch app? Gone. Widget? Gone. Siri Shortcuts? Gone. Keyboard shortcuts? What's that?

Other developers are racing to make widgets and integrate their apps more into the platform, while Evernote does the opposite. 

[LateToTheGame 31]

I appreciate your description of Electron. It's quite disappointing to hear that Evernote may be heading in the wrong direction. It's such a great tool.

Examples from other industries of technology going in the wrong direction come to mind: The Da Vinci surgical robot and Boeing's 737Max. 

Can Evernote turn back the clock? It's core feature is lightening fast search. It would be intolerable if search and navigation were slow. I'm heavily invested in a tag structure. It's already painfully slow to organize tags in the native (non-Electron) Mac version of Evernote (on a 2019 16" MBP with 2.4 GHz 8-core i9). 

[Chris_W 67]

18 hours ago, wbutchart said:

Personally I think the electron argument is a little unfair. This isn’t some terrible software that shall cripple Evernote, its the same software platform that the much exalted notion uses, Facebook messenger, Microsoft teams and many many more use. Are there issues with the current iOS app, absolutely, but these I think are for Evernote to fix - and quickly hopefully, they need to show true agility here and urgent transparency because they need to get on top of the concern being expressed. 
 

im not concerned by electron though, as long as we get an app that works, others are clearly implementing it well. 

Leaving aside the security issues Electron has and the opinion among security researchers that it shouldn't exist, I think it's fair to say that crippling is relative here.

Compared to native frameworks Electron will always do worse in performance. At some point, this might not matter. Like you mentioned, Notion isn't exactly bad on iOS. So I agree that it might just work out in the end and become usable. 

My concern here is that if not implemented well, the foundation itself becomes the problem that no shiny new editor or anything else can fix.

What we are seeing right now is a lack of previously existing features, bad system integration (Siri shortcuts, etc., gone), compounded by performance issues. So far, we only get the downsides of Electron. In a way the faster development across platforms might get canceled out by more work on performance problems and re-integration of features that native frameworks already provide (services, keyboard shortcuts on Mac, Apple Script support, …).

My biggest issue is that this was an acceptable version for them to publicly release, this needs months of more work and that's why I'm a bit pessimistic about the future of the product.

Here is a video that illustrates the choppy and sluggish user experience of the new Evernote compared to the Notes app. The lack of fluidity and the constant delay make simple things like swiping a pain to use.

 

 

  

  

[Alvin C 121]

It's definitely human problem, rather than the infrastructure.

• They give up communicating with users other than YouTube, like what sort of features will be temporarily disabled, and what will be totally abandoned. After rolling out the public version, they just let the support team to resolve users' issues, which are expected to (and should be the most effective when it is) be handled by the management. They choose to speak something good of Evernote like better features and ignore problems and even crises at this moment.
• They insist on releasing buggy, unusable v10.0 to the public. They could make sure the new version is usable at an acceptable level.
  • But I have said before that, they can also launch a new app called Evernote, and make the existing one as "Evernote legacy", with a comparison table letting users know the difference between two, including what features are missing in this period. Let users try new things voluntarily and let them report and request, while other users and enterprises will not be affected by using the legacy. The legacy will still be updated only for fix and compatibility. When all features are back to the new version, they can delete the legacy.

I'm not a developer, but believe some ways of doing do also matter.

[WilliamL 654]

9 hours ago, Chris_W said:

Leaving aside the security issues Electron has and the opinion among security researchers that it shouldn't exist, I think it's fair to say that crippling is relative here.

Compared to native frameworks Electron will always do worse in performance. At some point, this might not matter. Like you mentioned, Notion isn't exactly bad on iOS. So I agree that it might just work out in the end and become usable. 

My concern here is that if not implemented well, the foundation itself becomes the problem that no shiny new editor or anything else can fix.

What we are seeing right now is a lack of previously existing features, bad system integration (Siri shortcuts, etc., gone), compounded by performance issues. So far, we only get the downsides of Electron. In a way the faster development across platforms might get canceled out by more work on performance problems and re-integration of features that native frameworks already provide (services, keyboard shortcuts on Mac, Apple Script support, …).

My biggest issue is that this was an acceptable version for them to publicly release, this needs months of more work and that's why I'm a bit pessimistic about the future of the product.

Here is a video that illustrates the choppy and sluggish user experience of the new Evernote compared to the Notes app. The lack of fluidity and the constant delay make simple things like swiping a pain to use.

 

 

  

  

I Can't disagree regarding the ios version.  I was surprised it went from beta to public and hoped it would be stable, its clear from here this isnt the case, I too am very concerned about this.  I think what is more concerning is the complete absence of communication since, no leadership is evident to the community who pay and therefore keep this company afloat.  We get silence which for me is the most concerning thing.  We could cut some slack if they owned the mistake and explained a roadmap but we get silence, in what, the hope this goes away? I dont know but like yourself I am not feeling optimistic and looking for alternatives to Evernote, issue is finding one which has similar features, multi platform, tags etc.  My subscription still has 6 months to go but at this moment it wont be renewed.   

[Alvin C 121]

2 小時前, wbutchart說:

I Can't disagree regarding the ios version.  I was surprised it went from beta to public and hoped it would be stable, its clear from here this isnt the case, I too am very concerned about this.  I think what is more concerning is the complete absence of communication since, no leadership is evident to the community who pay and therefore keep this company afloat.  We get silence which for me is the most concerning thing.  We could cut some slack if they owned the mistake and explained a roadmap but we get silence, in what, the hope this goes away? I dont know but like yourself I am not feeling optimistic and looking for alternatives to Evernote, issue is finding one which has similar features, multi platform, tags etc.  My subscription still has 6 months to go but at this moment it wont be renewed.   

What made me feel confident and even proud of Evernote is that the CEO Ian Small told us that they were paying a great effort to solve almost all of the problems occurred long long ago in the company. They have a series of videos to explain that and I was willing to wait patiently. But the brutal fact is that, that CEO just does something for marketing. He speaks something good and tries to hide something that users may need to prepare for. Most worrying is that he tends to ignore problems when there are voices here, Reddit and Twitter... This kind of company and leadership is the worst as he only gives you the good impression but it turns out that they are in opposite directions as you think.

Maybe I think like a victim. I should think he just showed us what they were doing through videos only. Not a detailed note showing the roadmap and how we have to prepare for (some missing features temporarily). I should notice that first sign, and prepare myself to leave earlier. (I just renewed a month ago)

They like to remove features by not informing users first: this had happened in v8.0 and I remember that they didn't put back some of the features to the app they had promised. Considering the worse communication, should I believe they will bring back features like Apple Watch? Better not to trust them. Trust yourself you can find better alternatives for better self.

 

[WilliamL 654]

6 minutes ago, ks. said:

If you do not know, here you can find a lot of good alternatives for Evernote. While Evernote goes downhill last ten years, many other counterparts built exciting applications.

STOP spamming this forum! You have posted the exact same message in 5 threads now.  This space is for people to discuss ideas, bugs and currently frustrations, please dont abuse it like this.

[WilliamL 654]

27 minutes ago, ks. said:

I offered a solution. If you do not like it, you may not use it.

No you spammed the entire forum, ruining threads and conversations on some ego trip to promote your own reddit. 

[WilliamL 654]

24 minutes ago, ks. said:

Firstly, it is not my Reddit; I just found it.

Secondly, all the messages like "let's wait and see improvements" I can call spam. Evernote has not implemented any useful features for ten years. They are slow and deaf towards users' expectations. Why should we wait?

I was astonished by the simplicity of the procedure after trying to export my notes into another app. I want to share it with others. It is a solution.

Not everyone subscribed to all threads like you. I answered only in relevant topics. Sorry for the inconvenience you experienced. As I said, it was a one-time action, and I never do that again.

All in all, I hope my information can help someone.

You need to work out what spam means, spam isnt people sharing their options, it is most definitely posting the same message over and over and over and over and over again all over the forums.