Hate the new Evernote

eric99 · December 26, 2020

19 minutes ago, NorcalScott said:

This whole episode with Evernote 10 has made me realize that it is really important for me to break away from a proprietary system in which 10 years of my work could possibly be at the mercy of decisions made that do not necessarily consider my best interests at heart.

What makes you so sure that your work is not at the mercy of decisions by the Joplin team? Does the Joplin team has sufficient human and financial resources to survive?

NorcalScott · December 26, 2020

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

For me, it is really important to be able to exit from a proprietary system
Evernote's export feature provides the assurance that my data is not locked in

In the meantime, I'm able to make use of the Evernote features; organization, search, ...

Note, I'm using Evernote's Legacy product
I won't consider using the Version 10 product until the ongoing work is completed

I agree that to date Evernote has made it somewhat easy to export files that can be imported into other solutions. However, these exports in the ENEX format are still proprietary and require quite a bit of manipulation in order to handle in another application, which is one reason for some of my problems. Joplin can export in mark-down text which is much easier to manipulate on import into a different product.

One thing all Evernote subscribers should be aware of - Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know. (I suppose they could change all this, but the indications so far are troubling) As long as you can use the Legacy product, you can get at all your files. However, once this goes away, you may not have that luxury, and it will go away, we just don't know when.

NorcalScott · December 26, 2020

56 minutes ago, eric99 said:

What makes you so sure that your work is not at the mercy of decisions by the Joplin team? Does the Joplin team has sufficient human and financial resources to survive?

Joplin is led by the creator of the project, and there are around 30-40 other developers who work on it in their spare time. There are no guarantees, of course, but the work there is motivated by a desire to move the solution ahead, not by the profit and loss of venture capitalist funds. Many folks also contribute money to Joplin to help cover costs.

In any event, as it is open source and the data files are easily exported as mark down text, I don't see much risk, but your opinion of that risk may be different than mine.

DTLow · December 26, 2020

31 minutes ago, NorcalScott said:

However, these exports in the ENEX format are still proprietary

I use the HTML export option - it's not proprietary

>>Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know

Our expectation is the 50 note limit will be removed as the project development proceeds
Note: There is no limit when exporting entire notebooks

fwiw Export is a local function, not cloud
The export is from the local database

eric99 · December 26, 2020

5 minutes ago, NorcalScott said:

Joplin can export in mark-down text which is much easier to manipulate on import into a different product.

One thing all Evernote subscribers should be aware of - Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know.

The ENEX format is a very strict XML format, actually a XHTML subset with only a few extra EN tags. It is formally well described in a XML scheme http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export3.dtd which can be used to validate the notes against. There is plenty of software available to parse XML, which makes the import into other note taking apps much easier.

At the other hand, mark down format looks great, but I have the impression that it is not standardized very well. There are several incompatible flavors of it. Maybe, this has been solved in the mean time?

Markdown is also very limited, see the comments from the Joplin author: https://joplinapp.org/rich_text_editor/

Evernote export of complete notebooks is already possible in V10, so this 50 files limit is no issue for a full database export. What is still missing is the HTML export but EN promised that other options will come.

..."

NorcalScott · December 26, 2020

28 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I use the HTML export option - it's not proprietary

>>Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know

Our expectation is the 50 note limit will be removed as the project development proceeds
Note: There is no limit when exporting entire notebooks

fwiw Export is a local function, not cloud
The export is from the local database

I've not had much success doing anything with the HTML export - most of the other products do not interpret it correctly and you end up with a lot of orphan files if you try to import it. However, as a strict backup it does make a lot of sense, and I'll give credit to Evernote for providing this.

Regarding the export - I understand that "today" the export is from the local database, but my understanding is that the new platform will do the export from the cloud. I may be wrong, as there has been very little information provided as to the future plans (that I've seen). If that is the case, then the 50 limit (or maybe a moderately higher number) makes sense as exported GBs worth of data from the cloud will be cumbersome.

Not to be a Joplin fanboy, because it does have its quirks - but it allows for a "RAW" export in which data is saved to a directory and each item represented by a single file. This is very handy for future proofing.

NorcalScott · December 26, 2020

34 minutes ago, eric99 said:

The ENEX format is a very strict XML format, actually a XHTML subset with only a few extra EN tags. It is formally well described in a XML scheme http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export3.dtd which can be used to validate the notes against. There is plenty of software available to parse XML, which makes the import into other note taking apps much easier.

At the other hand, mark down format looks great, but I have the impression that it is not standardized very well. There are several incompatible flavors of it. Maybe, this has been solved in the mean time?

Markdown is also very limited, see the comments from the Joplin author: https://joplinapp.org/rich_text_editor/

Evernote export of complete notebooks is already possible in V10, so this 50 files limit is no issue for a full database export. What is still missing is the HTML export but EN promised that other options will come.

..."

You are right that mark down is somewhat limited but there are some very good open source command line tools that can do quite a bit with it for getting data into and out of other systems.

Good to know that the 50 file limit is no longer an issue. That alone would be a show stopper for me.

It may be good if Evernote would just provide a full accounting of what they are planning, and when the legacy products will be deprecated. If their intentions are in the user's best long-term interests, they have certainly caused themselves a lot of harm with the lack of communications.

LucaBen · December 27, 2020

I don't hate the new Evernote and overall I find lots of improvements, even though a few things really annoy me (see below). I am luckily not among those who had their workflows broken, e.g. I hardly use tags, but I do understand the frustration of the many power users who feel like they've been abandoned. The latest post from the CEO sounds promising, and while they've made some mistakes, it doesn't seem to me that they are ignoring their customers; I have some hope that a lot of what is infuriating people is going to be addressed soon. I personally find the new Mac version better overall, it's much cleaner and search is finally prioritising matches with notes titles. In-note search is also much better, as it supports a queries made of multiple words.

That said, there's still a couple of things that I see as red flags, and others that I find frustrating:

- I welcome the idea of having just four styles (normal text, 3 headers) apply to all my notes and making them look cleaner. The problem is that all the existing content has now been tagged as "normal style", and modified accordingly. My notes are not looking more consistent, but they are harder to read compared to my previous base style (Helvetica 16, which was still a bit too small on my iMac). While others find this new font size too big, I would actually like to convert the base style to 20 dp, sans serif. The problem is that nowhere can the user choose what the font size (and typeface) for this default styles should be. In order to modify normal text to 20 dp, the only option I have is to select the "Update 'normal text' to match" command, but if I do that, all content gets updated accordingly, and any bold/italic text is going to loose its formatting (luckily, cmd + Z also applies, but I had a backup, just in case!). An alternative option is to select all text and increase the font size, but guess what, all the line breaks would maintain the standard 16 dp size, which means, every time I add new content somewhere in the note, it would be a 16 dp font.

- Export: this is another deal breaker. I don't want Evernote to become a walled garden. Even though I found reassuring to hear the comment from eric99 about the enex format being relatively easy to handle, I find it preposterous that in the new version, I cannot export to HTML. The new release page promises more export options, so hopefully HTML is going to be back, together with the possibility to add more than 50 notes. I would also appreciate being able to export to an open format: as long as Evernote will continue to be a great piece of software and allow me to export easily and in multiple format migrating is not something that I would consider. On the contrary, what is making me think of alternatives right now, is having all my existing content stuck into a proprietary format.

- Tabs have been removed. While the way they used to work made them almost useless, I see how I could benefit from having multiple notes open at the same time, e.g. if I want to copy/paste content from one note to the other. The best way to implement this, in my opinion, would be to add a contextual option to "Open in a new tab" next to "Open in new window". The new tab would have the name of the note, and be fully independent and separated from the search results it comes from (if any).

- Anchors within notes: this is a feature that I wish will be available one day. I don't want to have a million notes so I rather have a few of them (still more than 300 actually!), but many of them have separate sections, with dividers and headers to easily recognise them. I would like to create anchors so I can easily jump to a specific section within the note. I'd be fine with a dropdown, even if that would mean two clicks, still easier than scrolling down and having to recognise where the desired section is. A side panel would actually be ideal, and not big deal on a large monitor (just make it optional).

- I want to be able to press the Esc key and see highlighted text matching the search query disappear. Really annoying that I cannot do that the same way that I can do it in a browser.

- Two clicks to open links: as someone else has noted, this is quite frustrating, and I would like an option to disable that. Luckily it's possible to cmd + click and open in just one step, but not sure if I will always remember.

tavor · December 27, 2020

1 hour ago, LucaBen said:

- Anchors within notes: this is a feature that I wish will be available one day. I don't want to have a million notes so I rather have a few of them (still more than 300 actually!), but many of them have separate sections, with dividers and headers to easily recognise them. I would like to create anchors so I can easily jump to a specific section within the note. I'd be fine with a dropdown, even if that would mean two clicks. Still easier than scrolling down and having to recognise where the desired section is.

Anchors, outline mode, internal note links. This category of features has been highly requested for many years. Amazing that at the end of 2020, EN still does not have it.

It's one of the key reasons I'm experimenting with Joplin (along with no local notebooks and no zero knowledge encryption). The built-in editor has a TOC function that checks for markdown headers in the note and builds a TOC at the top of the note, which gets updated as headers are added or deleted. A convenient way to navigate long notes. Another option is using an external editor like Typora, which has outline view - there's a left pane that shows all your headers in an outline format, very much like the TOC in Joplin's native editor, except the outline view, when enabled, is always onscreen. So you can click around to your different headers, while in the native editor, you have to get back to the top of the screen (CTRL+Home or CMD+Home) to access TOC.

dailiness · December 27, 2020

I use tags a LOT. I use the web clipper often. I cannot stand to have the small web clipper green elephant head constantly showing in Safari. I'm fine with it in the menu at the top. Right click to bring up save options has been good. I don't want my apps to work or look like Windows apps. I'd work in Windows if that's what I wanted. What drove me to look up the Evernote forums where I see many complaints is the elephant head web clipper right on my screen ALL THE TIME. There is no need for it to take up the visual space. It takes mental processing to ignore something and that should not be necessary and to force on all osx users. It could be terrible for someone with visual disabilities. Allow for an off switch. It won't even let me kill it in activity monitor. This is how spam works.

Wanderling Reborn · December 27, 2020

1 hour ago, tavor said:

Anchors, outline mode, internal note links. This category of features has been highly requested for many years. Amazing that at the end of 2020, EN still does not have it.

It's one of the key reasons I'm experimenting with Joplin (along with no local notebooks and no zero knowledge encryption). The built-in editor has a TOC function that checks for markdown headers in the note and builds a TOC at the top of the note, which gets updated as headers are added or deleted. A convenient way to navigate long notes. Another option is using an external editor like Typora, which has outline view - there's a left pane that shows all your headers in an outline format, very much like the TOC in Joplin's native editor, except the outline view, when enabled, is always onscreen. So you can click around to your different headers, while in the native editor, you have to get back to the top of the screen (CTRL+Home or CMD+Home) to access TOC.

Onenote has that functionality, FWIW.

KirbyC · December 28, 2020

For Windows app:

No more colored notebooks

No more moving multiple notes using drag n drop

NO MORE RENAMING NOTEBOOKS!!??!! There's not even a menu that comes out when when you right click on a notebook!!

NO MORE PREFERENCES! (I just want it to start as my windows start, is that too much to ask?!)

This is just another wake up call not to rely too much on tech.

ha-kg · December 28, 2020

I tried today some exports and was confronted with the limit of 50 Notes to be marked and the export only to enex format.

I am going to install Nimbis.

Hartmut

PinkElephant · December 28, 2020

1 hour ago, ha-kg said:

I tried today some exports and was confronted with the limit of 50 Notes to be marked and the export only to enex format.

You can install whatever you want.

But you should tell the whole story:

The limit of 50 notes only apply when you select them individually
Export of complete notebooks works in v10, independently from the number of notes
If you install legacy, you can still use all export features as before

MrIllustrator · December 28, 2020

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

But you should tell the whole story:

I didn’t know that, you do understand a hidden feature may as well not exist. Someone should tell Evernote.

Paul A. · December 28, 2020

On 12/26/2020 at 6:17 PM, LucaBen said:

My notes are not looking more consistent, but they are harder to read compared to my previous base style (Helvetica 16, which was still a bit too small on my iMac). While others find this new font size too big, I would actually like to convert the base style to 20 dp, sans serif. The problem is that nowhere can the user choose what the font size (and typeface) for this default styles should be.

I agree that this is an issue, one that will hopefully be resolved when the preferences pane is released in 2021.

In the meantime, you may want to try zooming the whole interface to make it more readable. This is accomplished just like in a browser, with Cmd/Ctrl combined with the -/= keys to decrease or magnify, respectively.

MrIllustrator · December 28, 2020

17 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

you may want to try zooming the whole interface to make it more readable. This is accomplished just like in a browser, with Cmd/Ctrl combined with the -/= keys to decrease or magnify, respectively

Oh my goodness, has it really come to this?

Paul A. · December 28, 2020

6 hours ago, MrIllustrator said:

Oh my goodness, has it really come to this?

🤷‍♂️

It works OK for me, although I'm sure it's not ideal for all situations. YMMV.

eric99 · December 28, 2020

17 hours ago, KirbyC said:

For Windows app:

NO MORE RENAMING NOTEBOOKS!!??!! There's not even a menu that comes out when when you right click on a notebook!!

Just click the notebook-list icon and right click the required notebook => rename

Edit: I do understand your confusion, because this doesn't work when you hover over the tags, why is there different behaviour (the same problem for labels)

Edit: why is the speed menu invoked with a right click in case of notebooks and for labels the right click is replaced by '...' ? Is this a consistent GUI ?

Edited December 28, 2020 by eric99

LucaBen · December 29, 2020

6 hours ago, Paul A. said:

In the meantime, you may want to try zooming the whole interface to make it more readable. This is accomplished just like in a browser, with Cmd/Ctrl combined with the -/= keys to decrease or magnify, respectively.

Thanks for the heads-up. I did try it but didn't work, was not aware the equal sign must be used, instead (and wonder why, it's actually not fully consistent with standard browser behaviour).

eric99 · December 30, 2020

On 12/26/2020 at 8:57 PM, NorcalScott said:

- Just the process of importing Evernote files into Joplin is not without difficulty. I tried doing a mass import but found that many notes coming from Evernote needed some handling and manipulating once imported, for example, Joplin's sync system does not handle large (>10MB) files too well. That's fine as I have decided that I do not want to attach anything that large, but it made mass imports unworkable, so I ended up importing Evernote files ~150 at a time, then checking attachments and pruning after each import.

Overall, if you are willing to put in the effort, Joplin is very much a viable alternative, and I expect it is going to continue to get better and better as the development team is motivated and talented.

Last days, I've been testing Joplin import of my full database (3700 notes). At a certain point I got an import problem for a single web clip note, due to an inconsistent Enex file (invalid XML). I reported this problem on the joplin forum and within 10 minutes, the Joplin author asked me some info, and after less than half an hour, he worked around the enex problem and released it, problem solved 🙂 If I would have asked evernote to fix the root cause, the invalid XML in the ENEX generator or web clipper, it would probably take a couple of months...

In the mean time, he's still improving the import of web clipped notes. He's now at the point that these clipped notes looks sometimes better in Joplin than in EN. All this progress in a few days...

Also interesting to know, Joplin is built on electron too, exactly the same platform as EN V10. So there is still hope for EN, performance shouldn't be an issue...

Edited December 30, 2020 by eric99

Nashzel · December 30, 2020

Totally agree. Sell people o something that is supposed to help them and then periodically just scramble th UI so it takes them out of their comfortable place. As with most apps, change for changes sake and not thought out from the perspective of people that are paying the bills. As an Evernote Premium for last 7 years, it has lost what attracted me to it in the first place. I have till April or May before I pay my annual, but right now I'm leaning toward leaving.

NorcalScott · December 30, 2020

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

Last days, I've been testing Joplin import of my full database (3700 notes). At a certain point I got an import problem for a single web clip note, due to an inconsistent Enex file (invalid XML). I reported this problem on the joplin forum and within 10 minutes, the Joplin author asked me some info, and after less than half an hour, he worked around the enex problem and released it, problem solved 🙂

In the mean time, he's still improving the import of web clipped notes. He's now at the point that these clipped notes looks sometimes better in Joplin than in EN. All this progress in a few days...

Also interesting to know, Joplin is built on electron too, exactly the same platform as EN V10. So there is still hope for EN, performance shouldn't be an issue...

Yes, the responsiveness of the Joplin author, Laurent, is great, and he is always cordial no matter how basic the question. I am fully up and running now on Joplin and really liking it. I have about 10,000 notes loaded and syncing through DropBox between my Windows laptop, iPad (Air 2019) and Android phone (LG G7).

The biggest surprise with Joplin is how good the web clipper is. I have tried all the different page capture formats and am finding that "Clip Simplified Page" is almost always perfect. Search also is superb - results on all platforms come up in seconds.

It is strange that both Evernote 10 and Joplin are both written in Electron, considering how better performing Joplin is on the desktop. I think that the database part of it is the difference - hopefully Evernote can make that work better, because for someone with a lot of note, it is a deal breaker.

ripwit · December 30, 2020

I have recently moved my 15,000+ notes and tags to joplin. Currently just stored on my Windows laptop but looking at various sync options to be able to access from Android and Linux devices.

Joplin does store everything locally, contrary to what @tavor said. It is stored in a SQLite DB, at least on my Windows boxes. The nice thing about having it in this open format is that I can examine it, write scripts against it, back it up - all without using proprietary tools like EN's. I use JetBrains DataGrip but SQLiteStudio looks really nice also.

And of course what others have said - Joplin is open-source, has a nice RESTful API, and supports plugins very well.

MarcoP · December 31, 2020

Reading all these posts really make me think that it is time to leave Evernote... sad for a 10 year member but this company is proving it is unable to provide real new value to customers.

eric99 · December 31, 2020

13 hours ago, ripwit said:

I have recently moved my 15,000+ notes and tags to joplin. Currently just stored on my Windows laptop but looking at various sync options to be able to access from Android and Linux devices.

Joplin does store everything locally, contrary to what @tavor said. It is stored in a SQLite DB, at least on my Windows boxes. The nice thing about having it in this open format is that I can examine it, write scripts against it, back it up - all without using proprietary tools like EN's. I use JetBrains DataGrip but SQLiteStudio looks really nice also.

And of course what others have said - Joplin is open-source, has a nice RESTful API, and supports plugins very well.

I like the mark down format more and more since I compared ENEX format with MarkDown format.

Even for the simplest notes, ENEX files are still very verbose and heavy.

It's amazing that complicated web clips notes can still be expressed in simple human readable MarkDown format, without loosing essential info. And for exceptional difficult fragments, MarkDown format allows HTML snippets if needed.

TechPerplexed · December 31, 2020

My three monthly check in - probably the last though Yep, still very, very happy with Joplin after one year.

A few weeks ago my Evernote premium subscription expired. Just before that happened I finally cleaned out all my notes (which were lagging behind now anyway). That also means I just missed the entire v10 "upgrade" and from the looks of it, I didn't miss much!

So long everyone, perhaps we'll meet again some day - here or there

Piotas · December 31, 2020

3 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

That also means I just missed the entire v10 "upgrade" and from the looks of it, I didn't miss much!

v10 "upgrade" that is completely unusable for several non-English users (myself included), due to conflict between hard-coded shortcuts of Alt-Grey mapping with several default keyboard mapping for Polish, Latvian, Turkish, English-International etc.

PS. I still use Evernote Legacy in parallel with Joplin+Dropbox, but continue to clean-up old notes and be ready to move-out.

New notes in Joplin. I had to rethink my approach to tags (because Joplin currently uses FLAT tags due to performance issues) but after 9 years of collecting data in Evernote a refresh in approach is necessary.

TechPerplexed · December 31, 2020

4 minutes ago, Piotas said:

I still use Evernote Legacy in parallel with Joplin+Dropbox

I did that as well for a while, because I wanted to make sure that Joplin was suitable for my needs before abandoning Evernote. Even then it was quite nerve wrecking still to delete all my old Evernote notes at last, I can tell you that!

One of the game changing features of Joplin (to me) was the nested notebooks. Once I started to organize my notes that way, I knew there wouldn't ever be a way back... I tried tags in Evernote but it quickly turned out to be a hot mess in my case. I am a very hierarchical person apparently so the way that works in Joplin suits my needs perfectly. In Evernote I was always trying to juggle how many notebooks to place in how many stacks, and how many notes I could cram into as few notebooks as possible. In Joplin if a notebook gets too crowded or unruly, I can just divide the notes into into a few additional categories within that notebook, problem solved.

I also really appreciate how easy it is to backup the entire Joplin database including the notebook hierarchy and then restore everything seamlessly with almost one single click. I am no longer frightened to lose my Joplin notes, with the weekly backup, local storage on two Windows machines and my Samsung Note 20. I recently upgraded from the Note 8 and it was as simple as installing the app and connecting to Dropbox - a few hours later all my notes were present.

At first I missed a few Evernote features such as the PDF in-note display and the visually attractive note thumbnails, but I found that this in itself wasn't enough to keep me with Evernote in the end.

Piotas · December 31, 2020

9 minutes ago, TechPerplexed said:

I recently upgraded from the Note 8 and it was as simple as installing the app and connecting to Dropbox - a few hours later all my notes were present.

At first I missed a few Evernote features such as the PDF in-note display and the visually attractive note thumbnails, but I found that this in itself wasn't enough to keep me with Evernote in the end.

Moving from Evernote to Joplin required few changes in mindset. Due to OneDrive limitation with large files (related to method of choice of fast sync) I moved to Dropbox, as side effect I did second transition: having large media files in your note taking app is simply unpractical and no longer required, as I can link freely cloud-based large files and folders (I use 5 cloud-based file storages) to my Joplin notes via hyperlinks. Long meeting with audio notes and transcript? No longer have to put it into note taking app - linking a note to audio file on GoogleDrive (for long term archive) via hyperlink is much more convenient. And so on...

Blaisorblade · December 31, 2020

Thanks all! The new Evernote seems unusable here too — but I don't understand the complaints about advanced features, because EN 10 struggles in *creating* and *showing* notes. That is, creating a note (with Cmd-N) and typing in it is not reliable. I'll stick to Evernote Legacy for now.

I understand a bit why they rewrote the app: some longstanding bugs in the old app suggested it had very serious problems hidden behind the facade — those bugs were mostly hidden well, but I've long believed EN wasn't able to deliver working software, and feared it might be near bankruptcy. Rewriting your app can make sense, if you can avoid the mistakes of the first time. And some bugs are unavoidable — software is hard. But this doesn't seem much of an improvement!

ripwit · December 31, 2020

Just to piggyback on this general discussion, especially in view of the apparent deprecation of tags in EN and lack of nested tags in Joplin.

I have worked in the healthcare information world for a while but have many interests overlapping and outside, especially AI/ML. So many articles of interest overlap so many domains that I found a rigid hierarchical structure confining, no matter how nested. Early on I tried capturing notes based on the job/employer I was with. This didn't work as I started to realize that notes from other employers and domains could be useful in all contexts. Duplicating notes or just using references was obviously a kludge.

I started building EN canned searches using boolean expressions to pull up relevant material. For example: "tag:cancer -tag:melanoma" would give me all non-melanoma cancer notes. This is an artificial example but it mirrors what I started using.

Just before moving to Joplin from EN I tagged all notes in a particular notebook with "_notebook name" and then I copies all notes into one large EN folder. This is what I exported/imported into Joplin. 15,000+ notes with tags intact.

I still don't have saved searches (that I know of) nor very good boolean searches, especially on tags.

Still the pace of improvements and the ability of the community to contribute to this effort makes me very hopeful.

QFieldBoden · January 1, 2021

On 10/20/2020 at 7:26 PM, gazumped said:

Hi. You don't mention whether this is Mac, Windows or mobile, but have you tried stepping back to the last public version? v10 is pretty much a skeleton so doesn't display much, but if your data still exists within Evernote (or you have a usable backup) you may find the Legacy versions are the best place to stay for a while...

But you would perhaps agree that we should not really be having to do that? It's a nightmare, how can this be called an update?

Nish12 · January 1, 2021

Used to love evernote. These recent updates have made it super annoying to do the simplest things like renaming a stack. Every day i'm finding myself googling how to fix these annoying bugs/features.

Seriously considering notion or one of the other apps!!

gazumped · January 1, 2021

30 minutes ago, QFieldBoden said:

But you would perhaps agree that we should not really be having to do that? It's a nightmare, how can this be called an update?

In an ideal world every new device and app would work perfectly and us poor users wouldn't have to do anything other than lie back on the beach and browse to our hearts content - but there's actually a long history of new developments being driven by advancing tech vs demanding finance.

Those nice smartphones we use that you can politely ask how to make an omelette - and watch a video demo if you need it - developed out of hefty unattractive blocks of plastic that were 'portable' only in a generous interpretation of the word. And the first genuine pocket phones (remember Matrix?) had LCD screens that were... a little limited in scope and strictly black and slightly less black. (Don't talk to me about WAP - I used to do tech support on that stuff...)

The only way the manufacturers could fund the later development of color screens and 200gm phones was to sell the early cr*p. R&D costs a LOT - and when do you stop? In principle (and if they had unlimited cash) we could all still be driving Model T's now while car makers kept aiming for a 'proper' flying car.

OK - so do I devoutly wish Evernote had sold this launch a whole lot better? Heck yes! If they'd made v10 a voluntary public beta and invited general access, a lot of folks would have moved over and given them the live test data that they desperately need - how well do their new systems bear up under the humungous load of the entire population of a medium-size country using them on a 365/24/7 basis? Normal QA and beta testing just doesn't do volume.

The new version was - like Elon Musk's Starships - a cut-down test model meant to prove it worked. Surprise! It didn't. But in rewriting their entire code base and potentially removing 80% of their coding overhead, plus a lot of development roadblocks it is - like Starship again - definitely an update on present models.

They're doing an Elon and iterating their way through updates that add extra (code) engines to the basic frame, and - I imagine fairly quickly - we should get pretty much the full range of the 'legacy' apps back.

Meantime I'm continuing to operate in my own little bubble without any disruption - because being tech-savvy I know NOT to be first with new tech, and I killed all the automatic update functions on my various devices and apps before they were tempted to do anything silly.

I don't have much sympathy with anyone currently having issues (unless they're on iOS!!) because on most operating systems and devices there's a way either to dump the new app and go back to the old ones, or to run the official Legacy app alongside the new.

But everyone seems to be struggling and demanding that Evernote fix the issues - which is exactly what they're busy doing anyway! If you're not prepared for the hassle - just go back to the old app!! Evernote will fix things - eventually.

They should just have shared their strategy clearly with everyone before they started, and posted something along the lines of this comment publicly so that users don't feel so frustratingly ignored.

Here endeth my rant for 2021. Happy New Year!

Pbpamela · January 1, 2021

I download the legacy version but it wants me to pay as a new user and does not contain my notes. How do I "sign in" to the old legacy so it recognizes me and so it has my notes, and then eliminate the V10 version for now?

Thank you for your help!

DTLow · January 1, 2021

3 minutes ago, Pbpamela said:

new user and does not contain my notes

It seems like you created a new account
Log out, and log back in with your original id/password

CalS · January 1, 2021

What's it been, three months now? And V10 is still a steaming pile relative to most power users. Some progress has been made but only a fraction of what is needed. Unfortunately I have V10 on my iPhone. Randomly I get duplicate notes now after editing one there. That's special.

Sure 6.25.1 is working fine for me, same as @gazumped, but the major question for me remains what is NOT coming back on this iterative catch up journey? And how long does 6.25.1 live? Crickets. Disrespectful on a good day.

The recent video didn't make me feel a whole lot better as the issues were brushed aside (emperor got any clothes?). It's one thing if function is "delayed" another when the stuff that is there doesn't work - sync and search and the like. I know it's complicated reengineering a platform but that's no excuse for creating a sh!#storm in the process. Somebody needs to care somewhere.

If the company wants to change its target market just let us know so we can get on with it. This dangling stuff is a PITA. End of my first rant for 2021.

luvmyc6 · January 1, 2021

39 minutes ago, CalS said:

Unfortunately I have V10 on my iPhone. Randomly I get duplicate notes now after editing one there. That's special.

Oh yippee (sarcasm here), good to know it’s not just me who is having this issue on iOS of random duplication of notes when editing them on a single device. Wish they had a view to show just Notes with Conflicts so I can easily find the duplicates.

luvmyc6 · January 1, 2021

1 hour ago, luvmyc6 said:

Oh yippee (sarcasm here), good to know it’s not just me who is having this issue on iOS of random duplication of notes when editing them on a single device. Wish they had a view to show just Notes with Conflicts so I can easily find the duplicates.

FYI I posted a v10 feature request for a conflicts view: https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/132858-provide-a-view-to-easily-find-notes-with-conflicts/

QFieldBoden · January 1, 2021

2 hours ago, gazumped said:

In an ideal world every new device and app would work perfectly and us poor users wouldn't have to do anything other than lie back on the beach and browse to our hearts content - but there's actually a long history of new developments being driven by advancing tech vs demanding finance.

Those nice smartphones we use that you can politely ask how to make an omelette - and watch a video demo if you need it - developed out of hefty unattractive blocks of plastic that were 'portable' only in a generous interpretation of the word. And the first genuine pocket phones (remember Matrix?) had LCD screens that were... a little limited in scope and strictly black and slightly less black. (Don't talk to me about WAP - I used to do tech support on that stuff...)

The only way the manufacturers could fund the later development of color screens and 200gm phones was to sell the early cr*p. R&D costs a LOT - and when do you stop? In principle (and if they had unlimited cash) we could all still be driving Model T's now while car makers kept aiming for a 'proper' flying car.

OK - so do I devoutly wish Evernote had sold this launch a whole lot better? Heck yes! If they'd made v10 a voluntary public beta and invited general access, a lot of folks would have moved over and given them the live test data that they desperately need - how well do their new systems bear up under the humungous load of the entire population of a medium-size country using them on a 365/24/7 basis? Normal QA and beta testing just doesn't do volume.

The new version was - like Elon Musk's Starships - a cut-down test model meant to prove it worked. Surprise! It didn't. But in rewriting their entire code base and potentially removing 80% of their coding overhead, plus a lot of development roadblocks it is - like Starship again - definitely an update on present models.

They're doing an Elon and iterating their way through updates that add extra (code) engines to the basic frame, and - I imagine fairly quickly - we should get pretty much the full range of the 'legacy' apps back.

Meantime I'm continuing to operate in my own little bubble without any disruption - because being tech-savvy I know NOT to be first with new tech, and I killed all the automatic update functions on my various devices and apps before they were tempted to do anything silly.

I don't have much sympathy with anyone currently having issues (unless they're on iOS!!) because on most operating systems and devices there's a way either to dump the new app and go back to the old ones, or to run the official Legacy app alongside the new.

But everyone seems to be struggling and demanding that Evernote fix the issues - which is exactly what they're busy doing anyway! If you're not prepared for the hassle - just go back to the old app!! Evernote will fix things - eventually.

They should just have shared their strategy clearly with everyone before they started, and posted something along the lines of this comment publicly so that users don't feel so frustratingly ignored.

Here endeth my rant for 2021. Happy New Year!

A rant indeed, I agree with that. The fact is that they should NOT be testing a release of this magnitude without pre-warning people and certainly not on a live system with a large user base which relies on it and entrusts it with data that is important to them. I at least am not asking for sympathy I'm asking for developments and new deployments to be handled reasonably and responsibly and with the paying user in mind. This has simply been handled terribly, users have been left with a worse system and that's inexcusable.

TaskClone · January 1, 2021

Oh the drama!

I am so glad that Evernote finally bit the bullet and decided to take this risk, I'd give them 4 months to work out the kinks. Productivity switching costs to another service will justify at least that much time.

The technical debt inside Evernote was huge (and still is - see below). For those looking to jump ship, good luck. Check out reddit for OneNote users or the many others that come back to Evernote and you might pause on that for a bit. For business reasons I watch OneNote closely too. They have their own issues, mostly their lack of prioritization within the Microsoft ecosystem. Development and focus move in fits and starts as you would suspect with a free product.

All this said, I understand the pain. Years of building workflows, learning nuances and not having to deal with the muckiness of change to the core. This must be truly debilitating for many. I can see that.

But, Evernote is a business and I want it to survive. To do that, they need to strike a very difficult balance of bringing in new paying customers while losing only a few existing paying customers. Not easy! They tried the Business market. They tried competing with Slack. They tried socks for God's sake. Now, they have to do what was needed all along. Build an efficient, sustainable business built on the core of their competitive advantage. That requires them to focus on getting their core product right to build a sustainable future. I blogged about this years ago and it's what we thought Chris O'Neill would do. Now Ian, actually pulled the trigger and ripped the band-aid. Good for him.

Did this effort actually focus the company? So far, not really. Too many competing interests I guess (see the balance comment above). At least he's trying.
Did they communicate the change well? Absolutely not. Transparency in fits and starts is not transparency. Evernote has never really learned that in multiple iterations. Transparency is showing your roadmap and financial with the challenge within each. Don't expect that in a competitive environment where NONE of their competitors are doing the same.
Was the beta test good enough and long enough? Maybe. With 200 million installs, they could've beta tested for years. I think the real failing was getting more power users in on the known compromises and not being ready for they inevitable challenges that come from such a big change.
Will it be over soon? Sorta. I suspect in 120 days, the worst will be over. The features with broadest appeal and ease of implementation will be back. Speed and syncing will be improved, but probably not finished or back to the "old days". Most importantly, the loudest and most hurt by the changes will be gone. This will allow greater focus on the new paying customers that can be brought in.

When this episode is over, the change I've been waiting for can fully begin. You see, behind that technical debt on the front-end is years of technical debt on the backend. They started addressing that with the move to Google's cloud. But their API is woefully behind the times and developers are under-supported compared to rivals. I think they know this, but that obviously has to come after the primary product that users see and use daily.

Ultimately, I think Evernote became a prisoner of its own freemium success. They showed the whole world the challenges of measuring growth in users instead of revenue. With all those users and the infrastructure to support them, change became even harder. I'm 1000% positive that spending $250M in VC money to just fix the foundation of your existing product did not go over well.

Now, they've bitten the bullet. We'll see if it was worth it. I'm betting in 18 months, they'll declare that it was.

(Geez, this was so long, probably should've been a blog post instead 🤣)

QFieldBoden · January 1, 2021

I have no doubt that there are good reasons for doing this. From an end user point of view when the product's primary function is storage and retrieval (a "second brain" I think it was called) if the storage is slow and the retrieval is hopeless, which it is when note attachments aren't searched, then that's a massive failure.

NorcalScott · January 2, 2021

2 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Will it be over soon? Sorta. I suspect in 120 days, the worst will be over. The features with broadest appeal and ease of implementation will be back. Speed and syncing will be improved, but probably not finished or back to the "old days". Most importantly, the loudest and most hurt by the changes will be gone. This will allow greater focus on the new paying customers that can be brought in.

Interesting take - so you are saying that Evernote will benefit from some of their most passionate paying customers leaving the platform to one of the many other competing solutions, and that there is somehow a large number of “new”paying customers who will come in and ensure profitability? Who do you see as these new customers?

Note taking and task apps are not a new and exciting industry - most users who are willing to pay anything for a solution are either using Evernote and feeling certain levels of pain from this recent debacle, or have used Evernote and left for various reasons. I don’t see these users coming back any time soon unless Evernote is offering something truly remarkable, which v10 most definitely is not. If a “win” is getting a product after 18 months that finally matches the previous product’s functionality, then Evernote is going to be in big trouble, in my opinion.

Paul A. · January 2, 2021

3 hours ago, luvmyc6 said:

FYI I posted a v10 feature request for a conflicts view: https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/132858-provide-a-view-to-easily-find-notes-with-conflicts/

Thanks for doing this - I upvoted it and encourage everyone to do the same. I have made similar requests in the past on the forums and via direct product feedback to Evernote, It just makes too much sense not to implement.

49 minutes ago, NorcalScott said:

I don’t see these users coming back any time soon unless Evernote is offering something truly remarkable, which v10 most definitely is not.

I have no idea if this gambit will work out for Evernote, but there are two features on the road map that could bring in new paying users. Both have been mentioned on these forums but since they're not supposed to be public I will be vague.

The first one, probably coming early this year, I kind of envision as being designed to increase engagement with the product, not necessarily to directly convince a number of new people to try Evernote if they haven't considered it so far. Rather, this would make it more likely for occasional users to use EN more often. Basic users who engage with the product more are much more likely to consider upgrading to a paying subscription (and premium subscription holders who increase and / or maintain high levels of engagement are much less likely to drop the subscription).

The second feature, probably coming later in the year, maybe Q2 or mid-year, has the potential to both increase engagement and convince some brand new users to give Evernote a shot. I don't have any special insight and obviously there's a lot of work to do between now and then, so it really depends on how well they execute on the feature. I think the potential is there, however.

So, we'll see. For the first time in a long while I'm finding myself being cautiously optimistic for the future. Evernote doesn't meet my ideal needs right now, but I also haven't seen anything else in the marketplace which does, so I'm willing to hold on for now.

rts · January 2, 2021

8 hours ago, gazumped said:

They're doing an Elon and iterating their way through updates that add extra (code) engines to the basic frame, and - I imagine fairly quickly - we should get pretty much the full range of the 'legacy' apps back.

Meantime I'm continuing to operate in my own little bubble without any disruption - because being tech-savvy I know NOT to be first with new tech, and I killed all the automatic update functions on my various devices and apps before they were tempted to do anything silly.

I don't have much sympathy with anyone currently having issues (unless they're on iOS!!) because on most operating systems and devices there's a way either to dump the new app and go back to the old ones, or to run the official Legacy app alongside the new.

But everyone seems to be struggling and demanding that Evernote fix the issues - which is exactly what they're busy doing anyway! If you're not prepared for the hassle - just go back to the old app!! Evernote will fix things - eventually.

As Grand Moff Tarkin once put it, you're far too trusting. Once you've concluded that v10 should have been presented as a preview/beta/work-in-progress instead of as "the new Evernote" you have to ask yourself, why was it released in that shape? The missing features people have complained about aren't bugs, they're design decisions. Ditto for the font choice limitations, etc. So why should we believe that the company will "fix things" when management has already given the green light to reduced functionality?

It seems to me there are three explanations for the premature v10 release: 1) management thought the product was "close enough" for most users (viz Small's statements on tags), 2) some idiot(s) thought adding features to a released product would be easy, or 3) v10 was pushed out for reasons unrelated to customer acceptance, such as being evidence the company was meeting milestones. I'm inclined to think it's a mix of all three, but none suggest that customers using the Legacy apps will see all the features they rely on appear in v10. On the contrary the company has declined to make explicit promises on how long the (already unsupported) Legacy version will be available or what specific features v10 will have when it's "finished".

I think the customer venting, er, feedback is useful should someone at the company actually pay attention to the posts. Given Small's shifting assessments of v10's meeting people's needs I suspect the feedback is being mostly ignored at some point in the chain of command, but one can hope. As to this particular forum discussion, I've learned a lot from the posts detailing how people are using Evernote and the experiences of people migrating to other software.

CalS · January 2, 2021

47 minutes ago, rts said:

It seems to me there are three explanations for the premature v10 releas

I would add a fourth. The company did not really understand how their software was used by their paying customers.

Side note, to have a tag saying of Accomplish Anything and to create such a productivity crippling release speaks volumes. I apologize for the snarkiness

eric99 · January 2, 2021

4 hours ago, CalS said:

I would add a fourth. The company did not really understand how their software was used by their paying customers.

Exactly, I even doubt whether they really know all the features built in over the years in the different products by different developers...

gazumped · January 2, 2021

8 hours ago, rts said:

The missing features people have complained about aren't bugs, they're design decisions.

I agree that apparently losing the Outlook clipper and Import Folders were (dumb) design decisions, but Evernote have at least already -apparently- reconsidered Import Folders.

I did see a fairly horrifying comment in another thread somewhere about another issue (there are so many I can't remember what) where an Evernote Employee - presumably a product manager - said something to the effect of "Oh I didn't think that feature was important, so we dropped it..."

Scary that sort of decision should be a matter of relatively junior opinion, without consultation; but to be fair the PM also said that he'd refer the matter back to the development team for re-evaluation.

But how many design decisions are we talking about here? IMHO the new app was stripped down like Musk's Starship to bare tanks and one engine for a test flight to make sure the whole system hung together. Then (as has been said) Evernote were relying on their new, super-fast development schedule to allow them to add the missing features - which they're still doing. They may not have allowed for the number of bugs though...

Some decisions we might have expected - but maybe choices should have been offered to users for a vote first. There was, forinstance a continuing powerful lobby of users who demanded that tables laid out on their phones should look exactly the same - typeface and all - as when laid out on a desktop.

There's a long explanation in another thread on this, but it boils down to: if you want free choice of fonts, that can't happen. If Evernote include their own limited (for the moment?) font package, it becomes possible. So congratulations font-happy users; you got exactly what you asked for. If it went back to a vote (why does everyone want another chance at a selection!) I don't know whether the layout party, or the choice party would win.

In essence, because we demanded the same app on all devices, Evernote have delivered. Sadly that means all apps have to operate on a level that will work on all devices; and some of the 'specials' like the formerly Windows-only Import Folder might get short listed for being dropped...

Have you heard the one about a camel being a horse designed by ~~users~~ committee?

TaskClone · January 2, 2021

18 hours ago, QFieldBoden said:

I have no doubt that there are good reasons for doing this. From an end user point of view when the product's primary function is storage and retrieval (a "second brain" I think it was called) if the storage is slow and the retrieval is hopeless, which it is when note attachments aren't searched, then that's a massive failure.

If it were true that retrieval were hopeless for a significant percentage of desired customers, that would be a massive failure.

Slowness is not a failure. In fact, it's often pre-planned. With many new releases of software, developers include additional logging to track any potential issues. Over time as these issues are discovered and corrected, the logging is removed. Ideally this is imperceptible delay, but this is often a feature and not a bug.

None of us is really sure what percentage and which users are most upset about the changes, but it's big enough that they've had to acknowledge something. Not sure that makes it a massive failure from the company's perspective. Time will tell.

Since I own a company, I tend to take the company's perspective. Customers are prone to hyperbole and "end of times" type reactions. That's fine, but in listening to it, one has to apply a bit of perspective that someone in an emotional state might not be applying.

QFieldBoden · January 2, 2021

1 minute ago, TaskClone said:

Since I own a company, I tend to take the company's perspective. Customers are prone to hyperbole and "end of times" type reactions. That's fine, but in listening to it, one has to apply a bit of perspective that someone in an emotional state might not be applying.

I for one am not in an emotional state, not in respect of Evernote at any rate, there are bigger issues these days. However, when I select and pay good money for a product that advertises a certain feature set I expect that feature set to remain available, unless I am told otherwise. I made my decision to use Evernote based on the features it offered at the time, and still advertises on it's website. If an "upgrade" is released, I don't expect to have to then "downgrade" to be able to continue to use the features I depend on and want.

If it was a car with air conditioning, sat nav, autopilot, airbags, automatic transmission and park assist fitted and I was offered an "upgrade" I'd not be happy if when I got it back after the upgrade I was left with air-con and nothing else I'd originally bought.

TaskClone · January 2, 2021

16 hours ago, NorcalScott said:

Interesting take - so you are saying that Evernote will benefit from some of their most passionate paying customers leaving the platform to one of the many other competing solutions, and that there is somehow a large number of “new”paying customers who will come in and ensure profitability? Who do you see as these new customers?

I run a company that interfaces with Evernote. I can attest that people leave and return all the time. I have the data logs to prove it not to mention dozens of conversations with clients.

Whether Evernote will benefit from losing the most aggrieved customers is a total unknown. However, it is common for companies to not pursue a strategic opportunity to grow for fear of alienating a small, but vocal group of long-term customers. That tension exists all the time.

Evernote is smart enough to know that as long as it's viewed as "note-taking" software, it's future is limited. They have fought against that label for a long time and I would guess that most of their best customers don't think of it as just note-taking software. I don't.

That said, they may want to move in a direction that clarifies that (hopefully not with Work Chat), but that new direction may bother some.

For the record, I don't think that's the major issue here. I think the major issue here is some of the compromises needed to create a unified base across platforms given the limitations of the tools available. Combine that with the limitations of beta testing such widely used software and POOR communications.

TaskClone · January 2, 2021

4 minutes ago, QFieldBoden said:

I for one am not in an emotional state, not in respect of Evernote at any rate, there are bigger issues these days. However, when I select and pay good money for a product that advertises a certain feature set I expect that feature set to remain available, unless I am told otherwise. I made my decision to use Evernote based on the features it offered at the time, and still advertises on it's website. If an "upgrade" is released, I don't expect to have to then "downgrade" to be able to continue to use the features I depend on and want.

If it was a car with air conditioning, sat nav, autopilot, airbags, automatic transmission and park assist fitted and I was offered an "upgrade" I'd not be happy if when I got it back after the upgrade I was left with air-con and nothing else I'd originally bought.

Your expectations are, of course, perfectly reasonable. Which is why their poor communications about some of the missing features was doubly troubling. No one expects an upgrade to be a downgrade.

I've been a position where we added code to make future changes possible. It slowed everything down. That sucked. It was the right business decision and wouldn't pay off for over 12 months.

They have to make a business decision whether it's worth it to lose some folks for a greater purpose. They may have miscalculated the extent, but I think they made that decision.

ripwit · January 2, 2021

1 hour ago, TaskClone said:

If it were true that retrieval were hopeless for a significant percentage of desired customers, that would be a massive failure.

Slowness is not a failure. In fact, it's often pre-planned. With many new releases of software, developers include additional logging to track any potential issues. Over time as these issues are discovered and corrected, the logging is removed. Ideally this is imperceptible delay, but this is often a feature and not a bug.

None of us is really sure what percentage and which users are most upset about the changes, but it's big enough that they've had to acknowledge something. Not sure that makes it a massive failure from the company's perspective. Time will tell.

Since I own a company, I tend to take the company's perspective. Customers are prone to hyperbole and "end of times" type reactions. That's fine, but in listening to it, one has to apply a bit of perspective that someone in an emotional state might not be applying.

If logging/debugging is slowing down production apps, the developers should be moved away from any contact with production. I also have run a few companies and have had to deal with new releases put out in the wild, around the world.

Where is the QA, the system tests, the performance tests? We all know how Microsoft decided to forego stringent QA and unit/system tests in some of the debacles that led to Windows 10 roll-backs. Cost cutting testing staff usually ends up costing more in support and lost sales.

Wanderling Reborn · January 2, 2021

22 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Oh the drama!

... This will allow greater focus on the new paying customers that can be brought in.

I'd love to hear about the wunderweapon that they have in their secret arsenal that will bring the new paying customers into the most expensive service on the market that still, in 2021, doesn't support some fairly common features that their free or cheaper competition provides. (E.g. encryption).

They had long term problems doing that with their "legacy" product, that honestly was more featured and less buggy.

2 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Evernote is smart enough to know that as long as it's viewed as "note-taking" software, it's future is limited. They have fought against that label for a long time and I would guess that most of their best customers don't think of it as just note-taking software. I don't.

Agreed. They are a content / data management service with notetaking features. They are not a notetaker (not the best one, anyway) and they are not a business suite, regardless of how badly they want to become one. As such, they are still competing against a host of free, freemium, and paid offerings, most of which are way cheaper and just as feature full (lacking in some areas and winning in others). They are losing long term members who were deeply attached to the service and willing to pay the price for it. Time will tell if they will attract enough new paid members to make up for this. Personally, I think they took a wrong turn a few years ago.

Kolmir · January 2, 2021

Just a short story.

About a month ago my MS Outlook for Mac asked me if I would like to see a shiny new revolutionary version.

I clicked yes, and in few seconds I sow a nice rework - fast, good UX, maybe a bit too shiny, but working stable.

However, after some time I discovered, that some advanced functionality isn't available yet. But information about lacking functionality wasn't kept in secret. There was a clear message from app about this and that they are working on this. Moreover, there was an option (button) to return to the old app included in the message box. I clicked and in few second I was in my old app - with all my customization, old list of read/unread messages, etc. Everything was as I left them an hour earlier. Moreover, my old app is still officially supported until next year at least. And I can switch between new/old with just one click.

This was a good example how things should be done:

a real choice and transparency about it
an easy way back without suffering
a full support
there is a community BackLog where people you can vote on features and company stuffy really engage and comment about progress and future release date

Wanderling Reborn · January 2, 2021

7 minutes ago, Kolmir said:

Just a short story.

About a month ago my MS Outlook for Mac asked me if I would like to see a shiny new revolutionary version.

I clicked yes, and in few seconds I sow a nice rework - fast, good UX, maybe a bit too shiny, but working stable.

However, after some time I discovered, that some advanced functionality isn't available yet. But information about lacking functionality wasn't kept in secret. There was a clear message from app about this and that they are working on this. Moreover, there was an option (button) to return to the old app included in the message box. I clicked and in few second I was in my old app - with all my customization, old list of read/unread messages, etc. Everything was as I left them an hour earlier. Moreover, my old app is still officially supported until next year at least. And I can switch between new/old with just one click.

This was a good example how things should be done:

a real choice and transparency about it

an easy way back without suffering

a full support

there is a community BackLog where people you can vote on features and company stuffy really engage and comment about progress and future release date

To be fair, while MS does give plenty of warning, and usually provide a very generous grandfathering period, they still don’t listen to their customers any more than Evernote does. Although they did reverse the course on retiring Onenote desktop, but I suspect it was due to the corporate pushback.

IMHO, to understand that V10 rollout, the very first thing to consider is the CEO tenure... he was hired almost exactly two years prior to v10 release. A new CEO hired to fix things at a struggling company gets a free reign in his 1st year, and all of the issues can still be blamed on his predecessors or pains of enacting change. He must however show results by the end of his 2nd year, if he wants to prove that he was the right choice. I think that’s where the rush to roll it out before the end of the year came from.

Kolmir · January 2, 2021

2 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

To be fair, while MS does give plenty of warning, and usually provide a very generous grandfathering period, they still don’t listen to their customers any more than Evernote does. Although they did reverse the course on retiring Onenote desktop, but I suspect it was due to the corporate pushback.

Yeah, but at least they care enough to assure smooth switch instead of unprofessional and unpleasant revolution.. Moreover, as you see, they are able to change their minds. Ian Small prefers plausible deniability instead.

I don't expect perfection. I just want fair treatment, continuity, and assurance. And I get it from MS.

TaskClone · January 2, 2021

4 hours ago, ripwit said:

If logging/debugging is slowing down production apps, the developers should be moved away from any contact with production. I also have run a few companies and have had to deal with new releases put out in the wild, around the world.

Where is the QA, the system tests, the performance tests? We all know how Microsoft decided to forego stringent QA and unit/system tests in some of the debacles that led to Windows 10 roll-backs. Cost cutting testing staff usually ends up costing more in support and lost sales.

Understand your opinion, but I know it's common to see this sort of thing. Although I doubt they didn't do QA and some performance testing. Just doesn't catch everything and I bet there was plenty that wasn't tested along with some basics that were. I seldom see a major release, let alone a rewrite that doesn't suffer from significant issues for 30-90 days. A rewrite of software in use by tens of millions of people across multiple platforms seems destined to have some of this.

What companies are you aware of that stuck the landing on their first major rewrite with 10 million users of a complex software on one platform? On 4?

TaskClone · January 2, 2021

3 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Personally, I think they took a wrong turn a few years ago.

Interesting. Which wrong turn was that?

DTLow · January 2, 2021

2 hours ago, Kolmir said:

there was an option (button) to return to the old app

Would that be like the Evernote Legacy app?
No button but we can install at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

CalS · January 2, 2021

6 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

I seldom see a major release, let alone a rewrite that doesn't suffer from significant issues for 30-90 days. A rewrite of software in use by tens of millions of people across multiple platforms seems destined to have some of this.

Sometimes a self full filling prophecy. Yeah, it's tough to do a major rewrite, wah wah. Doesn't obviate the doer from from the effort required for testing and communications to alleviate as much pain as possible for such a significant event. Don't really think that was a part of the EN game plan for this release based upon what we've seen the last three months.

V10 was dropped with no Achtungs or buyer bewares at all. Fend for yourselves kiddies. That lack of communication is what has irked me the most. Clueless. A close second would be all the function that was blown up in the process. Oh well.

luvmyc6 · January 2, 2021

7 minutes ago, CalS said:

That lack of communication is what has irked me the most.

Agreed, if EN had simply a) effectively communicated in ADVANCE of what they were doing and what was/was not included for the initial roll-out and b) gave people the CHOICE to upgrade to V10 or not on Windows & Mac (I know you can only have one version of Android and iOS) ... I don't think we would have seen so many of the postings over what we all unexpectedly received.

Note: Some people may argue that there was communication before they rolled it out, but I didn't get anything pushed to me as a paying customer.

TechPerplexed · January 3, 2021

19 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

Interesting. Which wrong turn was that?

I can't speak for Wanderling of course, but a few years ago Evernote decided to suddenly almost double the price of Premium, while simultaneously crippling the Basic free version (most notably confining it to a maximum number of devices). I think that might be the wrong turn that is being referred to. Whether that was truly a wrong turn is debatable, but it certainly was a irrevocable turning point for me.

Up to then I had been tickled pink with Evernote and happy to pay Premium for many years (despite not really even needing all its features, but I wanted to show some support). But overnight I felt that I had landed between a rock and a hard place - I couldn't afford the new premium but also needed at least three devices. When I pointed that out in these forums (along with several other upset customers), we were told we were hysterical whiners, boo hoo posters, freeloaders, etc by the resident forum dwellers. There was almost total radio silence from the staff, except from one or two employees who basically informed us "tis what tis, lump it or leave".

I think that if Evernote had grandfathered us in, or if they had introduced these changes more gradually, or if they had given some soothing reason why this was for our own good, or heck, if they had created a super great new version of Evernote that made the price hike palatable, I think all that "drama" back then could have been prevented.

The point I'm trying to make though is that from that moment on, I vowed to find an alternative, a thought that until then hadn't even occurred to me. I actively tried to leave Evernote from that moment on, but it wasn't until early 2020 that I finally found that alternative (Joplin, in my case).

I have a feeling that Evernote is not done making wrong turns, and this upgrade to v10 seems to prove it. I have no idea if that 2015 "fiasco" made many customers determined to flee back then, nor do I know if many today put their money where their mouth is. However, I'll say this: the competition has not sat still and nowadays there are many more alternatives to Evernote than back then.

TaskClone · January 3, 2021

6 minutes ago, CalS said:

That lack of communication is what has irked me the most. Clueless. A close second would be all the function that was blown up in the process. Oh well.

Can't really disagree with that. If you're going to punch me in the gut, tell me first. I won't want to hear it, but it's better than the alternative.

I'm on the developer side and I guarantee you every time Evernote or OneNote sneeze, we catch a cold. Right now, syncing doesn't work the same with their new apps. It sucks and impacts our bottom line. However, OneNote is no better. They made a change and now their API delays indexing (i.e. recognizing) notes created within the last 30 minutes. Imagine creating a note and the service that looks for that note can't find it for 30 minutes.

Trust me, I feel the pain as none of this stuff gets communicated and half the time they wouldn't know unless we told them. My primary point is that I've seen this so much, it's to be expected (not necessarily accepted).

Again, Evernote is not the only company that does this. After their layoffs, I expected this sort of cost cutting to focus on what they considered "core". They also suffer from this thing in tech where if you let anyone know what's coming, you've somehow worsened your competitive position. Shock and awe is preferred over predictable releases of known priorities and known tradeoffs. That's unfortunate, but not surprising.

I will say, it seems like some last minute changes were made before release. The syncing issues we face now did not occur on earlier builds that we beta-tested. Something happened along the way.

TaskClone · January 3, 2021

15 minutes ago, TechPerplexed said:

I can't speak for Wanderling of course, but a few years ago Evernote decided to suddenly almost double the price of Premium, while simultaneously crippling the Basic free version (most notably confining it to a maximum number of devices). I think that might be the wrong turn that is being referred to. Whether that was truly a wrong turn is debatable, but it certainly was a irrevocable turning point for me.

Definitely think that move made the average user realize that all was not well. Those keeping up with the company's struggles could see that coming, but the form it took was curious. You usually try to do that stuff along with a major upgrade on bring features from higher plans downward. It sorta cushions the blow. I assume they owned too much of the market already for grandfathering to be feasible. They have far more analytics about their demand curve than we do, so I assume they made the decision that was warranted.

I took it as a race to be profitable enough to justify the existing investors' patience or pay them off. I may never know, but I always speculate that too much VC money makes you chase a home run when a solid double of a company would be just fine. Many go out trying to steal third instead. Evernote has had enough of a user base to not flame out entirely, but that provides only so much runway to get it right.

CalS · January 3, 2021

13 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

Can't really disagree with that. If you're going to punch me in the gut, tell me first. I won't want to hear it, but it's better than the alternative.

Yup.

CalS · January 3, 2021

15 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

Imagine creating a note and the service that looks for that note can't find it for 30 minutes.

On the personal side imagine adding a note and not being able to find it for three minutes. Matters if you are in the midst of a project. 6.25.1, change it now, find it now. Again, oh well.

jillybean · January 3, 2021

In the legacy Evernote, when I move a note to a different notebook, the entire note gets moved to the new notebook.

With the new update, when I move a note, it looks like I just made a copy of the original note. I'm stuck with the same exact note in two different notebooks. This is making my records a mess and confusing. They should not have changed that feature. All I want is to have the note "moved" not "copy" or "duplicate".

I went as far as installing the legacy Evernote which is useless because I can't even get past the login screen. I'm stuck at "Cannot connect to server. Please try again" error.

ThePizWiz · January 3, 2021

I joined the forum just to say how much I hate the new evernote design.

Why can't I format interface dates to just be numbers - i.e. 12/12/20 - now all my columns have to show the entirety of the date listed out (ie. Nov, 9, 2020 so I can't tabulate and sort my info at a glance on smaller windows.

Why does this version FEEL so much more cloud based - so that I actually have errors when switching between notes? Why is big tech CONSTANTLY pushing us on the cloud.

Awful. I been an evernote user for a decade - and this is the first time I'm searching for alternatives. But it will be a truly painful split - everything in my life is on here.

Wanderling Reborn · January 3, 2021

5 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Interesting. Which wrong turn was that?

Nearly doubling the price without adding any features, making Evernote the most expensive of all competing apps in the market, while already having problems attracting new paying customers. At the same time, they announced the change in their strategy - the new emphasis on expanding into business market as opposed to consumer market.

I suspected back then that the pricing change was an effort to maximize current revenue at the expense of those existing users that were deeply committed to Evernote, even if this meant not attracting as many new users willing to try the service, in order to use the new revenue to finance the business-oriented expansion. I, and quite a few other users on this forum, believed that to be a mistake - it would have been extremely hard to break into an already saturated segment, the competition for business accounts is much harsher than in consumer space, and even if they could land major corporate contracts, Evernote doesn't seem able to provide the level of support these kinds of accounts require.

I believe that the time proved us right - their business expansion did not really happen. In the meantime, they got hooked on that extra cash coming from their longtime loyal paying users that were willing to pay the highest prices in this market segment, and they can't risk reversing their pricing strategy to make the service more appealing and more competitive to bring in new users. They are stuck.

John 1X · January 3, 2021

I’ve been a user since 2009 - just had to pile on here. I thought I was the issue, that my internet or computer or iPad was bad - but now realizing that’s not the case. I can’t comment on many of the features since Evernote has been too slow to even use. The lag is insane - I can’t.believe this was tested before release. I have a very serious problem now since so much of my life is stored in Evernote - maybe a risk I should have considered more seriously. I will for sure going forward. Evernote, can’t hold all my eggs in their basket, regretfully I see that now. Sigh.

Wanderling Reborn · January 3, 2021

18 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Can't really disagree with that. If you're going to punch me in the gut, tell me first. I won't want to hear it, but it's better than the alternative.

I'm on the developer side and I guarantee you every time Evernote or OneNote sneeze, we catch a cold. Right now, syncing doesn't work the same with their new apps. It sucks and impacts our bottom line. However, OneNote is no better. They made a change and now their API delays indexing (i.e. recognizing) notes created within the last 30 minutes. Imagine creating a note and the service that looks for that note can't find it for 30 minutes.

Trust me, I feel the pain as none of this stuff gets communicated and half the time they wouldn't know unless we told them. My primary point is that I've seen this so much, it's to be expected (not necessarily accepted).

Again, Evernote is not the only company that does this. After their layoffs, I expected this sort of cost cutting to focus on what they considered "core". They also suffer from this thing in tech where if you let anyone know what's coming, you've somehow worsened your competitive position. Shock and awe is preferred over predictable releases of known priorities and known tradeoffs. That's unfortunate, but not surprising.

I will say, it seems like some last minute changes were made before release. The syncing issues we face now did not occur on earlier builds that we beta-tested. Something happened along the way.

Evernote however doesn't have a luxury of doing this with a free product that's preinstalled by default on tens of millions computers running MS Office, thus already getting a massive exposure advantage from the start. Especially now that MS is making a major push tp promote Onenote to educational institutions, which means millions of students would be required to use it (and develop attachment to it via learned habits).

Evernote's paying user base is heavily composed of people who joined it many years ago, when it was all the rage and the major player in then still underserved market. Things have been quite a bit different for quite a while now.

s2sailor · January 3, 2021

18 hours ago, TaskClone said:

Shock and awe is preferred over predictable releases of known priorities and known tradeoffs.

I think with v10 it was more shock and dismay...

TaskClone · January 3, 2021

15 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Nearly doubling the price without adding any features, making Evernote the most expensive of all competing apps in the market, while already having problems attracting new paying customers. At the same time, they announced the change in their strategy - the new emphasis on expanding into business market as opposed to consumer market.

I suspected back then that the pricing change was an effort to maximize current revenue at the expense of those existing users that were deeply committed to Evernote, even if this meant not attracting as many new users willing to try the service, in order to use the new revenue to finance the business-oriented expansion. I, and quite a few other users on this forum, believed that to be a mistake - it would have been extremely hard to break into an already saturated segment, the competition for business accounts is much harsher than in consumer space, and even if they could land major corporate contracts, Evernote doesn't seem able to provide the level of support these kinds of accounts require.

I believe that the time proved us right - their business expansion did not really happen. In the meantime, they got hooked on that extra cash coming from their longtime loyal paying users that were willing to pay the highest prices in this market segment, and they can't risk reversing their pricing strategy to make the service more appealing and more competitive to bring in new users. They are stuck.

I agree with this assessment. I think Evernote has never solved its identity crisis. It needs to do that for business adoption and broader paid consumer success. Being a Swiss Army Knife has not been a good marketing strategy. As much as SaaS companies want to go enterprise like Asana has done, you have to articulate solving a clear business need better than alternatives. Evernote doesn't do that. Neither does OneNote. Their core value proposition is much more personal than business. There's a business connection, but it's indirect for most.

I think they needed the revenue enhancement for more than chasing business expansion though. I think they needed it to justify the investments that are paying for the work they're doing now. Everyone knew they needed to give away less and earn more. Evernote was the poster child for that. The way it was done just left an awful taste for many. I also thought they would take a more gradual approach over a few years that coincided with feature improvements, but seemed the urgency was too great.

TaskClone · January 3, 2021

55 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Evernote however doesn't have a luxury

They don't have many luxuries. Like a parent that is willing to spend money for years with no direct return. Like an in-built ecosystem. Like an R&D division (the Azure cloud and Graph API) that adds handwriting recognition, integration with Outlook and other features built for other purposes, but easily added to OneNote. Like sales and support teams with existing relationships with enterprise and now SMB clients.

What Evernote should have to compete with this is the ability to focus and iterate quickly. That competitive advantage has not been there for years. We'll see if recent changes fix that.

MS has recently taken their eye off of crushing EN entirely, focusing rather on the more lucrative effort to embed themselves in verticals (education) and use OneNote like Teams; to sell more Business Office 365 subscriptions. MS has no problem with oligopolies anyway.

Wanderling Reborn · January 3, 2021

26 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

They don't have many luxuries. Like a parent that is willing to spend money for years with no direct return. Like an in-built ecosystem. Like an R&D division (the Azure cloud and Graph API) that adds handwriting recognition, integration with Outlook and other features built for other purposes, but easily added to OneNote. Like sales and support teams with existing relationships with enterprise and now SMB clients.

What Evernote should have to compete with this is the ability to focus and iterate quickly. That competitive advantage has not been there for years. We'll see if recent changes fix that.

MS has recently taken their eye off of crushing EN entirely, focusing rather on the more lucrative effort to embed themselves in verticals (education) and use OneNote like Teams; to sell more Business Office 365 subscriptions. MS has no problem with oligopolies anyway.

MS never had a plan to crush EN entirely. Actually, they never had a plan for Onenote at all, until recently. Onenote was their red-haired stepchild, never really receiving the marketing attention that other products were getting. For a decade, it would be automatically installed on millions of desktops, yet most of these users didn't know what it was, why it existed, what it could be used for. Heck, most probably didn't even know they had it. The push to promote the use of Onenote is just a few years old, and even now, MS is still very bad at marketing it.

As to oligopoly - Evernote still seems to think they are a monopoly, judging by their pricing plan. Either that, or they are deliberately giving up on attracting new paid users in order to maximize current revenue, even if it's not a sustainable long term plan.

TaskClone · January 3, 2021

56 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

MS never had a plan to crush EN entirely. Actually, they never had a plan for Onenote at all, until recently.

Either that, or they are deliberately giving up on attracting new paid users in order to maximize current revenue, even if it's not a sustainable long term plan.

I agree about MS. Since they got their new CEO, they've gotten smarter about many things and one was to invest a bit in OneNote. I was actually a OneNote user until I decided I wanted to build TaskClone and found OneNote didn't even have an API (they built it in 2014). However, they did aggressively go after Evernote in that period, publishing pages like this - https://www.onenote.com/import-evernote-to-onenote. That focus has again waned.

I can tell you that marketing works. In the weeks after Evernote's "relaunch", we saw a significant spike in new Evernote users and I bet some of them are paid. When nobody is talking about you and you get few referrals, you're dying. Most folks who see Evernote's relaunch in the press have no idea this forum even exists. What their actual demand curve looks like, none of us knows. If they get the value prop right, I'm confident enough people will pay (and I think they and their investors are confident of that too). I believe their identity problem is the bigger hurdle. I hope to help them solve it.

Wanderling Reborn · January 3, 2021

2 hours ago, TaskClone said:

I agree with this assessment. I think Evernote has never solved its identity crisis. It needs to do that for business adoption and broader paid consumer success. Being a Swiss Army Knife has not been a good marketing strategy. As much as SaaS companies want to go enterprise like Asana has done, you have to articulate solving a clear business need better than alternatives. Evernote doesn't do that. Neither does OneNote. Their core value proposition is much more personal than business. There's a business connection, but it's indirect for most.

I think they needed the revenue enhancement for more than chasing business expansion though. I think they needed it to justify the investments that are paying for the work they're doing now. Everyone knew they needed to give away less and earn more. Evernote was the poster child for that. The way it was done just left an awful taste for many. I also thought they would take a more gradual approach over a few years that coincided with feature improvements, but seemed the urgency was too great.

You’re probably correct.

At any rate, the right thing to do would be to grandfather the existing paid accounts into the old pricing structure, at least for a couple of years, while simultaneously removing features in the free Basic plan and introducing Plus and Premium at new prices. But it may be indeed that the urgency to show immediate cash flow improvement was just too great.

I still think that Evernote, in its current form, with its current pricing structure, and given the competition, is not well positioned to grow their paid user base. Time will tell.

TaskClone · January 4, 2021

3 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I still think that Evernote, in its current form, with its current pricing structure, and given the competition, is not well positioned to grow their paid user base. Time will tell.

I agree, but I think the pivot has been harder for Evernote than others. Evernote gave away so much for so long. Others also had a clearer strategy to go after enterprise so they could give away more at the personal tier to get adoption rates up.

I remember when Mailchimp decided to essentially ditch the transactional aspect of their business and go up-market. They initially grandfathered clients, then decided that wasn't enough revenue and stopped the grandfathering. What a debacle. Probably better for their profit margins, but they lost lots of loyal long-term clients (including us). I'm sure they knew their demand curve quite well and didn't care. It was a business decision and I was disappointed, but I run a business, so I get it. Poor communication is usually the kicker that hurts most.

I just compared Evernote's pricing to Dropbox's. Dropbox is more expensive. I know people don't usually compare the two, but look at the feature set. This is why I say their real issue is an identity issue. At the end of the day, for the mid-level managers, freelancers and small business owners that use Evernote, is their $100 a year worth of value? Think of the opportunity cost of that money. Where that $100 would go otherwise. For those who use Evernote for more than a note-taker, the answer is most likely going to be yes.

As for competitors, first Evernote has to iron out the bugs/glitches and demonstrate there is a future. Once that is done, there is plenty of market for them and others based on simple user preferences. They've survived Microsoft offering a feature-equal, free product that is on many of their customers' computers for free. Look at the task app market (the other market I'm in). There are literally dozens of quite similar players with no one winning on features alone. Everybody's productivity seems fiercely personal.

As you say though, "Time will tell".

Wanderling Reborn · January 4, 2021

51 minutes ago, TaskClone said:

I agree, but I think the pivot has been harder for Evernote than others. Evernote gave away so much for so long. Others also had a clearer strategy to go after enterprise so they could give away more at the personal tier to get adoption rates up.

I remember when Mailchimp decided to essentially ditch the transactional aspect of their business and go up-market. They initially grandfathered clients, then decided that wasn't enough revenue and stopped the grandfathering. What a debacle. Probably better for their profit margins, but they lost lots of loyal long-term clients (including us). I'm sure they knew their demand curve quite well and didn't care.  It was a business decision and I was disappointed, but I run a business, so I get it. Poor communication is usually the kicker that hurts most.

I just compared Evernote's pricing to Dropbox's. Dropbox is more expensive. I know people don't usually compare the two, but look at the feature set. This is why I say their real issue is an identity issue. At the end of the day, for the mid-level managers, freelancers and small business owners that use Evernote, is their $100 a year worth of value? Think of the opportunity cost of that money. Where that $100 would go otherwise. For those who use Evernote for more than a note-taker, the answer is most likely going to be yes.

As for competitors, first Evernote has to iron out the bugs/glitches and demonstrate there is a future. Once that is done, there is plenty of market for them and others based on simple user preferences. They've survived Microsoft offering a feature-equal, free product that is on many of their customers' computers for free. Look at the task app market (the other market I'm in). There are literally dozens of quite similar players with no one winning on features alone. Everybody's productivity seems fiercely personal.

As you say though, "Time will tell".

But most people don't see Evernote as a Dropbox, they see it as a note taking / information organizing tool. And looking at Dropbox... I can get the entire Office suite (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook) + 1TB of storage for $50 a year under MS' HUP that most people whose employers use O365 would be eligible for. Dropbox has something like 15 mln paid users and its revenue growth is slowing down and about half that of MS (with about 200 mln paid O365 accounts) and both are way behind Google. Dropbox has the same issue as EN, it doesn't have good conversion rates from free to paid (IIRC theirs was something like 3%) and is overpriced.

I also doubt that the majority of paid Premium EN users are "mid-level managers, freelancers and small business owners". Some of them are, of course, but the majority are just private individuals getting EN for themselves. EN business plan was not exactly a shining success, to date.

Them surviving MS' free offering is due to timing. During the high point of Evernote (2009 to 2013 or so) Onenote was not a serious competitor - it was forgotten by MS' own marketing, obscure, and unavailable outside of Windows (or available in a severely crippled form). Back then, Evernote was the name everyone talked about, it got tremendous exposure, and built a large user base. I bet that the majority of current paid users had first started with Evernote five or more years ago. By the time MS' got more serious about Onenote (which they still don't market too well), Evernote has already grabbed its chunk of loyal user base. And once you really get used to a specific product, it's easier to pay what was then a reasonable subscription price, than to change to something completely different with its own share of issues. I agree, nobody's winning on features alone, but it's hard for EN to win on features + price without making that combination far more appealing.

TechPerplexed · January 4, 2021

2 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Back then, Evernote was the name everyone talked about,

Not to mention it was basically shoved down people's throats because it was preinstalled and unremovable on every Android phone I had back then.

In fact the reason I had Premium until last month is because I factory reset my old Note 4 about two years ago and after installation received 120 points for signing in to Evernote, which turned out to be one additional year of Premium.

Brian Handscomb · January 4, 2021

On Mac in the "bad old days" of the launch of version 6 (late 2014) and the IMHO bad UI changes that version brought I rolled back not to 5.7.x but to 5.6.x on my "work laptop" (I don't use "local" notebooks so it's not a big issue), though I left 5.7.x on another machine. For me this by now ancient version continued to work PERFECTLY until the day in November I needed to install "Big Sur" and the "ancient" version of Evernote crashed on launch... So I downloaded the then latest Evernote, seeing version "10" and thinking "wow I must have missed hearing about so many versions"... Nope, they skipped a bunch of version numbers and in my opinion "ruined it completely".

I did briefly put the "legacy" version 7.14.1 on my work laptop but it didn't "feel" right so again did a "roll back" to the "real Evernote" 7.14 version taken from its announcement post, ensuring to disable the update mechanism. I feel that are still things that my beloved version 5 did (does) better, but still a better application than what appeared as "the new Evernote"...

Today I read the "we goofed" (state of the product) blog post from December which addresses some concerns but to me only partially addresses the problem. Yes communication was bad but with SO MANY missing features (it didn't even have "settings" when I looked at v10 in November) I personally believe what SHOULD have been done is restore the "real" older version(s) on the download page alongside the new version, not some slightly mangled "Legacy" version buried on a too hard to find (IMHO) support page and actually let people CHOOSE whether they want to live on the cutting edge or use a fully featured version. Just take a look at LibreOffice for an example of this in action!

The irony for me is that the old version 5 Mac icon actually fits better with the visual design of Big Sur than the newer version 7 Mac icon.

jlady · January 4, 2021

On 12/1/2020 at 11:45 PM, WilliamL said:

I truly don’t get the hysteria around the legacy app which exists in these forums. What is this mysterious bug people speak of that means you need support and won’t get it? It’s stable. It’s getting exhausting now cause here’s the thing - if you want to leave, that is your choice, no judgement, we are customers and have the right to use what we feel suits us best.

Agreed. I'm puzzled with all the comments on how awful it is. The implementation of tags still beats anything other application I've encountered. I'm happy with the new version. The ability to choose pre-defined headers was a much needed improvement.

CalS · January 4, 2021

@Brian Handscomb @jlady

Glad V10 works for you. The commotion you hear is from customers like me whose use case of EN has been mangled, no drama, mangled by the new release.

Over the past 10 years I have become paperless using EN, leveraging the features of the product. More than a few of those features were removed and have made it nigh on impossible for me to get anything done in an effective manner with V10. And it is slow as molasses in the winter time to boot. Net of it all, it's a use case thing.

So I stick with 6.25.1 on Windows. Just hoping EN rolls back the features (they have not been specific as to which) and improves speed. Don't really want to migrate to something else, way too much work.

andresmmujica · January 4, 2021

On 10/20/2020 at 5:42 PM, Chieff said:

Thanks Metrodon,

I'm just so confused as to their priorities and perceptions of how I use it. Moving? My life is in there.

mine too... they don't understand us

Brian Handscomb · January 4, 2021

1 hour ago, CalS said:

@Brian Handscomb

Glad V10 works for you.

Didn't say that... far from it... In terms of "live clients" I still have as far back as 4.6.2 Windows and 5.6.2 Mac and am not seeing any problem. In fact the only "problem" I have with 7.14 Mac is unlike my "beloved" 5.6/5.7 clients it seems 7.14 seems to want to insist that tables are wider than the notes forcing you to scroll and just like all the 6.x and v7.x clients there is no divider between the note title and the note body... The latter is a minor thing but to me is something I really liked (still like) with v5 Mac.

IMHO when I saw 10.4.3 in November it struck me as something that wasn't even ready for beta testing let alone something released and improved upon already...

I'd love Evernote to about turn and return to the "real applications" they had before the V10 "web site in a wrapper" solution (similar to how WinAmp 5 went back to the WinAmp 2 code and abandoned the majority of the WinAmp 3 code) but it is clear the development version of the "sunk cost fallacy" is at work. I will continue to happily use my PRE-V10 clients, until something happens to force me to move my 10 years worth of notes elsewhere...

CalS · January 4, 2021

54 minutes ago, Brian Handscomb said:

Didn't say that... far from it... In terms of "live clients" I still have as far back as 4.6.2 Windows and 5.6.2 Mac and am not seeing any problem. In fact the only "problem" I have with 7.14 Mac is unlike my "beloved" 5.6/5.7 clients it seems 7.14 seems to want to insist that tables are wider than the notes forcing you to scroll and just like all the 6.x and v7.x clients there is no divider between the note title and the note body... The latter is a minor thing but to me is something I really liked (still like) with v5 Mac.

IMHO when I saw 10.4.3 in November it struck me as something that wasn't even ready for beta testing let alone something released and improved upon already...

I'd love Evernote to about turn and return to the "real applications" they had before the V10 "web site in a wrapper" solution (similar to how WinAmp 5 went back to the WinAmp 2 code and abandoned the majority of the WinAmp 3 code) but it is clear the development version of the "sunk cost fallacy" is at work. I will continue to happily use my PRE-V10 clients, until something happens to force me to move my 10 years worth of notes elsewhere...

My bad, sorry about that.

Wanderling Reborn · January 4, 2021

16 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

Not to mention it was basically shoved down people's throats because it was preinstalled and unremovable on every Android phone I had back then.

In fact the reason I had Premium until last month is because I factory reset my old Note 4 about two years ago and after installation received 120 points for signing in to Evernote, which turned out to be one additional year of Premium.

Well, back around 2009 I actually actively went out of my way to get Evernote working on my Windows Mobile phone - with no shoving. Back then, it was probably the only really useful service of its kind, and after a while I did not mind paying what then was a reasonable subscription fee. OneNote back then sucked even on Windows Mobile, and the only other service I kind of liked was Springpad, but they didn’t last. EN certainly had momentum.

TechPerplexed · January 6, 2021

I appreciate your experience, but that was not entirely the point I was trying to make... I think that a lot of people like myself would never even have considered Evernote if they hadn't appeared EVERYWHERE or if they hadn't thrown around free premium years like candy. I swallowed the hook and even after they upped the price to ridiculous heights I kept paying because there wasn't a viable alternative.

Then again I agree with you 100% that this is no longer the case, I believe there are ample alternatives now to suit just about everyone's needs and wants.

Only the truly loyal seem to stick it out with Evernote to the bitter end, and even in those ranks I see some discomfort with the new version v10.

As you and others have been saying, only time will tell where this will be going... with free products like Joplin adding new and exciting features by the minute (today they announced their new experimental personal server and official plugin repository for example), it will be a hard sell for Evernote to attract new customers!

Skidder · January 6, 2021

Why does the app now not work on my Iphone 6

gazumped · January 6, 2021

10 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

I think that a lot of people like myself would never even have considered Evernote if they hadn't appeared EVERYWHERE

I think that's called marketing...

10 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

Only the truly loyal seem to stick it out with Evernote to the bitter end

I'm still here, though I have an exit plan. I've adopted the Starship Trooper attitude to applications - "you're my preference - until you stop working or I find a better one." (Also known as Rasczak's Rule)

10 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

even in those ranks I see some discomfort with the new version v10.

Ya think???

10 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

it will be a hard sell for Evernote to attract new customers!

Just did a quick search for 'best note-taking app' - guess which one got a mention every single time...

The new app (won't dignify it with a version) is probably good for most users who've not experienced Evernote before, and don't need most of the advanced features. Students and general-purpose note-takers should do fine.

Those with workflows geared towards clipping and importing data, not so much. 😒

Display___Name · January 6, 2021

I've just upgraded to the Legacy version as version 10 was driving me insane.

As a user of 8+ years at Premium I felt compelled to add my voice to those calling for the powers that be at Evernote to review why this product needed to be changed so drastically.

As things stand, PITA that it is, I will not be renewing my subscription. Good luck attracting more non-paying customers.

s2sailor · January 6, 2021

13 hours ago, TechPerplexed said:

Only the truly loyal seem to stick it out with Evernote to the bitter end, and even in those ranks I see some discomfort with the new version v10.

Maybe, but I think most of us are pragmatic. Sure, we use and like Evernote and hope they succeed. That is why we are here, but if the pain is great enough and there is a better alternative out there, I'll jump ship and not look back. There is a lot of new and interesting development in this app space, which I follow, but for my needs, currently the EN legacy version is still the best.

TechPerplexed · January 6, 2021

Pragmatic is the way to be If you are happy with a product, stay. Once you are unhappy, go (if you can *). You are shown no loyalty from Evernote (or other companies for that matter), so no need to stay loyal yourself.

*) It's the "if you can" that had me upset for a while, because I couldn't. Luckily nowadays one can, if one wishes. To me that made all the difference in the world

DTLow · January 6, 2021

40 minutes ago, TechPerplexed said:

If you are happy with a product, stay. Once you are unhappy, go (if you can *).

Before I commit to any service I made sure I have an easy exit
Evernote (Legacy) meets this requirement with the export feature

TechPerplexed · January 6, 2021

Yes but then you need something to exit TO. Hence the need for competing products, which thankfully exist in abundance today.

CalS · January 6, 2021

23 minutes ago, TechPerplexed said:

Yes but then you need something to exit TO. Hence the need for competing products, which thankfully exist in abundance today.

All with such a variance in feature sets which satisfy different use cases better and worse. I've looked and none work as well for me and my use case as 6.25.1. A major PITA coming if EN does not add back chunks of the removed features. No single provider solution anymore, sub optimal all around me, add products and change process. Geez.

QFieldBoden · January 6, 2021

4 hours ago, DTLow said:

Before I commit to any service I made sure I have an easy exit
Evernote (Legacy) meets this requirement with the export feature

I know what you mean about being able to get your notes out of Evernote by exporting ALL notes to a single ENEX file, I do that as a backup. My question is what do you currently think is the best thing to actually do WITH that ENEX file in terms of other services?

Just picking your brains!

Thanks.

DTLow · January 6, 2021

43 minutes ago, QFieldBoden said:

My question is what do you currently think is the best thing to actually do WITH that ENEX file in terms of other services?

Some services are able to import directly from the Evernote app, or from the .enex file

Personally, as part of my backups I run a weekly export in .html format
The notes are read-able using any browser app

Hate the new Evernote

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