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How Long Can We Realistically Expect Evernote to Exist?


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Just thought this would be good for us to discuss since most of us here use Evernote as our external brain.

I am confident that Microsoft for example, will be around for many years to come, possibly over 100 years from now still running strong based on their current hold of the market. 

Do you think Evernote will be here for the long run? If so, why and how? If not, why? 

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On 4/15/2021 at 1:35 PM, Matthew85 said:

Do you think Evernote will be here for the long run?

I think Evernote will continue to exist as a service  
No time guarantees - everyone should have an exit plan   
Fortunately, Evernote makes it easy to export our data and move on

For myself, I will switch products if/when I find a better fit for my requirements   
imho  Evernote Legacy is the best product for me currently

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8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I think Evernote will continue to exist as a service for some users   
No time guarantees - everyone should have an exit plan   
Fortunately, Evernote makes it easy to export our data and move on

For myself, I will switch products if/when I find a better fit for my requirements   
imho  Evernote Legacy is the best product for me currently

I find that interesting, Legacy version. Which version are you using? Windows or Mac? and what do you like better about the Legacy version? 

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6 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

I find that interesting, Legacy version. Which version are you using? Windows or Mac?

I'm a Mac and IOS user

>>and what do you like better about the Legacy version? 

it works 🙂   
The v10  product is a work-in-progress   
specifically my key concerns are lack of scripting integration, import folders

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IMHO this is all going to be pointless speculation.  Evernote do not discuss their finances or their future plans in public, and no-one has any 'special' knowledge of their deliberations. We do know that a very large number of people have downloaded and installed the software - and by 'large' I mean somewhere around the total number of Windows 10 users - which is a user-base that all software companies (except Facebook and Apple) would cheerfully kill for.

Evernote is pretty much guaranteed enough of an an active user base to fund its day to day operations for the forseeable future.  Whether those operations are suitable for your particular purposes is a purely personal decision.  If doesn't suit your needs, then of course you should look around.  But bear in mind that no software is perfect,  and there will always be claims that a new app is "better than the rest". 

It will be a judgement call whether it's worth it to endure the extra actions and learning curve required for a migration and 'serious' use.

I'm also currently using the 'old' Windows 6.25 and Android 8.33 versions because I'm very aware of their shortcomings,  and I can work around them.  I most emphatically do NOT need the extra stress of learning a new set of menus, features and new drawbacks on top of doing my existing day job.

I'll continue doing that until either 1) I'm very sure that version 10 is the equal of the older versions or 2) Evernote withdraws access to their servers for the old version.  This last does not seem likely (and may not be possible) for some considerable time.

I do have an exit strategy (and daily backups) in case v10 does not fit my requirements,  and while I very much hope Evernote will get its act together soon,  I'm not bound to the Evernote eco-system.  This would not be the first time that I've changed app providers because there was a better option available... 

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No service lasts forever, but the good services provide easy exit routes. Evernote has the .enex file exports which are easily imported to Apple Notes etc. They have good export options and so I don't feel locked in. I've been trying Bear, Apple Notes, One Note and Day One for the past two years alongside Evernote and the elephant still seems to be the best. Apple Notes is probably the closest to Evernote these days as it really has come on leaps and bounds. For all that Apple touts their privacy and encryption, they have the same at rest encryption on their servers that Evernote does and the same type of in transit encryption that Evernote does.

Google have closed many apps and services but nobody really speculates about their longevity. Same with Microsoft closing services and retiring older app versions. At least Evernote have their legacy apps for power users that need features not currently found in v10. For me, an average user across 4 platforms for home and work, v10 is great and the innovation speed at Evernote is far better now.

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When EN was founded, the original CEO wanted EN to be a 100-year company.

Sadly he left EN few years later and EN no longer officially wants to be a 100-yr company.

I don't see how EN can grow. Cross platform note taking is no longer a novelty. Many others like Microsoft, Google etc. offer it for free.

If you keep notes as Word DOCX files [not taking of OneNote here] you can open it in mobiles and edit it using free Word software. Keeping notes in a proprietary format is no good. While EN uses HTML like format it is not exactly plain HTML.

How long EN lasts is a difficult question to answer. Even if Microsoft goes bust, there is enough support for DOCX file format to remain editable for a very long time.

As long as you can keep your data in an editable format, it hardly matters how long EN last.

We should focus to our data rather than application we use to process that data.

I keep my notes as DOCX, HTML & RTF in Dropbox & OneDrive. These are accessible in mobiles too and I can search inside those files in desktop and mobile (both Dropbox and OneDrive now offers content search even for free users). So I am no longer tied to any proprietary applications. As long as I have access to any app that can open DOCX/HTML/RTF I am safe.

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Hi.

4 minutes ago, Vidalia said:

Sadly he left EN few years later and EN no longer officially wants to be a 100-yr company.

You know this how? Given the amount of effort they're putting into updating their product on an almost weekly basis,  they still seem determined to provide some level of service to their users.

6 minutes ago, Vidalia said:

Keeping notes in a proprietary format is no good. While EN uses HTML like format it is exactly plain HTML.

Doesn't matter what format you store notes in as long as they can be extracted into a usable format.  EN's native format is not just plain old HTML,  but all notes,  attachments and images can be extracted to standard formats individually or in bulk at any time.

8 minutes ago, Vidalia said:

I keep my notes as DOCX, HTML & RTF in Dropbox & OneDrive.

If that suits your level of access and use case,  that's fine - I have everything except most images and books in Evernote. It's all manageable and searchable from one point - including the OCR'd content of all notes and images.  That still satisfies my needs as noted above.

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5 hours ago, Steven Eff said:

Apple Notes is probably the closest to Evernote these days as it really has come on leaps and bounds.

Have you tried exporting data from Apple Nates?   
Another concern is no support for organization with Tags methodology

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7 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Have you tried exporting data from Apple Nates?   
Another concern is no support for organization with Tags methodology

 

That is one area where Apple haven't caught up. Their export function is getting a user to laboriously copy and paste really. I use Apple devices mostly but I've got an Evernote account as it was the service back in the day. There are others which have caught up, like Apple Notes, in terms of regular use but Evernote is still in front with search, result highlighting, OCR and web functionality. After a couple of stagnant years, it feels as if EN is finally innovating again.

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You'd be a fool to use Apple Notes as they want you to be stuck in their ecosystem. There would be no good way of exporting notes across platforms easily. 

Joplin looks attractive however. I like the simplicity and the fact that it is plain text format. Which will last forever literally. 

 

Thoughts on Joplin vs. Evernote? 

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29 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

You'd be a fool to use Apple Notes as they want you to be stuck in their ecosystem. There would be no good way of exporting notes across platforms easily. 

Joplin looks attractive however. I like the simplicity and the fact that it is plain text format. Which will last forever literally. 

 

Thoughts on Joplin vs. Evernote? 

Joplin is not exactly 'plain' text. They use mark down  format, and this is sometimes limiting and less expressive than an XML based format like enml. 

ENML is unfortunately much more verbose, but very well defined in a xml scheme.

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7 hours ago, gazumped said:

You know this how? Given the amount of effort they're putting into updating their product on an almost weekly basis,  they still seem determined to provide some level of service to their users.

Yeah! Kodak, DeLorean, NOKIA, MySpace, etc. were probably also pretty determined... but they failed with execution at the some point in time... 😉

(To be clear, simple explanation for those nerds who don't get sarcasm: good intention doesn't always equal abilities to perform...)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions | "Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works"

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My subscription comes due in November.  Not sure if things like speed and comparable feature to 6.25.1 will be sorted by then.  If not October will be a logical time to evaluate alternatives, V10 or something else.  Upside is if I switch I can continue use EN as Basic user and have a data store as I migrate, pending of course EN not changing the rules for Basic accounts. 

To date though I still don't see anything else in the market with the completeness of either version of EN for my use case.  I can brute force some of the workflow shortcomings of V10 with AHK but I can't fix the painful slowness of the app.  If things aren't sorted and 6.25 looks to have some legs I might extend a year.  Version 6.25.1 just works fast and efficiently as opposed to the click and lag monster that is V10.

One bit of early work I have started is porting notes from my Local notebooks.  I have already duplicated 6000 of my 8000 local notes to a simple windows folder set up.  Easy in my use case as most of those notes contain attachments of some sort.  They don't change, they exist for the odd lookup.

Time will tell.

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52 minutes ago, CalS said:

If things aren't sorted and 6.25 looks to have some legs I might extend a year.

I faced that decision last Nov, and extended Premium subscription for a year     
I won't be extending again

>Not sure if things like speed and comparable feature to 6.25.1 will be sorted by then

My "comparable feature" concerns focus on script integration; for me Applescript on a Mac     
I've lost any hope/expectation of this being implemented in the Version 10 product
 

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I have exported all of my notes in html format.

The continuing problems with V10, plus the issues I have had with using EN and making it work effectively have moved me to the opposition and my subscription expires in May.

I may renew, as I have nearly ten years of notes and commitment invested, but I'm open to moving away.

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12 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I faced that decision last Nov, and extended Premium subscription for a year     
I won't be extending again

Wow, that feels like quite a milestone if you're planning to let your subscription lapse, given you've been one of the biggest Evernote fans in these forums for many years. Do you already know what product will replace Evernote for you?

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13 minutes ago, DTLow said:

My "comparable feature" concerns focus on script integration; for me Applescript on a Mac

For your sake I hope this gets added, but if tags are truly only used by 2-5% (whatever the number was) of the user base, then the number of folks that use scripting is probably countable on one or two hands.  I will be very surprised if it gets added.  It was only ever a Mac feature to start with.

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6 hours ago, DTLow said:

Have you tried exporting data from Apple Nates?   
Another concern is no support for organization with Tags methodology

It sucks trying to get it out of Apple Notes. I love both products and use both but for someone looking to leave AN completely there aren’t very good options. Importing is great. Exporting not so much. 

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Just like Microsoft and Google... Apple has entirely abandoned entire applications before (see Aperture photo editing app).  It seems much less likely that Evernote will not abandon their entire business.   If they start to fail, I am confident they will end up getting acquired and there will be time to get out.

For users like @DTLow and @CalS... I am really surprised to hear that you would consider not renewing until at least a year after you have moved to another service.  We are not talking about a huge cost of carrying the subscription an extra year after you migrate in case things don't work out.  To each there own, but given the amount of time each of you spend in this forum (I find myself increasingly in that category lately as well), just think of it as a very low entertainment cost for you.

 

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1 hour ago, Paul A. said:

Do you already know what product will replace Evernote for you?

Top of my alternatives list is Devonthink   
- Apple Mac/IOS only; no web    
- solidly integrated with scripting (Applescript)   

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5 minutes ago, aukirk said:

Just like Microsoft and Google... Apple has entirely abandoned entire applications before (see Aperture photo editing app).  It seems much less likely that Evernote will not abandon their entire business.   If they start to fail, I am confident they will end up getting acquired and there will be time to get out.

For users like @DTLow and @CalS... I am really surprised to hear that you would consider not renewing until at least a year after you have moved to another service.  We are not talking about a huge cost of carrying the subscription an extra year after you migrate in case things don't work out.  To each there own, but given the amount of time each of you spend in this forum (I find myself increasingly in that category lately as well), just think of it as a very low entertainment cost for you.

Like I said if at that point in time V10 isn't a good fit for me and I think V 6.25.1 still has legs I will extend another year.  I have zero desire to move to something else based upon startup, conversion, learning, yada yada.  So I would as soon stick with EN. 

And you are right, the $70 isn't a big deal.  I just don't see any reason to pay once I leave the building if things aren't sorted for my use case.  I will ramp out of the product, hope not, but not going to get stupid about it.

I found in my brief forays on a backup (though faster) machine that V10 is so slow as to have me throwing my mouse in no time.  I'm used to entering a search term and having a list with a note displayed in less than a second, from a base of 53,500 notes.  I fear that might not happen any time in the foreseeable future with EN based upon the tech deployed.

Relative to the forums, hey the entertainment is free!  🤣  I find myself posting less these days.  I kind of scan the topics by forum.  Since most of the threads are re something that got trashed I just mark forums as read anymore as there aren't many topics of interest to me.  Can't help folks when something is broke.  😕

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I faced that decision last Nov, and extended Premium subscription for a year     
I won't be extending again

>Not sure if things like speed and comparable feature to 6.25.1 will be sorted by then

My "comparable feature" concerns focus on script integration; for me Applescript on a Mac     
I've lost any hope/expectation of this being implemented in the Version 10 product
 

Wasn't too much of a decision for me last year.  Should be harder this coming November.

Off the top of my head, import folders, file links, sorting by tags, sorting by reminders, saved display settings by tag/search/whatever, encrypted text maintenance, all the extra clicks for hidden functions, effective backup capability, the built in lag for search results to be accurate (this one is mind numbing).  Then the cosmetics that will probably never change like tags on the bottom (though on the top in IOS), all the open space (it's like a big chief tablet and a crayon), the more time consuming search process, lack of control of sync, options in general, and SPEED.  I haven't been that diligent so maybe some of this stuff has been fixed for Windows desktop.

I'm more for getting things done than pretty.  One of these days a company will find the balance.  Even if their programmers have to work harder.

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Interesting that this topic got started, because after having been a huge fan of Evernote for about 6 years and getting to a point where I was shedding paper documents after 'Evernoting' them. But in the last year I have started to get concerned. The two biggest concerns I have are firstly that the document scanning just doesn't seem to work very well anymore and the Office lens on my iPhone seems way better. The second is that Search of OCR'ed text seems very hit and miss now. In the early days it would find the text and put it in a nice yellow box. Doesn't always seem too do that now.

More generally, it seems to be losing its elegant simplicity.

As I started to think about this, I then thought 'what if others start to get disenchanted too?' - and then, if that happens and - like Yahoo, the company fades from its former glory, the problem then would be all that investment I have made in it could be wasted. I am beginning to think that I should just stick to Office for Home and store most docs as just files in OneDrive.

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1 hour ago, twofivepie1 said:

the problem then would be all that investment I have made in it could be wasted

I have over 15k notes stored in Evernote   
No regrets, and no "wasted"   
I  chose the best product for my needs, and I've aways known I can export my data and move on

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Based off some of the comments in this thread I have just downloaded the OneNote Evernote importer app. Interestingly it says this:

Note: This software is still available for you to download and use, but we are no longer actively developing or supporting this tool.

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9 hours ago, twofivepie1 said:

Interesting that this topic got started, because after having been a huge fan of Evernote for about 6 years and getting to a point where I was shedding paper documents after 'Evernoting' them. But in the last year I have started to get concerned. The two biggest concerns I have are firstly that the document scanning just doesn't seem to work very well anymore and the Office lens on my iPhone seems way better. The second is that Search of OCR'ed text seems very hit and miss now. In the early days it would find the text and put it in a nice yellow box. Doesn't always seem too do that now.

More generally, it seems to be losing its elegant simplicity.

As I started to think about this, I then thought 'what if others start to get disenchanted too?' - and then, if that happens and - like Yahoo, the company fades from its former glory, the problem then would be all that investment I have made in it could be wasted. I am beginning to think that I should just stick to Office for Home and store most docs as just files in OneDrive.

Yeah, search of PDFs is less accurate with V10.  Doing the same search on V10 IOS and V6 Windows desktop yields 100 fewer results on V10.  Not a good thing.

Storing docs on OneDrive works well.  That’s where I am porting my local notes, mostly confidential PDFs.  I use BoxCryptor so that everything on the web is encrypted though easily visible on my PC. .  Windows search of file contents is very fast when you index the folders.  Found all this out in the last couple of months. 

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18 hours ago, Steven Eff said:

That is one area where Apple haven't caught up. Their export function is getting a user to laboriously copy and paste really. I use Apple devices mostly but I've got an Evernote account as it was the service back in the day. There are others which have caught up, like Apple Notes, in terms of regular use but Evernote is still in front with search, result highlighting, OCR and web functionality. After a couple of stagnant years, it feels as if EN is finally innovating again.

It's also an Apple only product so you'd better not have any friends who don't use Apple products.

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15 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

You'd be a fool to use Apple Notes as they want you to be stuck in their ecosystem. There would be no good way of exporting notes across platforms easily. 

Joplin looks attractive however. I like the simplicity and the fact that it is plain text format. Which will last forever literally. 

 

Thoughts on Joplin vs. Evernote? 

How do you pay for online note-keeping and sharing with Joplin?

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22 hours ago, Vidalia said:

When EN was founded, the original CEO wanted EN to be a 100-year company.

Sadly he left EN few years later and EN no longer officially wants to be a 100-yr company.

citation badly needed

Quote

I don't see how EN can grow. Cross platform note taking is no longer a novelty. Many others like Microsoft, Google etc. offer it for free.

evernote is not (just) a note taking app. It's a document database.

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If you keep notes as Word DOCX files [not taking of OneNote here] you can open it in mobiles and edit it using free Word software. Keeping notes in a proprietary format is no good. While EN uses HTML like format it is not exactly plain HTML.

DOCX is a proprietary format. Large parts of it are covered under "should work like in Word 2005 (copyright and patent protected)" Also DOCX has no provisions for expressing the relationships between files or for tagging. This is what Evernote is good at.

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How long EN lasts is a difficult question to answer. Even if Microsoft goes bust, there is enough support for DOCX file format to remain editable for a very long time.

As long as you can keep your data in an editable format, it hardly matters how long EN last.

We should focus to our data rather than application we use to process that data.

A large part of Evernote data is the meta information about the document. This is leveraged by the evernote query language which allows very interesting and powerful integrations (see for example filterize or zapier or ifttt). Totally impossible with DOCX and Microsoft products.

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I keep my notes as DOCX, HTML & RTF in Dropbox & OneDrive. These are accessible in mobiles too and I can search inside those files in desktop and mobile (both Dropbox and OneDrive now offers content search even for free users). So I am no longer tied to any proprietary applications. As long as I have access to any app that can open DOCX/HTML/RTF I am safe.

Then you're not using the capabilities of Evernote and would probably be best served by a less powerful solution.

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13 hours ago, s2sailor said:

For your sake I hope this gets added, but if tags are truly only used by 2-5% (whatever the number was) of the user base, then the number of folks that use scripting is probably countable on one or two hands.  I will be very surprised if it gets added.  It was only ever a Mac feature to start with.

if they ever release the linux version it would be nice if it were scriptable. Linux users tend to spend a lot of time in the shell (it makes batch processing easier). I can see shell scripts like:   

for document in `evernote search -tag:mytag`
do
id=`grep 'id:' $document | awk '{print $2}'`
evernote -add-reminder $id -date 2021-05-09T14:23:00
done

or whatever you want to do ...

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14 hours ago, Kolmir said:

Yeah! Kodak, DeLorean, NOKIA, MySpace, etc. were probably also pretty determined... but they failed with execution at the some point in time... 😉

(To be clear, simple explanation for those nerds who don't get sarcasm: good intention doesn't always equal abilities to perform...)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions | "Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works"

The Android app for example has had 7 minor releases in the last 4 months. The old app had that in 4 years. The functionality of v10 on Android is now above that of v8 in most areas, and performance was greatly improved in v10.7.

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19 hours ago, Steven Eff said:

That is one area where Apple haven't caught up. Their export function is getting a user to laboriously copy and paste really. I use Apple devices mostly but I've got an Evernote account as it was the service back in the day. There are others which have caught up, like Apple Notes, in terms of regular use but Evernote is still in front with search, result highlighting, OCR and web functionality. After a couple of stagnant years, it feels as if EN is finally innovating again.

Do you really think Apple wants to implement export? Remember that when iMessage came out they promised to open the wire format and write clients for other platforms. Then after years of waiting for Apple to deliver, a few weeks ago we learnt that Apple didn't do this because it would have allowed people to migrate away.

This is one of the major advantages of Evernote and Google over Microsoft and Apple: Evernote and Google profit from making their work available to all. Both Microsoft and Apple invest billions in freeware with the sole purpose of keeping you bound to their other products.

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On 4/16/2021 at 1:20 PM, s2sailor said:

the number of folks that use scripting is probably countable on one or two hands.  I will be very surprised if it gets added.  It was only ever a Mac feature to start with.

Scripting on Windows was available via the Enscript interface, also MIA in v10
Even less used,  but I know third party Backupery has shut down (edit: app is no longer functional for for EN v10)
 

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5 hours ago, ehrt74 said:

if they ever release the linux version it would be nice if it were scriptable.

There are many additions that would be nice, but their target is the masses and not the outliers.  When the CEO mentioned that new innovations were coming, I was intrigued, and then they announced ... a dashboard.  I’m sure many were happy, but I was disappointed.  It offered nothing to me and indicated the direction they are taking.  If my work OS wasn’t Windows, I would have moved to DevonThink when v10 was released.  V10 is not a bad product and I think it will do well in the market.  It just isn’t the product I wanted, or needed it to be.

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3 hours ago, s2sailor said:

There are many additions that would be nice, but their target is the masses and not the outliers.  When the CEO mentioned that new innovations were coming, I was intrigued, and then they announced ... a dashboard.  I’m sure many were happy, but I was disappointed.  It offered nothing to me and indicated the direction they are taking.  If my work OS wasn’t Windows, I would have moved to DevonThink when v10 was released.  V10 is not a bad product and I think it will do well in the market.  It just isn’t the product I wanted, or needed it to be.

That's an extremely uncharitable reading of the remarkable progress Evernote has been making recently. If you're a web or android client then Evernote has introduced a myriad of new features.

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4 hours ago, ehrt74 said:

That's an extremely uncharitable reading of the remarkable progress Evernote has been making recently. If you're a web or android client then Evernote has introduced a myriad of new features.

I don’t use the web or Android so can’t speak to that but for the other OSes, in areas that are important to me, they have lost ground and are still not on par with the legacy version.  Uncharitable?  No, just calling it like I see it.

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9 hours ago, s2sailor said:

I don’t use the web or Android so can’t speak to that but for the other OSes, in areas that are important to me, they have lost ground and are still not on par with the legacy version.  Uncharitable?  No, just calling it like I see it.

Which other OSs are you talking about? On Mac OS and Windows they haven't lost anything. I can't talk about iOS because it's the smallest platform Evernote currently supports and I don't use it.

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37 minutes ago, ehrt74 said:

On Mac OS and Windows they haven't lost anything.

As i posted above, with the Version 10 product Evernote Win/Mac has lost scripting support   
Also no support for Local Notebooks

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21 hours ago, DTLow said:

Even less used,  but I know third party Backupery has shut down

You sure about that?  I had a response from them last week. Their product does not work with V10 but still works with 6.25.

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4 hours ago, ehrt74 said:

Which other OSs are you talking about? On Mac OS and Windows they haven't lost anything. I can't talk about iOS because it's the smallest platform Evernote currently supports and I don't use it.

V10 for Windows is inferior to V6.25.  As is exhibited in the torrent of posts since October in those forums. 

I’m glad Android and web work for you.  I can’t even access web V10 which says a lot about the scalability of the new web solution.  🙁

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36 minutes ago, CalS said:

VI can’t even access web V10 which says a lot about the scalability of the new web solution.  🙁

How may notes do you have? Have you reported this problem already?

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5 hours ago, CalS said:

You sure about that?  I had a response from them last week. Their product does not work with V10 but still works with 6.25.

 

21 hours ago, gazumped said:

Don't know about the company, but my app is still producing daily local backups here...

I concede that Backupery app functions well with the Evernote Legacy product    
In the context of Evernote v10, the app no longer functions
I edited my port to make the context clearer

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10 hours ago, CalS said:

V10 for Windows is inferior to V6.25.  As is exhibited in the torrent of posts since October in those forums. 

I’m glad Android and web work for you.  I can’t even access web V10 which says a lot about the scalability of the new web solution.  🙁

I don't see how v 6.25 for Windows has lost anything.

They'll probably switch on web v10 for more than 10k notes sometime soon. It is basically the same app as the desktop versions, and they work fine with >10k notes.

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8 minutes ago, ehrt74 said:

I don't see how v 6.25 for Windows has lost anything.

No one is claiming the Legacy product has "lost anything"   
I'm using the product, and the only concern is lack of future upgrades; no enhancements, no bug fixes, ...,    
also Evernote will discontinue data synchronization at some point

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19 hours ago, ehrt74 said:

Which other OSs are you talking about? On Mac OS and Windows they haven't lost anything. I can't talk about iOS because it's the smallest platform Evernote currently supports and I don't use it.

V10 on Mac and Windows has definitely lost function.  No local notebooks, no import folders, no scripting, no local backup and restore, at least as far as I can tell, to name a few.  It is slower to use, and requires more clicks to get most things done.  In general, it is not as functional or useable.  It has gotten better since first released but still not as good as the legacy version.  
 

In the iOS version offline notebooks is still not working for me.  I have one large notebook that will eventually crash the app before it completes.  Once that happens it becomes unstable.  Notes may not display, search becomes hit or miss.  The only fix is to delete the app and reinstall.  I’ve tried this so many times that I now disable offline notebook for this notebook.  I’ve given up trying to get this notebook offline.  The pre-v10 iOS app just worked.

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40 minutes ago, ehrt74 said:

v6.25 is still perfectly usable and will remain so for the foreseeable future

True, or at least we hope, but this recent discussion has been about the back step v10 is, on at least some of the platforms.

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12 hours ago, s2sailor said:

True, or at least we hope, but this recent discussion has been about the back step v10 is, on at least some of the platforms.

Well, it was turned into that discussion, which seems to happen to most threads on this forum. Meanwhile there has been another point release for the android and iOS apps.

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On 4/17/2021 at 4:32 AM, ehrt74 said:

The Android app for example has had 7 minor releases in the last 4 months. The old app had that in 4 years. The functionality of v10 on Android is now above that of v8 in most areas, and performance was greatly improved in v10.7.

 

On 4/17/2021 at 1:46 PM, ehrt74 said:

That's an extremely uncharitable reading of the remarkable progress Evernote has been making recently. If you're a web or android client then Evernote has introduced a myriad of new features.

Interesting perspective on the Android app. I'm curious as to your use case, does it not involve any writing or editing of text notes? Because there are still horrible text editor bugs in the Android app (since before the public launch, six+ months ago) that make writing and editing text on Android a thoroughly unpleasant experience. So much so that I canceled my long-term Premium subscription over it.

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15 hours ago, Paul A. said:

 

Interesting perspective on the Android app. I'm curious as to your use case, does it not involve any writing or editing of text notes? Because there are still horrible text editor bugs in the Android app (since before the public launch, six+ months ago) that make writing and editing text on Android a thoroughly unpleasant experience. So much so that I canceled my long-term Premium subscription over it.

I write notes daily on my Android phone and I haven't noticed any bugs in the text editor.

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On 4/21/2021 at 7:45 AM, ehrt74 said:

I write notes daily on my Android phone and I haven't noticed any bugs in the text editor.

I find that a bit hard to believe, based on my own experience, but perhaps the text editor bugs don't manifest with all configurations. Curious as to what device(s), keyboard, and Android version you use?

Examples of just a couple of the text editor bugs below. Many more posts in the Android beta forums:

 Highlighting text and using shift to change capitalization will DELETE the word instead.

Typing space or enter before a word jumps the word so that you're suddenly entering text in the wrong place. See more here:

 

 

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3 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I find that a bit hard to believe, based on my own experience, but perhaps the text editor bugs don't manifest with all configurations. Curious as to what device(s), keyboard, and Android version you use?

Examples of just a couple of the text editor bugs below. Many more posts in the Android beta forums:

 Highlighting text and using shift to change capitalization will DELETE the word instead.

Typing space or enter before a word jumps the word so that you're suddenly entering text in the wrong place. See more here:

 

 

No, I haven't noticed those bugs. I'm on an S20 using gboard keyboard.

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I'll second the comments about apple notes.  It's the roach motel of note systems - once you check in, you're not going to check out (without a lot of cut and pasting).

Apple notes wins because it is so simple.   But the counter is that it is infuriating in terms of the basic things it doesn't do.  On the plus side for better or worse, apple doesn't change it dramatically like EN, so if you can get used to its limitations, you can settle in for the long haul.

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One aspect keeps me away from Apple notes: There is no real export option to move a hoard of information elsewhere when I want to do this. Once you are in, you depend on 3rd party tools of unknown quality to extract your data.

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On 4/19/2021 at 11:05 AM, ehrt74 said:

v6.25 is still perfectly usable and will remain so for the foreseeable future

The point of a local notebook for me was keeping private information offline.  The fact that they are phasing it out by only having it in the legacy version that will one day go away and become unfeasible is the disappointing part.  Not everyone likes their entire life posted on the internet.  

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On 4/27/2021 at 11:15 PM, SomewhatPresent said:

Not everyone likes their entire life posted on the internet.  

Me either. Which is why I stuck to the Legacy version for the time being and have some ideas about local storage outside of Evernote even if I continue to host my notes there.

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11 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Me either. Which is why I stuck to the Legacy version for the time being and have some ideas about local storage outside of Evernote even if I continue to host my notes there.

Adding file links back might help a bit.  I think they are still broken in V10?

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  • 11 months later...

I paid for the Personal plan a year ago when this discussion was going on. Some things aggravated me about Evernote (I keep a note of improvements I would personally like to see), and I already had a family Microsoft 365 subscription, so I figured I'd give OneNote a shot. Dear lord do I hate OneNote (terrible tagging, terrible sharing of single notes, and I just generally dislike how it functions). I've tried Bear (no Windows app) and Apple Notes (no Windows app) and Joplin (buggy mobile app) and Obsidian (didn't like the mobile app). I keep coming back to Evernote because despite its flaws, it is the most well-rounded app for my needs. I think enough people are invested in it and think it has the best combination of features to keep it going for a while. Plus there seems to be more positive chatter about it online recently. I will be renewing for another year.

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Yes, I agree to the observations, although I have not tried all of the quoted alternatives.

We should not forget that the subscription model is a buffer: Each month only 1/12th of the subscription becomes due. So if 10% cancel in that month, it is less than 1% of the total customer base, and of income. Of course, if this happens over a longer period of time, the impact is the same. But it does not depend on winning over new users all of the time as with selling software.

Only EN could tell the true figures. From the current forum participants (taking the inmates like me out of the equation) I think that there is actually an inflow of new users.

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9 hours ago, scojjac said:

I paid for the Personal plan a year ago when this discussion was going on. Some things aggravated me about Evernote (I keep a note of improvements I would personally like to see), and I already had a family Microsoft 365 subscription, so I figured I'd give OneNote a shot. Dear lord do I hate OneNote (terrible tagging, terrible sharing of single notes, and I just generally dislike how it functions). I've tried Bear (no Windows app) and Apple Notes (no Windows app) and Joplin (buggy mobile app) and Obsidian (didn't like the mobile app). I keep coming back to Evernote because despite its flaws, it is the most well-rounded app for my needs. I think enough people are invested in it and think it has the best combination of features to keep it going for a while. Plus there seems to be more positive chatter about it online recently. I will be renewing for another year.

The closest platform  i have come across is Nimbus. I use both actually Evernote and Nimbus. I'll give a slight advantage to Nimbus (sync and sharing is way better in Nimbus) but I still resist moving my 40 000+ notes. 

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11 hours ago, scojjac said:

I keep coming back to Evernote because despite its flaws, it is the most well-rounded app for my needs. I think enough people are invested in it and think it has the best combination of features to keep it going for a while. Plus there seems to be more positive chatter about it online recently.

My thoughts also - I have tried MANY alternatives and bottom line is none of them have the search capabilities of EN. I also suspect many have not really explored v10 -for example few seem to use the Tasks facility, to me it requires a bit of a rethink but it works VERY well.

Save searches and filters also really useful ETC.

I did experiment with Apple notes but the search is not as good and there is not a real export option.

I also have misgivings about relying on NEW software which is basically being beta tested by paying subscribers.

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It's a use case thing for sure.  I looked at most of the alternatives for my use case and none stacked up to V10.  But then V10 did not stack up to 6.25.  So I opted to roll my own as reported in these forums.  It is a combination of MEGA, Directory Opus, WorkFlowy, and Windows Search with AutoHotKey for streamlining.  Not for everyone..  I exported all of my 57K notes in December.  I've been tweaking it since and am approaching the same level of productivity I had with 6.25.1 as muscle memory has developed.  

I keep checking the forums to see if V10 begins to achieve the speed and UI productivity of 6.25.  I might return if that were to happen.  Meanwhile I keep a basic account, just in case.  🤷‍♂️

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17 hours ago, scojjac said:

I paid for the Personal plan a year ago when this discussion was going on. Some things aggravated me about Evernote (I keep a note of improvements I would personally like to see), and I already had a family Microsoft 365 subscription, so I figured I'd give OneNote a shot. Dear lord do I hate OneNote (terrible tagging, terrible sharing of single notes, and I just generally dislike how it functions). I've tried Bear (no Windows app) and Apple Notes (no Windows app) and Joplin (buggy mobile app) and Obsidian (didn't like the mobile app). I keep coming back to Evernote because despite its flaws, it is the most well-rounded app for my needs. I think enough people are invested in it and think it has the best combination of features to keep it going for a while. Plus there seems to be more positive chatter about it online recently. I will be renewing for another year.

Cant agree more. My story exactly. Leaving EN, coming back to EN, leaving EN, and than coming back again :) Even tried that ugly Devonthink but just cant. So yeah, EN is just all together best rounded up story. Now playing also with Apple notes as a quick capture tool for EN. And EN btw you still suck big time on Ipad with no shortcuts.

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2 hours ago, Frki2 said:

Even tried that ugly Devonthink but just cant

Can you add details about "that ugly Devonthink"   
I'm a satisfied user, primarily because of the scripting integration (Applescript)   
fwiw  Devonthink is Apple platform only,  has no cloud service; no web access.  Our data is stored locally, on our devices
 

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9 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Can you add details about "that ugly Devonthink"   
I'm a user, primarily because of the scripting integration (Applescript)

Not much to add, its just ugly. Looks like designed in 2001, same for UX of devonthink. And dont get me wrong, it is power tool with problems. But generaly it is just plain ugly app with very bad UX. Additionaly there is too much option that average user will never touch or understand. Now i use it as expensive indexer of Synology NAS and for that is excelent as i can search on Mac throug Synology NAS files.

Also, it has problem with syncing, not so frictionless syncing as with EN. Mobile app is also UX nightmare.

 

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Personally I don’t count a NAS as a direct competition. It is build for a different use case, and just the fact it will index files does not qualify it.

The note solutions are pretty barebone, they are clearly build by small dev teams that lack the resources to build something competitive. I run 2 Synology NAS systems myself, I know what I am talking about. There are (semi-)professional solutions for document management running in Docker-installs on a NAS, but this is probably beyond the reach of 95% of all EN users. And they still have a different use case.

Devonthink is a serious contender in the notes app field. But it is self hosted, Mac & iOS only and the power is accompanied by complexity. It is a solution for some, I think, but not for most users.

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1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

Personally I don’t count a NAS as a direct competition. It is build for a different use case, and just the fact it will index files does not qualify it.

The note solutions are pretty barebone, they are clearly build by small dev teams that lack the resources to build something competitive. I run 2 Synology NAS systems myself, I know what I am talking about. There are (semi-)professional solutions for document management running in Docker-installs on a NAS, but this is probably beyond the reach of 95% of all EN users. And they still have a different use case.

Devonthink is a serious contender in the notes app field. But it is self hosted, Mac & iOS only and the power is accompanied by complexity. It is a solution for some, I think, but not for most users.

I wasnt reffering on NAS as competition but that i use Devonthink to index NAS disks and than can actualy search through Alfred on Mac directly NAS files through Devonthink, and for that it is super as i didnt find any other way to search directly Synology NAS files on Mac.

Devonthink is definetely serious contender as for power that he have, but, as i said, his UX is disaster, one of the worst  i saw. Also, look & feel is 2001ish. Also, for 99% users i would say devonthink is total overkill.

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Off topic: Actually you don't need a 3rd party tool for that: If you mount a folder on the Synology in the Mac's Finder, and the folder was indexed by Synologies Universal Search, the index of that folder will be available for the Mac to search. You enter something into the search field in the Finder, and it will use the Universal Search index to locate the file.

To use Spotlight on files on the NAS, you need to sync a folder using Synology Drive. Then the files are on the Mac as well, and Spotlight will work on them. Only problem: Giving the SSD prices of Apple, I won't put much of my NAS content into a synced folder ...

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On 4/5/2022 at 9:17 AM, RobertJLee said:

I have tried MANY alternatives and bottom line is none of them have the search capabilities of EN. I also suspect many have not really explored v10 -for example few seem to use the Tasks facility, to me it requires a bit of a rethink but it works VERY well.

Right on @RobertJLee. I like being able to search mixed media; I regularly take paper notes and scan them (or transcribe them but include the scan because doodles). But I had to respond to you just to say that I love Tasks because my action items have context now. I particularly use the Notes and Due Dates views.

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