Stop focusing on being a todo app and improve the note taking experience

[brenter 9]

I admit I have not used the task features in evernote. Why? I had been a loyal user since 2008. Evernote was for storing... notes. I haven't been a subscriber in over a year and have sadly moved to onenote. I still miss things from evernote, but the handwriting experience is appalling. I often check to see what evernote is up to and all I seem to see is tasks tasks tasks. What happened to evernote? Why is a NOTE taking app focusing on TASKS? We have task apps for that.

I'm really curious why evernote has focused so much on this... were people asking for a todo app in evernote more than a better handwriting experience?

 We're in 2022. And yes, HTML can support this. Tablets with pencils are here to stay, and tons of people will not use evernote because of this. 

I would love to have a reason to honestly give evernote my money again. Please focus on note taking and improve the experience for those of us who use tablets. Also please add password protection/encryption to notebooks not just the entire app. 

[PinkElephant 8,111]

If you want to share your ideas with other users, you are doing fine here. Just expect a lively discussion.

If you want to reach EN, use the feedback function, or a support ticket.

Tasks have been generally welcomed by the community here, and I think many more users. Most critical posts here IMHO show that the main advantage of EN Tasks over Task Managers have not yet been fully understood:

EN Tasks make notes actionable. You have all the information in a note, and the attached task(s) control what happens next. While it happens, you continue to add information to the note, until the job is done.

EN without Tasks holds the information, and Task Managers control actions, but lacking the information.

Without trying, you won‘t find out what are your personal use cases for this feature.

P.S. For the use with Apple Pencil there are better apps. You con continue to bang your head against the wall (I want it in EN, bang bang), or use the door (an app like GoodNotes 5 in my case, or many other good handwriting apps).

[agsteele 2,949]

Actually I do think that there was more clamour for tasks than hand writing. But that's my perception.

There are a number of other threads which answer the hand writing question with posts even today. 

[brenter 9]

Well I hope there was more clamour for tasks if they've been focusing on it so much.

TBG, It's late and I feel like complaining because I'm frustrated with my current setup so here I am =). And Thanks Pink, I have used the feeback button. I also use a combo of notability (for doc markup) and onenote for general notes. Ultimately I may end up adding evernote back into my work flow for purely text based, non-password-protection-needed info. 

And yes there is probably a better use for tasks in notes, I really haven't given it the time. If I end up adding evernote into my work flow I'll certainly play with it more. 

[WilliamL 654]

3 hours ago, brenter said:

I admit I have not used the task features in evernote. Why? I had been a loyal user since 2008. Evernote was for storing... notes. I haven't been a subscriber in over a year and have sadly moved to onenote. I still miss things from evernote, but the handwriting experience is appalling. I often check to see what evernote is up to and all I seem to see is tasks tasks tasks. What happened to evernote? Why is a NOTE taking app focusing on TASKS? We have task apps for that.

I'm really curious why evernote has focused so much on this... were people asking for a todo app in evernote more than a better handwriting experience?

 We're in 2022. And yes, HTML can support this. Tablets with pencils are here to stay, and tons of people will not use evernote because of this. 

I would love to have a reason to honestly give evernote my money again. Please focus on note taking and improve the experience for those of us who use tablets. Also please add password protection/encryption to notebooks not just the entire app. 

I use the tasks feature a fair bit and many others do too, it might not be part of your use case but being so dismissive because you dont use it isnt exactly the best look.  I cant see any issue with the note taking experience on the ipad, as far as I can tell it is very similar to the desk top app - can you elaborate as to why the experience is poor on tablets?

[kcreamer 1]

I am probably too late to this conversation. Evernote has a nice checklist feature I use within notes. But as an actual task management tool, I have no interest in Evernote. I’ve been using OmniFocus across all of my devices and it is a fully-fleshed out task management system. It even does pretty well for one-person project management. And there are plenty other task management tools out there - what was the rationale for Evernote devoting precious resources to the development of tasks instead of continuing to improve an excellent note organization system?

Have to admit I don’t have an opinion about Pencil in Evernote. I’d like to see things like expanded support for links between apps within the OSes out there.  I love linking within Evernote, but it would be GREAT to be able to link from a note to an OmniFocus task, for example. I am able to link from an OmniFocus task to an Evernote note. Not trying to hype Omni here, but making Evernote work with as many other productivity apps would be a very good way to continue to increase the value of this app against its competitors. 
 

One last shot: Even if you don’t focus on interaction in the mobile app environments, you could focus more on quality control. I think tasks preceded the annoying defect that duplicates messages frequently (seems to happen most if I am editing between two devices. I do not have time to clean up after a product synchronization issue, and I am becoming frustrated trying to figure out which note is the current one. This seems like a core function not working in the app. 
 

I’m just not sure of Evernote’s game plan. I hope you aren’t losing in the note taking & organization market while you’re chasing some other sector you hope to dominate to grow the user base. You know?

Best of luck with the changes coming with the acquisition. I will be watching to see what your focus areas will be as the new management takes over. 

[PinkElephant 8,111]

A lot of words, and only for this: It is a misunderstanding of what is tasks about.

EN tasks is mostly a tool to make notes actionable. That is its primary objective, and you can see that it is because all tasks need to be embedded into notes. That meeting with some open issues: Add some tasks to the meeting note. That lead to a potential customer, after a first contact: Add a task or several, for the follow up activities. That new device you purchased: Add a task to check it over before the warranty expires. And so on.

You can use EN as a task manager as well. It will work as a simple task manager, but will not play in the same league as dedicated task managers. It does not intent to do, and „proving“ that it doesn’t misses the point.