Evernote's "exciting news"

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 11/17/2022 at 12:25 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

There really wasn't any hint of that in the announcement. It seems to me that a company wouldn't buy another company if they thought they'd have to rebuild everything right away. Unless, of course, they like doing that sort of thing....

That's a really good question. I've never had any doubts about Evernote's privacy and security. But storing the data under stricter European conditions could only be good.

Not sure I agree. The stricter EU conditions also come with heavy handed and borderline intrusive EU governmental demands.

EU’s resolution on encryption foreshadows likely anti-encryption push | Proton

Statewatch | EU: Anti-encryption Regulation: Presidency compromise proposals for Chapter I and Chapter III

Rights activists slam EU plan for access to encrypted chats | AP News

Wait and see, everything is just speculations now.

[DTLow 5,736]

13 hours ago, SWSL said:

You left Evernote but your signature says legacy user.  I wonder which it is.

Updated to ex-Evernote Legacy user   

>EN offers a free tier and perhaps feel that us paying customers are subsidizing it? 

That's my understanding of how it works, with the objective of converting to paying customers

>but wonder how people might abuse the free tier

Using the product with no intention of ever paying   

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

The stricter EU conditions also come with heavy handed and borderline intrusive EU governmental demands.

Would this apply if Evernote continues to be a separate US entity?

[SWSL 66]

28 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Updated to ex-Evernote Legacy user   

>EN offers a free tier and perhaps feel that us paying customers are subsidizing it? 

That's my understanding of how it works, with the objective of becoming paying customers

>but wonder how people might abuse the free tier

Using the product with no intention of ever paying   

Ah, ok.  Sorry to hear but glad you are still contributing to the discussion, thx.

Gotcha on the abuse explanation.  I didn't know it was a trial thing.   Anyway, free worked to get me hooked!   I now know that this is one of the top services I need on every device.  Why I pay.

[janndk 471]

58 minutes ago, SWSL said:

I didn't know it was a trial thing. 

Free plan is not a trial. However, somebody has to pay the costs - so the bill ends up here at us paying customers. And soon we will probably be asked to pay much much more (Bending Spoons pricing)?

[Alxa 477]

That is some of my fear too. EN now is already somewhat overpriced compared to what you get for the money in the cloud business. You can get a full featured office solution, with tons of cloud storage and note taking, calendar and task integration for less. We all know the product. If the high EN pricing comes from the cost of the storage consumed by free accounts they should stop or limit that tier and better invest the money in development (especially Android platform 😉). No higher prices acceptable on my side with the current state of the product.

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Would this apply if Evernote continues to be a separate US entity?

Honestly I have no idea. If Evernote is a separate US entity, but EU requires that any data held by EU citizens is subject to EU laws, I believe a fairly common approach is to split the servers and keep US customers data in the US and EU customers data in the EU. And it's further complicated if the top level owner is an EU based corporation, as if there's no corresponding US law that clearly proscribes what needs to be done with US customers' or international (non-US and non-EU) customers' data, they are more likely to err on the side of EU law. But  I am not an expert in the international law governing data handling.

[gazumped 11,639]

34 minutes ago, janndk said:

And soon we will probably be asked to pay much much more (Bending Spoons pricing)?

And you say this because?  Again;  Bending Spoons don't get their hands on the keys until next year,  they bought a going concern that they presumably liked,  and there's no indication that they'll do an Elon and sack the staff and impose new prices.  Imaging apps typically cost a lot more than Evernote charges.

22 minutes ago, Alxa said:

EN now is already somewhat overpriced compared to what you get for the money in the cloud business.

Bought an Outlook 365 or Adobe app licence recently?  Evernote Professional is one of my lower-range subscriptions.  I do have apps that were bought for peanuts - they work as well as you should expect...

5 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

EU requires that any data held by EU citizens was subject to EU laws

Evernote,  and Google were already compliant with the applicable regulations.  User data is likely to be stored exactly where it always used to be - I doubt Spoons have petabytes of storage space available...

[janndk 471]

14 minutes ago, gazumped said:

57 minutes ago, janndk said:

And soon we will probably be asked to pay much much more (Bending Spoons pricing)?

And you say this because? ...

Seems that all Bending Spoons apps follow the same price structure, so why would Evernote be different?
 

14 minutes ago, gazumped said:

42 minutes ago, Alxa said:

EN now is already somewhat overpriced compared to what you get for the money in the cloud business.

Bought an Outlook 365 or Adobe app licence recently?  Evernote Professional is one of my lower-range subscriptions.  I do have apps that were bought for peanuts - they work as well as you should expect...

Evernote Personal cost about the same as Microsoft 365 Personal

[gazumped 11,639]

1 minute ago, janndk said:

Seems that all Bending Spoons apps follow the same price structure, so why would Evernote be different?

Not quite all - they developed a Covid app for free for the Italian government.  None of the other apps strike me as note-taking related,  but your opinion is as good as mine on this - we'll just have to agree to disagree!

4 minutes ago, janndk said:

Evernote Personal cost about the same as Microsoft 365 Personal

So not that wildly overpriced then?

[janndk 471]

20 minutes ago, gazumped said:

25 minutes ago, janndk said:

Evernote Personal cost about the same as Microsoft 365 Personal

So not that wildly overpriced then?

I'm on Evernote Professional plan, so I pay more for EN than for the whole Microsoft 365 package.

[gazumped 11,639]

Well - exchange rates and taxes;  I'm the same for memberships but I pay slightly less for Evernote than (family) 365.

Without getting into a pointless detailed analysis of relative worth,  MS describe their offering as "seriously simplify creating, collaborating, and sharing your work"... sounds familiar from somewhere...

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

2 hours ago, gazumped said:

Not quite all - they developed a Covid app for free for the Italian government.  None of the other apps strike me as note-taking related,  but your opinion is as good as mine on this - we'll just have to agree to disagree!

So not that wildly overpriced then?

It depends on (1) what you are paying and (2) what you're paying it for.

Evernote is $8.99 per month so about $108 per year; you get a single service with unlimited storage for whatever you put in this service. (But 10 Gb monthly upload limit).

O365 is $99 per year, or $50 if you qualify for Home Use Program (which would cover pretty much anyone who works for a company which is on one of business O365 plans, at least I qualified at 2 different companies).  You get 1 TB of Onedrive space that can be used by any app, Excel, Word, Outlook, Powerpoint and Onenote that can be installed on (I think) up to 5 computers with same MS email (and mobile devices don't count toward this limit). 

So, for some people, Evernote is well priced. For others, it's overpriced compared to O365. 

[jefito 5,589]

re: paying for free users

Not an issue with me. Evernote provides me with a service that works for me, at a cost that seems fair, and that I can afford, and I'm happy to do pay for it. That's pretty much what matters to me. If other folks are able to use the free version (I probably couldn't, at least easily), that's fine by me. Life's too short for me to be worrying about who's getting a better deal on my nickel, with respect to Evernote, or other parts of my world for that matter. I've much more important things to worry about -- in fact, I've never, ever thought of it in those terms before.

Maybe I'd rather be seen to be a sucker than a Scrooge...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

In my case, I don’t remember being frustrated over any perceived lack of speed in development, lack of “new” features (besides encryption), or price points. What I do mind are bugs, data loss, data corruption, data security issues, and the sudden loss or deprecation of features. I have a pretty simple use case, even if my number of notes and some attachment sizes are unusually large. Yet, Evernote has somehow managed to code my workflow out of its current iteration.

From the new owners, I’d like to see better reliability, better support for users who have a relatively large amount of data / number of notes, and better encryption. But, in the end, I’d need them to double down on a few of the core features. Not being able to select more than fifty notes at a time is a deal breaker (no price point is reasonable for me) and being limited by the hd storage on my computer is a major pain point (grudgingly pay). If the free tier for “abusers” like me disappeared without these two things, it’d be tough to hang on. Zero-knowledge encryption for some or all of our database would be a nice enhancement of the paltry encryption options that currently exist. I always liked the goal of Evernote as your second brain—I never needed it to be a replacement for Word or PowerPoint. I’d pay to see this get realized.

[Paul A. 608]

Some good discussion in this thread. What I'm looking forward to is seeing Bending Spoons articulate their vision for Evernote. It will be interesting to see whether and how much their vision differs from the vision Ian Small has been outlining in his blog posts and occasional interviews.

It will also be interesting to see whether Small leaves Evernote the day the acquisition closes or whether he sticks around for a while, and same with some of the other Evernote leadership.

 

[Alvin- 4]

Evernote is a special and even exclusive company. They have more than a decade history and tried different kinds of things. For most people who don't always take notes and integrate note taking into task management, and who don't explore more about note taking, they may find Apple Notes, Craft and especially Notion more suitable and even cheaper for them. Especially Evernote has recently and quietly raised their subscription prices (Personal to a bit more expensive than Professional, and Professional is ~50% more expensive than before).

I have mixed feelings about Evernote. On one hand I can live without it and while the app navigation (bottom left button for shortcuts, notebooks, tag and tasks), comprehensive search (can find notebooks and tags as well as allow users to filter or change the order of search results...), table allowing all formats including photos so that I can use it to organise my thinking, different colors of highlight to allow me to concentrate on reading what I wrote. This is what other apps may not, or choose not to make the above better because they don't think those details are necessary. For example in Apple Notes it's difficult to find notes that matches titles because they don't put those on the top of search results; in Craft search is just for when you know exactly which note you are going to edit to find it more easily: they have no intention to find notes that you forget.

On one hand I find it annoying when Evernote is sometimes slow and consumes much more battery, or duplicate notes (up to 45 notes!); on the other hand, even though other apps are smoother and lightweight there are still few bugs that can be enough disturbing. Like Apple Notes suddenly scrolling back from almost the end to the beginning or middle of the note; traditional Chinese typing (language used by Hongkongers and Taiwanese) issues on Craft.

Evernote may be an everything bucket for some people, but can be a good place allowing me to turn rough ideas into solid actions and projects through different ways (writing, tables, photos, highlighting through reading and organising). Other apps like Apple Notes focus mainly on quick capture; Craft and Notion for organising; iA Writer and Bear for writing long articles. If the app is as smooth and reliable as other apps, I don't mind paying the latest subscription price.

But I think Bending Spoon will fix this as the app performance is still inferior even though there has been improvement for these two years.

And for someone who prefer Evernote to be sold to Google, I will think it may be that Evernote chose not to (I just think if this happened) because Google and Apple in history destroyed what they bought: Motorola and Dark Sky app are the examples.

[PinkElephant 8,048]

The subscription for personal is 69,99 on a yearly plan. Professional is 99,99.

How this means that Personal would be more expensive than Professional evades me - alternative math ?

You can get Professional through a 25% promo at the moment, for the 1st year, for about 75. Still a notch above Personal, my calculator tells me. And only valid for the 1st year, moving to the full price after.

EN Personal roughly costs the same as a full O365 Subscription. Which means for me, there is limited room to raise prices. And it means who pays it draws benefit from subscribing, or has not yet realized he doesn’t.

[bmcl26 484]

10 hours ago, jefito said:

re: paying for free users

Not an issue with me. Evernote provides me with a service that works for me, at a cost that seems fair, and that I can afford, and I'm happy to do pay for it. That's pretty much what matters to me. If other folks are able to use the free version (I probably couldn't, at least easily), that's fine by me. Life's too short for me to be worrying about who's getting a better deal on my nickel, with respect to Evernote, or other parts of my world for that matter. I've much more important things to worry about -- in fact, I've never, ever thought of it in those terms before.

Maybe I'd rather be seen to be a sucker than a Scrooge...

I am very happy paying for Proffesional as I consider it excellent value at £1.83 per week

[gazumped 11,639]

Just dropping by again to comment that while several here have hoped that Bending Spoons will lean in and "straighten Evernote out" (not the language anyone used, but unless I misread,  that was the intent) - I don't believe that any competent corporate,  having bought into a company because they like the way the product works,  are going to do more than help that new purchase by injecting whatever cash and expertise they can provide to help make it more efficient. 

They would not wish to (Elon excepted) rush in,  replace all the staff,  change the tech and ruin a reputation that has been built up over a period of years.  They bought into a going concern,  not a fixer-upper.

I'd expect the transition,  when it occurs,  to be largely transparent to users.  Things will proceed,  maybe a little smoother than before,  but what you got is essentially all we're going to see in the future.  My prediction anyway.  I have been wrong (repeatedly) before though...

On a side note I have worked with Italian colleagues before,  and the -erm- "theatrical" aspect of that culture is exactly what you might anticipate.  One change I do foresee is Evernote corporate not being quite as formal and reserved as they have been in the past... 

Plus a 90M user company just joined up with a 200M+ user company - I think they're going to want to offer us all a joint opportunity to try out new products and features. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

13 hours ago, jefito said:

re: paying for free users

Not an issue with me. Evernote provides me with a service that works for me, at a cost that seems fair, and that I can afford, and I'm happy to do pay for it. That's pretty much what matters to me. If other folks are able to use the free version (I probably couldn't, at least easily), that's fine by me. Life's too short for me to be worrying about who's getting a better deal on my nickel, with respect to Evernote, or other parts of my world for that matter. I've much more important things to worry about -- in fact, I've never, ever thought of it in those terms before.

Maybe I'd rather be seen to be a sucker than a Scrooge...

I like this. The only time free users annoy me is when they come to the forums and complain that they're not getting enough for free.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

12 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

From the new owners, I’d like to see better reliability, better support for users who have a relatively large amount of data / number of notes, and better encryption. But, in the end, I’d need them to double down on a few of the core features. Not being able to select more than fifty notes at a time is a deal breaker (no price point is reasonable for me) and being limited by the hd storage on my computer is a major pain point (grudgingly pay). If the free tier for “abusers” like me disappeared without these two things, it’d be tough to hang on.

This is going to be a little unfair, since it will sound too personal and be like mind-reading, but to me this feels like searching for reasons not to pay. If they let us select unlimited notes (which they definitely should) and you become able to own a cheap, gigantic HD or SSD, does the scale then slide a little bit farther?

I understand that there are some who are simply not able to pay any subscription fee, and I sympathize with them. Perhaps Evernote should offer a student rate, or limited-income rate. Some people (my wife is one) were brought up in an atmosphere of "always go cheap"; some (like her) escape that, and some stay there, which is fine. But blaming the free lunch for not having enough gravy ... that I don't get.

[davidtderrick 54]

Here are some simple truths.

a) There has been a very lazy online industry for years of Evernote-bashing. You can ignore nearly all of it.

b) It is good to see this community largely optimistic about this acquisition.

c) I have tried alternatives. They are usually appalling, and I don't understand the praise they get.

d) Yes, Evernote has incomprehensible bugs and anomalies. But so do all the others.

e) If Evernote is too expensive for you, move. Serious users don't usually mind. But yes, I hope Spoons will get the pricing right.

f) I hope Spoons are reading this thread, but I'm not counting on that. I doubt Evernote is.

g) Migrating is basically impossible anyway. There is not one migration route that doesn't lead to unacceptable compromises and bring unfixable formatting bugs with it. Tell me if I am wrong.

[jefito 5,589]

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

Just dropping by again to comment that while several here have hoped that Bending Spoons will lean in and "straighten Evernote out" (not the language anyone used, but unless I misread,  that was the intent) - I don't believe that any competent corporate,  having bought into a company because they like the way the product works,  are going to do more than help that new purchase by injecting whatever cash and expertise they can provide to help make it more efficient. 

Hopefully, that's what's going to happen. The company I work for was bought out by a Canadian company -- we're both sort-of in the same general realm of computer  mapping, but our focuses are different. The arrangement that they have with us is that if we keep making profits and hitting or targets, they stay pretty much hands-off. So far, so good (it's been 11 or 12 years with that arrangement).

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

18 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

This is going to be a little unfair, since it will sound too personal and be like mind-reading, but to me this feels like searching for reasons not to pay. If they let us select unlimited notes (which they definitely should) and you become able to own a cheap, gigantic HD or SSD, does the scale then slide a little bit farther?

I understand that there are some who are simply not able to pay any subscription fee, and I sympathize with them. Perhaps Evernote should offer a student rate, or limited-income rate. Some people (my wife is one) were brought up in an atmosphere of "always go cheap"; some (like her) escape that, and some stay there, which is fine. But blaming the free lunch for not having enough gravy ... that I don't get.

Nothing unfair about it. Actually, I am looking for reasons to pay. I paid up until the latest version, but my workflow was broken, so there wasn’t much incentive left to pay.

 

Note Selection

I think being able to select more than fifty items at a time is a terribly low bar—Evernote used to be able to do it, and all of their competitors can, but somehow the new and improved version can’t. In my workflow, it turns out this is a deal-breaker. Maybe BS will address this. I am guessing they won’t, because I suspect there is some fundamental flaw with Evernote’s new architecture / Electron, but I will check in every once in a while to see if they figured it out. If they want to put an upper limit on it, make it 100,000 notes. That is the most we can have (I think), anyhow. it would be kind of funny if they got this sorted out right away— pthen I would have to wonder if there was some obstinate engineer with a bizarre obsession with a fifty-note limit.

Second Brain Storage

As for the “second brain” thing, storage obviously becomes an issue after a decade of use, but Evernote never has gotten this right, so it is a pain point rather than a deal breaker. Can’t really expect the new team to get something right that Evernote never could. I don’t think it has to be such a big problem, though. At least, not conceptually. Specifically, my second brain is too big for my desktop, especially my work one (the purchase seems to have been predicated on the idea that we would keep everything in GDrive). One solution for Evernote (assuming they see this as a problem)would simply be feature parity. Evernote has stuff you choose to sync and stuff you don’t on mobile, but not on the desktop. Introduce selective syncing like mobile and my problem would be solved.

If we get down into the weeds, I can recall multiple cycles of rewrites / redesigns when solutions were considered, and some interesting experiments were considered (at one point, unlimited uploads), but ultimately Evernote never solved the issue. I could speculate about the reasons, but that’s probably not productive.

Alternatives to Evernote? Yes, but…

In response to the other comments, there are some really reliable, established competitors that are pretty impressive in their own ways. Some are fantastically reliable and offer solutions to this memory thing that comes with a “second brain.” And, there have always been pretty easy ways to get your data out of Evernote and into them—in my case, it only took a few minutes to get everything up and running in a new app after I experienced the current version of Evernote.

No one is quite like Evernote, though, and that is why I have stuck around even after the app iterated away from my workflow. I still hold out hope that it will somehow find its way back to being a good fit for me. This new deal is probably not a sign that things are going well for the company, but it may be a good thing for me, and with some repositioning (that “second brain” vision?), maybe the app could attract users back to it in the future. 

I’d be happy to subscribe again if they app did what it said it would do (reliability) and met my expectations for straightforward features like selecting notes.

[PinkElephant 8,048]

Note selection: The limit can pretty easy raised, to maybe up to 1.000 notes. It will not be as fast as legacy, since it runs for each note a server sync. Going offline before executing multi note operations can speed them up.

Local storage: If the place on the system drive is running low, the database can be instead moved to another drive. The trick is done by a symbolic link. Choose an SSD, EN since years (including legacy) does not execute well from a classical turning disk.

Alternatives: When on the Apple ecosystem, I see Apple Notes as a basic and DEVONThink as an advanced option. For Windows and mixed setups I have no such idea, one that works on all platforms is hard to find.

[DTLow 5,736]

On 11/25/2022 at 10:18 AM, davidtderrick said:

Migrating is basically impossible anyway. There is not one migration route that doesn't lead to unacceptable compromises and bring unfixable formatting bugs with it. Tell me if I am wrong.

I didn't find "basically impossible", "unacceptable compromises" or "unfixable formatting bugs"   
but it must be realized that some metadata will be lost when migrating to a new platform   
(I converted to Devonthink, using the Evernote Legacy product, and without data from the new tasks feature)

[maggiemay 3]

2 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

And, there have always been pretty easy ways to get your data out of Evernote and into them—in my case, it only took a few minutes to get everything up and running in a new app after I experienced the current version of Evernote.

Can you let us know which new app(s) you used that easily allowed migration of data from Evernote ?  Thanks !

[gazumped 11,639]

1 hour ago, maggiemay said:

Can you let us know which new app(s) you used that easily allowed migration of data from Evernote ?  Thanks !

Choose where you want to move to first - most note-taking apps have an 'import' option for Evernote data which will guide you through what you want to do.

Internet searches are also good,  plus Evernote have some help here - Back up and restore your data in Evernote for Windows

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

4 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

I would have to wonder if there was some obstinate engineer with a bizarre obsession with a fifty-note limit

See now, that I can imagine, for some reason. 

4 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

Specifically, my second brain is too big for my desktop, especially my work one (the purchase seems to have been predicated on the idea that we would keep everything in GDrive). One solution for Evernote (assuming they see this as a problem)would simply be feature parity. Evernote has stuff you choose to sync and stuff you don’t on mobile, but not on the desktop. Introduce selective syncing like mobile and my problem would be solved.

Of course, it's possible to use the v. 10 Windows app without keeping any local copy of the database (Settings ⚙️ > Preferences > Application > Uncheck "Keep a copy..."). Or use the Web version. But that's all or nothing, not selective, and I can see the advantages of selective syncing, especially in a work environment, even apart from disk space availability.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

On 11/27/2022 at 12:03 AM, maggiemay said:

Can you let us know which new app(s) you used that easily allowed migration of data from Evernote ?  Thanks !

Hi. I think DEVONthink is the easiest for any workflow, assuming an Apple environment. OneNote is probably the easiest destination for Windows environments. If you are in a mixed environment, Dropbox + a note taking app (Byword for plain text, Apple Notes for some style) would probably cover most needs. Evernote easily exports everything in html (legacy), and this can be dumped into any other app, so you can choose whatever you like. There are other threads detailing things for interested users.

Of course, this assumes you are not trying to keep Evernote-specific features in a non-Evernote environment. That would be an impossible migration, naturally. In general, as with so many things, the less complexity you have (for example, the fewer Evernote-specific features you rely on) the less friction and frustration you are likely to encounter. In my case, in order to escape EN bugs while developers worked on them, I used to port my things out a few times a year into VoodoPad (my trials and tribulations have been documented somewhere in these forums).

It’s never been a big deal for me to move in or out of EN, because I constructed my workflow to be as portable as possible. I recommend doing that at the outset, whatever app you end up using. Of course, I miss out on some truly innovative and interesting workflows (in EN as well as DT) due to my self-imposed minimalism, but I also avoid irritation—for me there is no workflow worth getting trapped into a single app or ecosystem.

One commitment that EN has maintained, at least in Legacy, is one to portability. It may not have all the bells and whistles folks would like, but “export” works and EN is able to be accessed by other apps looking to help you move out of EN into another home.

As EN enters a new phase, maybe this advice will help current and new users. Try to pare down your workflow to the bare minimum (at least avoid bulding a workflow that heavily relies on non-“core” features). whatever the new owners do, if you have a simple workflow, you’ll be less likely to be adversely impacted by any sudden changes.

[PinkElephant 8,048]

Workflows should not be centered on the abilities of a specific tool - however some workflows may rely on a set of abilities not found in every possible app. Just to highlight one aspect here:

If you rely on OCR to find documents, you will probably rely on EN to make your pdfs and pictures searchable and build a search index. If you swap to another tool, you will find out that this may have been a less than brilliant idea. The OCR result is embedded in the EN notes metadata. It will not export from EN, and it will not be available after loading your notes to another tool.

For picture files the reason is simple: The files don’t provide for an invisible text layer. There is no way to store this information in a jpg, png or gif file. Some apps and operating systems are providing searchability for pictures - but usually it is either inside of an app, or with an OS function it won’t work for pictures that are embedded into notes. If this ability was important for you, you need to take a close look at the tool you pick. OCR of handwriting in pictures will be especially hard to find.

For pdfs (typically of scans) it depends on how the pdf was created. Some scanners (both physical ones and apps for the smart phones) offer OCR when a scan is created. It will then embedd the OCR result in a text layer of the pdf. However, when the pdf was created without text layer it will take more to add such a layer later. Most OCR software supplied with scanners will not work on scanning existing documents. It will take some manual action to have a pdf OCRed, and it will take a significant effort to do this for all pdfs created and stored in an EN account during many years of use.

The best advise is to OCR when a pdf is created, and store it with a text layer into EN. But if you missed out doing so, you likely face the loss of search for your pdfs when switching to another app.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Workflows should not be centered on the abilities of a specific tool - however some workflows may rely on a set of abilities not found in every possible app. Just to highlight one aspect here:

If you rely on OCR to find documents, you will probably rely on EN to make your pdfs and pictures searchable and build a search index. If you swap to another tool, you will find out that this may have been a less than brilliant idea. The OCR result is embedded in the EN notes metadata. It will not export from EN, and it will not be available after loading your notes to another tool.

For picture files the reason is simple: The files don’t provide for an invisible text layer. There is no way to store this information in a jpg, png or gif file. Some apps and operating systems are providing searchability for pictures - but usually it is either inside of an app, or with an OS function it won’t work for pictures that are embedded into notes. If this ability was important for you, you need to take a close look at the tool you pick. OCR of handwriting in pictures will be especially hard to find.

For pdfs (typically of scans) it depends on how the pdf was created. Some scanners (both physical ones and apps for the smart phones) offer OCR when a scan is created. It will then embedd the OCR result in a text layer of the pdf. However, when the pdf was created without text layer it will take more to add such a layer later. Most OCR software supplied with scanners will not work on scanning existing documents. It will take some manual action to have a pdf OCRed, and it will take a significant effort to do this for all pdfs created and stored in an EN account during many years of use.

The best advise is to OCR when a pdf is created, and store it with a text layer into EN. But if you missed out doing so, you likely face the loss of search for your pdfs when switching to another app.

Indeed. This is a great example of the cost / benefit analysis folks ought to do when considering how to take this news about Evernote's acquisition.

The problem with OCR is why I have long advocated (10+ years?) Evernote users do OCR on their own PDFs before putting them into Evernote. Unfortunately, I have not found a viable alternative for Evernote's wonderful handwriting and image OCR. You can get handwriting recognition to work great if you create a file on the iPad using certain apps, for example, but that is similar to the PDF problem of doing it yourself before putting it into Evernote. You *can*, but not everybody will actually want or be able to do it. I cannot do it with my physical paper notes, for example. This is one of those platform specific things that Evernote just does really well. 

Anyhow, as much as I miss the handwriting recognition and image OCR, I have tried to keep those "plus alpha" things, and I haven't built my workflow around them, because I know it would lock me into Evernote. For example, I create a plain text "index" for my handwritten notes (similar to the handwritten one you might make with bullet journal). There are workarounds, and I have built it into my daily reviews, so it is a minimal hassle for me, and (at least in my case) worth the extra effort to avoid lock-in.

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Workflows should not be centered on the abilities of a specific tool

How do you feel about the new tasks feature?   
It's not supported in Evernote Legacy,     
but I've always used simple task notes and tags for task management; quite portable

[AlbertR 512]

The new tasks feature is an eye-catcher to new users. Most of existing users like and use tags together with reminders like we all know from

BTW: Has anyone heared about plans to (dis-)continue with business plans?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

8 hours ago, DTLow said:

How do you feel about the new tasks feature?   
It's not supported in Evernote Legacy,     
but I've always used simple task notes and tags for task management; quite portable

I think the tasks feature is pretty well-done (they seem to have put a lot of thought into streamlining the creation and management of tasks) and it seems to fit both Evernote and its user base.

Reminders. Tasks. The return on investment for developing these kinds of features seems like it would be pretty nice for any app in this space. I always wondered why Evernote dragged its heels on this kind of stuff for so long. Personally, I long ago developed my own workflow (I suppose it is a mix of GTD and bullet journal) that does fine without tying me into any features or platforms.

Whatever merits my manual system has, there is no doubt that these more automated workflows are terribly attractive, especially when dealing with complex projects. The nice thing about this feature in Evernote is that you probably wouldn't take much of a hit even if the data didn't port out at all--tasks being by their very nature short-lived (assuming you complete them), and so they become less and less relevant over time. If you were spending a lot of your time in Evernote, the tasks feature seems like it would be worth the effort to use.

As for what plans will be available and the specifics about them, I haven't heard anything. Even if there was an announcement today, though, a lot could change between now and "then," so I suppose it would be best to take a wait-and-see approach. 

[CalS 5,277]

Depending on workflow some apps work better than others.  But I couldn't find one that matched what EN 6.25 did for me..  V10 didn't for sure.  Nimbus may have been closest from a look and feel perspective but it was missing too much.  Though it did have local notebooks, a requirement of mine.

My use case is paperless, task management, some notetaking, and some tables/templates for phone calls and other logging activities.  Mostly I search the repository.  As I've stated somewhere in these forums my conversion was to a bespoke system of Windows files/indexing, Mega for backup/sync, Workflowy for notes and tasks, Google sheets for tables, Directory Opus as the gateway to my repository, and AutoHotKey to automate interfaces.

I used the EN export to HTML option which lets you export tags which means I can search by old EN tags in the new set up.  No issues with PDFs as Windows indexes any PFDs which weren't already indexed.

Sounds more complicated than it actually is.  At the end of it all I control all of my paperless stuff.  Directory Opus for me looks a bit like EN, Left panel - file list - display of selected file.  DO supports saved searches with saved display layout.  I am amazed as to how fast search is in Windows.  Saved searches in DO are instantaneous across 320k files.  Exporting to HTML creates a file for every image, attachment, etc.., so 55k notes became 320k files.

There options based upon use case, though I'm not sure everyone wants to roll their own.  I just didn't see any other way.  I've been converted for about a year now.  I think I may be as productive now as I was with EN which I didn't think would happen.  Now it's wo Windows open as opposed to one,  a browser with WF and DO.  I have a Basic EN account and check back in the forums to see if things have changed.  Maybe the new guys will make some changes to draw me back into the fold.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

@CalS, I love Directory Opus simply as an Explorer replacement. Never thought to use it in this way. Kudos. But of course it's a Windows program, and you also depend on Windows indexing. This works on a single computer, or maybe a Windows local network. Evernote was never designed to compete with that (as discussed in forum threads asking if it's possible to use EN just on a local computer with no Internet connection running). I use it largely for note-taking, and a small amount of document storage. The ability to work on laptop, desktop, and mobile is just brilliant for me, and I'm only beginning to explore some of the v. 10 features -- got a useful Home page set up, not yet into tasks.

De-drifting the thread, I'm not sure any of us can even speculate about how the Bending Spoons acquisition will affect our specific workflows.

[CalS 5,277]

@Dave-in-DecaturDrifting a bit again.  Using Mega cloud enables repository usage on multiple PCs and on mobile devices.  All PCs work the same.  Downside is NO content search on mobile, only titles, via the Mega app.  Workflowy is available on all platforms, same as Google sheets.  So for my use case access is fine.

De-drifting, I agree speculation is no doubt fruitless at this point.

[Paul A. 608]

On 11/27/2022 at 10:33 PM, PinkElephant said:

For pdfs (typically of scans) it depends on how the pdf was created. Some scanners (both physical ones and apps for the smart phones) offer OCR when a scan is created. It will then embedd the OCR result in a text layer of the pdf. However, when the pdf was created without text layer it will take more to add such a layer later. Most OCR software supplied with scanners will not work on scanning existing documents. It will take some manual action to have a pdf OCRed, and it will take a significant effort to do this for all pdfs created and stored in an EN account during many years of use.

The best advise is to OCR when a pdf is created, and store it with a text layer into EN. But if you missed out doing so, you likely face the loss of search for your pdfs when switching to another app.

On 11/28/2022 at 1:17 AM, GrumpyMonkey said:

Indeed. This is a great example of the cost / benefit analysis folks ought to do when considering how to take this news about Evernote's acquisition.

The problem with OCR is why I have long advocated (10+ years?) Evernote users do OCR on their own PDFs before putting them into Evernote.

I've thought about this before but haven't found a great solution. As PinkElephant mentioned, the software that came with my Canon scanner (for macOS) does not support OCR. There is higher-end Canon software which supposedly does, but Canon said it didn't come with my scanner. If there's a way to get that software for my Canon scanner I would be interested, but beyond that, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for good scanning software that's likely to a) support Canon MFPs and b) do OCR on-the-fly?

[PinkElephant 8,048]

On a Mac: Keep the scanning software, get OwlOCR. Yes, that one

https://owlocr.com   🦉

[feyyaz_kasli 5]

On 11/25/2022 at 12:08 AM, janndk said:

Free plan is not a trial. However, somebody has to pay the costs - so the bill ends up here at us paying customers. And soon we will probably be asked to pay much much more (Bending Spoons pricing)?

Wait, I am from a another country so I don't even have a idea about how it's possible. From my country, I am paying almost half for the Evernote yearly professional account.

I don't even have a microsoft 365 account. I am only using google docs. It's so expensive in our country most people does not buy it. 

Still, evernote yearly account is very cheap but because there is no regulations of ads in turkey, people tend to stick to other apps. 

It's a suprise for me to see evernote being almost expensive as microsoft 365. It's just a shock to me. 

[Altruologist 18]

I know it is early days, but I am surprised at how little (if any) communication is coming from Evernote after the announcement of the acquisition. As far as I can see, there has been no further comms from the CEO, Ian Small or from the CEO of Bending Spoons.  At this point there is not so much a need for specifics, but some explanation of the synergy between the companies, future vision etc. would be a good investment to placate concerns amongst the Evernote user community and lessen the uncertainty for individuals and businesses considering adopting Evernote in preference to other competitors. 

[PinkElephant 8,048]

To hear some „Tone from the Top“ would maybe nice to calm down some discussions.

Watching at other acquisitions I am not sure that the announcement of synergies (usually means layoffs) or vision (usually means how to make the acquisition pay for the acquirer) will make me happier when I know.

I hope we see a positive exception from the standard blueprint in the M&A handbook.

[lost_gweedo 73]

agreed, @PinkElephant some kind of message of intent from the bendy spoon folks would be great.  Silence encourages us all to make up whatever our reptile brains fancy.  I'll continue to be optimistic of EN's future, however I can't imagine the new owners will say anything that might result in bleeding subscribers.  So, I will take whatever might be stated with large grains of salt.

[agsteele 2,933]

We won't hear anything until the deal is finalised in Q1/Q2 of next year. That's just the way of corporate take overs.

 

[Frki2 76]

On 11/17/2022 at 4:28 PM, gazumped said:

Hi. Drag and drop is too hard?

- Couldn't really comment on the rest because I don't use Mac,  but if you have specific needs someone else can usually suggest useful work-arounds...

I need to give kudos here to EN, they solved this draging problem of notes with new update, so finaly we have that we can choose note to link while in note with cmd option K

 

Maybe pinned notes next 🤗

[Dave Green 206]

On 11/17/2022 at 9:36 AM, Frki2 said:

Yes if i have it in other notebook folder as i dont see it so i cannot drag and drop it. I would like that i enter [[ and than see when i add first few letters all notebooks with that name and just add it. Like others do.

I have made the suggestion to EN that the CMD+J shortcut be modified to support either going to the selected page or inserting a link to the selected page -- perhaps by something like CMD+Enter or CMD+Click instead of Enter / Click.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

6 minutes ago, Dave Green said:

I have made the suggestion to EN that the CMD+J shortcut be modified to support either going to the selected page or inserting a link to the selected page -- perhaps by something like CMD+Enter or CMD+Click instead of Enter / Click.

V. 10.50.9 is beginning to roll out. I've only received it for the Web client so far, but it is supposed to allow us to add links to other notes using Cmd+Opt+K / Ctrl+Alt+K (or the Insert menu).

[Dave Green 206]

20 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

V. 10.50.9 is beginning to roll out. I've only received it for the Web client so far, but it is supposed to allow us to add links to other notes using Cmd+Opt+K / Ctrl+Alt+K (or the Insert menu).

Cool.  I accelerated the roll out by downloading and copying over.

A bit awkward but tremendous improvement.  You can start typing then TAB to the one you want, hit SPACE to lock it in, then hit RETURN to insert.

[eric99 978]

8 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

V. 10.50.9 is beginning to roll out. I've only received it for the Web client so far, but it is supposed to allow us to add links to other notes using Cmd+Opt+K / Ctrl+Alt+K (or the Insert menu).

yeah, nice try but they released without testing: it hangs with my notebook of 3700 notes (windows client)

[agsteele 2,933]

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

but they released without testing

I'm not sure that there is any evidence of no testing... For sure it has an issue for you so you would do everyone a favour by reporting that. But making claims that we cannot substantiate isn't very helpful - sorry.

[Boot17 1,438]

4 hours ago, eric99 said:

yeah, nice try but they released without testing: it hangs with my notebook of 3700 notes (windows client)

Yeah - it seems kind of inefficient to load a large list of notes from a notebook into that dialog regardless of performance. I'm sure there are many people with even more notes than 3700 notes in one notebook.

Realistically though, I'm not sure looking through a list longer than (say) 100 or so would be very efficient. Better to type in part of the title and find it that way. An extra bonus for being able to see all the notes in a notebook and peruse I guess, but maybe they should cap that at XXX amount of notes, or however they address it.

One thing that @Mike P mentioned in another thread is that "that advanced search formatting works - certainly for tags." in this new 'select note' dialog: https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/143650-search-for-notes-on-create-link-popup/?do=findComment&comment=670765

This in-place note linking is a wonderful and welcome addition that will just need some minor refinement. (For example, another thing to look at is that it doesn't look like the cursor focus comes back to the initial link dialog after leaving the 'select note' dialog and so it can't be applied or dismissed with the keyboard.)

[eric99 978]

6 hours ago, agsteele said:

I'm not sure that there is any evidence of no testing... For sure it has an issue for you so you would do everyone a favour by reporting that. But making claims that we cannot substantiate isn't very helpful - sorry.

Agreed, they might have detected the bug but decided to release without solving it

[eric99 978]

3 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Yeah - it seems kind of inefficient to load a large list of notes from a notebook into that dialog regardless of performance. I'm sure there are many people with even more notes than 3700 notes in one notebook.

Realistically though, I'm not sure looking through a list longer than (say) 100 or so would be very efficient. Better to type in part of the title and find it that way. An extra bonus for being able to see all the notes in a notebook and peruse I guess, but maybe they should cap that at XXX amount of notes, or however they address it.

It is not that I want to scroll manually through the whole list, but I tried to open it because I noticed that the search results were incomplete, just a small subset from the regular search. Has anyone checked that already on a large notebook?

[Boot17 1,438]

14 minutes ago, eric99 said:

because I noticed that the search results were incomplete,

Do you have an example of it being incomplete?

It looks like it's doing a built in "intitle:*" search with the text you specify. (Edit: Kind of similar to the 'Switch to' function, except the 'Switch to' function will also return tags and notebooks.)

I just did a search for "safe" in the 'select note' dialog and it returned me 11 notes the same 11 that I get when I search for "intitle:safe". (Edit: I did another search term and got the same 25 notes in the 'select note' and the intitle: search.)

[eric99 978]

5 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

Do you have an example of it being incomplete?

It looks like it's doing a built in "intitle:*" search with the text you specify.

I just did a search for "safe" in the 'select note' dialog and it returned me 11 notes the same 11 that I get when I search for "intitle:safe".

Thanks, that explains it, but then, what is this restriction good for? Is a full note search possible as well?

[Boot17 1,438]

6 minutes ago, eric99 said:

Is a full body search possible as well?

Not that I know of. It's great in a pinch if you know the title (or smaller tag or notebook sounds like). For finding a note by a content search, I would do what I've done before: Pop my current note out into a new note window, search in the main Evernote window and find the note I want and drag it from the note list (or Control-Option-Command-C to copy the link) to my note in a new window.

[eric99 978]

9 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

Not that I know of. It's great in a pinch if you know the title (or smaller tag or notebook sounds like). For finding a note by a content search, I would do what I've done before: Pop my current note out into a new note window, search in the main Evernote window and find the note I want and drag it from the note list (or Control-Option-Command-C to copy the link) to my note in a new window.

I just found out that it returns all results if you type explicitly "intitle:* "  in front of the rest of your query:

example:  "intitle:* john doe"

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

We are wildly, and perhaps permanently, off the topic of this thread here, and it might be well to open a different topic.

That said ... in a brief trial it does look more or less as @Boot17 describes. The notes proposed come from all notebooks, not just the current one. The search seems to be quite "fuzzy" as well: searching for Mary brought up notes with titles that included Martin, marchers, marginal, etc. It seems to me that I will probably always have at least a general idea of the title of the note I want to link to, so I won't have to painfully open up notebooks and hunt for it.

But seriously, if someone has the superpower to clip this portion of the thread and move it to the https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/144254-evernote-for-windows-1050-feedback/ thread, I'm sure that would be helpful to all. @gazumped?

[agsteele 2,933]

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

Agreed, they might have detected the bug but decided to release without solving it

Or the tests may not have revealed the issue that has appeared in the wild so to speak For me, I had a minor issue in that I had another application that used Ctrl+Alt+K. Since I didn't need that I simply disabled that application from using the shortcut. Thereafter, Ctrl+Alt+K works absolutely as expected in my situation with Evernote v10.50. Perhaps you have something else trying to use Ctrl+Alt+K on your PC.  For me it was the Kindle app that had grabbed Ctrl+Alt+K to launch itself. That took a longish time to launch and might have appeared to have hung but was just loading another program.

I certainly don't claim that your experience isn't true for you in your particular situation of hardware, OS, number of notes etc. Just recognising that we cannot infer from one person's report that either no testing was conducted or that the developers are so slapdash that they just ignored a bug.

I hope that your report of the issue will lead to a speedy resolution. As it happens, today, for an entirely unrelated bug that I was tracking down with tech support I had a clean reinstall.  So I've been working with a very fresh install of my data.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

10 hours ago, eric99 said:

yeah, nice try but they released without testing: it hangs with my notebook of 3700 notes (windows client)

5 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Yeah - it seems kind of inefficient to load a large list of notes from a notebook into that dialog regardless of performance. I'm sure there are many people with even more notes than 3700 notes in one notebook.

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

It is not that I want to scroll manually through the whole list, but I tried to open it because I noticed that the search results were incomplete, just a small subset from the regular search. Has anyone checked that already on a large notebook?

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

I just found out that it returns all results if you type explicitly "intitle:* "  in front of the rest of your query:

example:  "intitle:* john doe"

We've moved on a bit from these initial remarks, but I'm going back to try to understand them. Again, I'm using insert link with Ctrl+Alt+K in the Web client, not a desktop program. When I open the dialog, I get a typing field with my whole list of notebooks below it. There isn't "a notebook," large or small, involved. I can click to open a notebook and select a note within it, or type. When I type in a few letters, I get a list of note titles from across my entire set of notes that have a character string in their titles that is, or closely resembles, that string of letters. As @eric99 noted, starting with intitle: will eliminate the "fuzzy" results and return only notes with that string. Are you all seeing something different?

[eric99 978]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

We've moved on a bit from these initial remarks, but I'm going back to try to understand them. Again, I'm using insert link with Ctrl+Alt+K in the Web client, not a desktop program. When I open the dialog, I get a typing field with my whole list of notebooks below it. There isn't "a notebook," large or small, involved. I can click to open a notebook and select a note within it, or type. When I type in a few letters, I get a list of note titles from across my entire set of notes that have a character string in their titles that is, or closely resembles, that string of letters. As @eric99 noted, starting with intitle: will eliminate the "fuzzy" results and return only notes with that string. Are you all seeing something different?

It's a little bit different, the trick is if you start the query with "intitle:* " followed by the rest of your query, it will search in the note body as well.

Example: 

"intitle:* john doe"  will search in the full note for "john doe" .

"john doe"  will search only in the titles for "john doe".

It's a little bit weird that we have to suppress the implicit intitle: by the prefix  intitle:*

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

43 minutes ago, eric99 said:

It's a little bit different, the trick is if you start the query with "intitle:* " followed by the rest of your query, it will search in the note body as well.

Example: 

"intitle:* john doe"  will search in the full note for "john doe" .

"john doe"  will search only in the titles for "john doe".

It's a little bit weird that we have to suppress the implicit intitle: by the prefix  intitle:*

Ah, I see. And the space after intitle:* is significant too. Weirder yet, for me a search like that does not find some of the notes that actually have the search term in the title. I find that other search operators such as "tag:" can also be used. "tag:" brings up a list of notes with a specific tag; if the tag's name has more than one word, you have to put a * after the search term. Thus "tag:receipts" will bring up notes tagged "Receipts". Searching "tag:receipts*" will bring up that plus "Receipts filed" and "Receipts not filed".

[AlbertR 512]

22 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

We are wildly, and perhaps permanently, off the topic of this thread here, and it might be well to open a different topic.

Done. See 😉

 

[Phi87 9]

I guess my worry is that the companies do not seem very well aligned. Bending Spoons makes high end video and AI products which aren't very aligned. I worked in this M&A world a bit and the best acquisitions are the ones that are natural fits -- ones where the products of one company compliment the other. While conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway can make random things work together, companies that make things need to merge with companies that make similar or complementary things. While there are cases you can think of where they complement (like AI in evernote), you have to stretch a bit to see it. 

[gazumped 11,639]

13 minutes ago, Phi87 said:

the companies do not seem very well aligned.

Hi.  Both companies make tech products,  both have a huge customer base and (presumably) there's not much customer overlap... yet.  The deal is only just being consummated,  so we'll (still) have to wait to get more details.

[Phi87 9]

It's a lot harder than that to bring two different market segments and product sets together without diluting one.   

[gazumped 11,639]

Just now, Phi87 said:

It's a lot harder than that to bring two different market segments and product sets together without diluting one.   

?? I didn't suggest a 'that' AFAIK - just saying there are similarities between the two companies and no doubt we'll find out more later.

[eric99 978]

Interesting interview: 

 

[Alxa 477]

Looking at their hiring pages they invest on native Android developers. Maybe there is hope for EN on Android to be a top notch mobile app one day again. Watching the interview I get the impression that imprison an app in a third party framework is rather not the go-for-it in the BS spirit. After already 2 years of misery on Android my fingers keeps crossed. I would not mind BS giving the Android app another (native) recode 😉

[Boot17 1,438]

Since they don't allow comment on the official post, it made sense to mention it in this thread that the Bending Spoons has officially taken ownership of Evernote:

The blog post by Luca Ferrari is short but states that he has been a user of Evernote since 2012 and is hoping to take Evernote to new heights.

FWIW - I thought Evernote has been on a recent awesome trajectory already. A not-small hiccup with the v10 release, but they are definitely getting their feet under them. The last couple of months of releases with polish has been great.

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

Thanks, @Boot17. To me, the most interesting part of Ferrari's post is what you cite: that he, the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, has used Evernote himself for 10 years. That suggests to me that he knows Evernote's capabilities and its history well, and that there is no radical re-conceptualization in the works. He must be perfectly well aware of the v. 10 move to the Electron framework and would not be interested in undoing that and starting -- again -- from scratch. As for Evernote as "a product and brand with great potential" and the new heights, that's vague enough to make me a little nervous. One person's new heights is another person's   . Perhaps most intriguing is the claim that "the technologies and know-how Bending Spoons has developed resonate with Evernote wonderfully." One can only trust that this is largely true, since what they have by way of tech and know-how is known only to them. Caaauuuutiously optimistic.

[WilliamL 653]

I just read the article - the frustration for me in this has been the treatment of users - the silence and ambiguity continues, the article says little. Bending spoons have made little to no effort to engage with Evernote users and offer any form of reassurance or direction, for me that speaks volumes. 
 

It is the ambiguity and lack of any direction or explanation of what this will mean for users that led me to decide to move on. I got a really good deal for Craft and now I’m using that as my daily. 
 

The article doesn’t even say if Ian is around, we know nothing and we are the folks parting with ever harder earned cash to use this. Not on in my view. 
 

Sorry if this is ranty! Frustrated that I have had to leave a product because a couple of wealthy folks couldn’t be bothered to communicate with every day folks when they bought their new toy. 

[Boot17 1,438]

14 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

He must be perfectly well aware of the v. 10 move to the Electron framework and would not be interested in undoing that and starting -- again -- from scratch

That's my thinking too... that would be like 4 years (? or more?) worth of work down the drain. And it seems Evernote was at an impasse with being able to add new functionality across all platforms before v10.

2 hours ago, WilliamL said:

It is the ambiguity and lack of any direction or explanation of what this will mean for users that led me to decide to move on. I got a really good deal for Craft and now I’m using that as my daily. 

The article doesn’t even say if Ian is around, we know nothing and we are the folks parting with ever harder earned cash to use this. Not on in my view.

I'm not to that point yet since there is still a lot of conjecture and hypothesis about where Bending Spoons will take it. I think Evernote (the software) is on a great trajectory and I hope that it can continue that way. What if Bending Spoons actually does breathe even better and more life into it? Perhaps not, and if it tanks, then at that point I'll be moving on to one of the many other competitors out there.

[Alxa 477]

14 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

To me, the most interesting part of Ferrari's post is what you cite: that he, the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, has used Evernote himself for 10 years. That suggests to me that he knows Evernote's capabilities and its history well, and that there is no radical re-conceptualization in the works. He must be perfectly well aware of the v. 10 move to the Electron framework and would not be interested in undoing that and starting -- again -- from scratch.

To be honest my thought was: Man, if this guy has been through all this sh... with EN10 maybe even on an Android device he probably brings the motivation to flip some shifters in a new direction even if this would mean to invest in software development. Am I the only one when thinking that keeping Evernote imprisoned in a framework will prevent the EN service from unleashing its full potential?

[agsteele 2,933]

On 11/24/2022 at 9:51 PM, gazumped said:

Again;  Bending Spoons don't get their hands on the keys until next yea

It was announced that Bending Spoons took ownership today

[WilliamL 653]

14 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

That's my thinking too... that would be like 4 years (? or more?) worth of work down the drain. And it seems Evernote was at an impasse with being able to add new functionality across all platforms before v10.

I'm not to that point yet since there is still a lot of conjecture and hypothesis about where Bending Spoons will take it. I think Evernote (the software) is on a great trajectory and I hope that it can continue that way. What if Bending Spoons actually does breathe even better and more life into it? Perhaps not, and if it tanks, then at that point I'll be moving on to one of the many other competitors out there.

I really hope bending spoons do something great with the software but for me I work in certainty - all this ambiguity frustrates me so it’s time for me to take a step back. I’m not saying I’ll never return but there are a few too many red flags for me at the moment in regard to communication and thus respect and value of the user base. Maybe that will change, hopefully it does, I’ll be dropping into here and the blog to see how things develop. 

[AlbertR 512]

Maybe I'm too gullible - but if a user uses EN for 10 years, he knows the background of the idea and benefits of the architecture behind it. If he is interested in EN, he believes in this and will not waste money for any other reason.

 

 

[gazumped 11,639]

23 minutes ago, agsteele said:

It was announced that Bending Spoons took ownership today

Given that 'Spoons seems to have a lot going on outside of Evernote,  and while they will have completed a bunch of due diligence to justify their merger/ takeover/ strategic partnership,  it seems highly unlikely that Evernote (Everspoons?) will be in any position to throw any major innovations until Q3/4 at the earliest.  Personally I'm going to stick to doing my stuff as usual and wait until I see any actual issues before I change a  thing. 

Unless and until we see more statements from the company,  everything else is just conjecture.  This could be the best thing to happen to Evernote,  or the worst - or most likely,  just something in between.  Only time will tell... 

 

[eric99 978]

1 hour ago, Boot17 said:

That's my thinking too... that would be like 4 years (? or more?) worth of work down the drain.

And how much "diligent work" is already down the drain by endless attempts to solve the side effects of the unified code base approach (sync problems, note duplication, performance...)  ?

Competitors reconsider native implementations as well,  Notion for instance recently redesigned their mobile apps using native components: https://twitter.com/notionhq/status/1549787378633412614?lang=en 😏

 

[Boot17 1,438]

2 hours ago, Alxa said:

Am I the only one when thinking that keeping Evernote imprisoned in a framework will prevent the EN service from unleashing its full potential?

It ran natively from 2006/7/8? until 2020 and seems like they kind of got stuck to me. Is there another second-brain tool out there like Evernote that runs natively on Web, MacOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux?

[Brad_I 5]

3 hours ago, Boot17 said:

It ran natively from 2006/7/8? until 2020 and seems like they kind of got stuck to me. Is there another second-brain tool out there like Evernote that runs natively on Web, MacOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux?

Notion gets some favorable reviews

[eric99 978]

3 hours ago, Boot17 said:

It ran natively from 2006/7/8? until 2020 and seems like they kind of got stuck to me. Is there another second-brain tool out there like Evernote that runs natively on Web, MacOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux?

Native mobile clients may be sufficient already

[Phi87 9]

48 minutes ago, Brad_I said:

Notion gets some favorable reviews

I just converted to Notion from Evernote and love it. There's a couple of features that I miss like being able to send it an email and it has features like nested and nested pages that make it better.  

[eric99 978]

The real problem with the legacy clients was the lack of a unified specification, not the implementation.  Even today, I still haven't seen a unified specification or a detailed user manual.

[Boot17 1,438]

3 hours ago, Brad_I said:

Notion gets some favorable reviews

Notion runs on the Electron framework on Desktop just like Evernote (i.e. it doesn't run natively on all platforms).

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

18 hours ago, eric99 said:

The real problem with the legacy clients was the lack of a unified specification, not the implementation.  Even today, I still haven't seen a unified specification or a detailed user manual.

TBH, I hardly ever see a user manual of any kind for any significant software any more. I miss them. Evernote help and learning is pretty good at answering questions about features, but you have to know that the feature exists first. But they are doing updates frequently enough now (no, not every day as some people seem to experience, but every couple of weeks or so) that even an online user manual would have to be constantly updated.

[Altruologist 18]

Strange silence on all fronts. As a business and personal user, I am getting a bit wary.  I noticed Ian Small is now former CEO of Evernote and that is not unexpected. There is a big difference when you sell or acquire a business when part or most of the workforce is remote or hybrid. There is a loss of both the subtle and obvious clues as to what is going on in people's minds with regards to their engagement with the firm. I am hoping that Bending Spoons is on top of this and Evernote is losing talent. The lack of communications and announcements on both companies' websites is, to me, not evidence of good execution. Of course, there is the blog post by Luca Ferrari, however that really does not communicate much at all.  The Evernote YouTube channel has gone largely silent at a time when it should be contributing to the confidence levels of prospects and customers.  I do not wish to be a 'downer' about the whole thing, and I still have hope that a better future lies ahead, however the clumsy execution of this acquisition makes me wonder. 

[gazumped 11,639]

7 hours ago, Altruologist said:

Strange silence on all fronts. As a business and personal user, I am getting a bit wary.

Hi.  Don't see that we have anything more to worry about than we did 6 months ago - 'Spoons only confirmed the deal this month,  and (having been part of a couple of notable takeovers in my career) I'd expect both companies to be continuing with their former plans on autopilot for some weeks or months while the merge in detail takes place. 

Until a new management is confirmed and a plan has been formalised there's nothing to announce,  and personally I'd find a series of "nothing to see here"...  "Everything's fine"...  "We're doing great..." announcements to be more worrying than lots of activity behind the scenes...

[Paul A. 608]

20 hours ago, Altruologist said:

I noticed Ian Small is now former CEO of Evernote and that is not unexpected.

Do you find it strange they didn't keep him on for a bit for transition purposes? Nor give him a chance to say a public goodbye? Nor even mention him in the first public communication post-acquisition? For better or worse, he's been a very impactful CEO as far as Evernote staff and customers are concerned, signing off on and overseeing the complete re-write of the clients, launching the project for real-time sync improvements, and so on.

I also noticed that Evernote listed several open positions on their "Careers" page as of the day the deal closed, and as of the next day they are all gone, and still gone. Like you said, not necessarily unexpected, but it does make me wonder whether the plan is to be in cost-cutting mode and not growth mode.

13 hours ago, gazumped said:

'Spoons only confirmed the deal this month,  and (having been part of a couple of notable takeovers in my career) I'd expect both companies to be continuing with their former plans on autopilot for some weeks or months while the merge in detail takes place. 

Although I agree to an extent, there is a lot of planning that goes on before a deal closes. Often the high-level organization structure has been decided, whether a new CEO is being brought in, whether a President or GM will be appointed who will report to the Bending Spoons CEO, whether there will be a temporary leadership appointed to usher in the integration of the company, and so on. None of that has been communicated, at least not publicly.

Also, it's my sense that should the acquiring company have plans that would be eagerly received by its customer base, that they would discuss those in a more specific way than the very vague initial communication from Bending Spoons. Could be nothing, but it does make me wonder...

[RJLUK 307]

All that's needed is you backup data.....if ENSPOONS is good.....great

If not then they will loose their customer base as we all go elsewhere.

I have a google alert set up for "evernote alternative with OCR" just incase 🧠

[agsteele 2,933]

6 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Do you find it strange they didn't keep him on for a bit for transition purposes? Nor give him a chance to say a public goodbye?

No, I expected this from the beginning. Ian was clearly brought in to fix things and make Evernote ready to sell. It is very common for the outgoing CEO in sales like this to go almost overnight.

I appreciated his approach and style and am sorry not to have been able to say so but, no, not at all strange.

[WilliamL 653]

The silence to me shows how they view users - not with value. They don’t see the customer base as worth respecting by communicating with them and keeping them in the loop. They have sacked the CEO it seems who drove the new product vision and spoke of new features and plans - what happens to those new features? They coming? WHO KNOWS. 

Bending spoons have shown by their actions we the users mean zilch and this approach of theirs makes me very relieved I have been moving my stuff over to Craft - there the staff and management communicate with users - why - cause they believe they matter and they care about their concerns. Here crickets - it’s an utter disgrace. 

[PinkElephant 8,048]

I don‘t know how many CEO changes have happened while I continue to use the product and services of a company. Thousands, I am sure about that. I am not sure how many companies of that kind changes hands in that period, probably hundreds. If all of them would make a fuzz about assuring me they are at my service, will continue to win me over and I can sleep tight while they improve whatever - I would be doing nothing else than sorting that sort of spam out.

There is no need unless they have something new to announce that would concern me as customer.

About CEO changes: It is quite normal the CEO of a company changes every 3-5 years. In this case it may well be (pure speculation, but not unheard of) that Ian Small was brought in to lead EN to a point where the owners can make their exit. This has happened, so mission completed. Often there is as well a change of control clause in the employment contract - when the ownership changes, C-level staff can cut their employment short, sometimes with a golden handshake.

Ian did a good job, period. And now we will see what happens.

Apart from all that, what has happened is a subscription increase. And this is something to evaluate, in terms of value vs. price.

[gazumped 11,639]

The last major merger I was involved with had me travelling from the UK to Germany for 6 months as part of a new team developing the hybrid IT system.  None of that was possible until the financial and legal sides were sorted out somewhere well above our pay grade,  and none of the work affected our users directly - we didn't brief them on the developments and as long as they continued to receive the usual level of service (AFAIK) they continued to be happy.

7 hours ago, WilliamL said:

The silence to me shows how they view users

Evernote  have a long history of not commenting unless and until they have something to say,  and 'Spoons have issued one encouraging statement (that I've seen) but probably won't share any detailed plans even when they're available,  because that's just asking for their (much younger,  much smaller and therefore much more agile) competitors to jump in and release similar features to steal -or at least share- any available publicity and poach some users.

Evernote just released another update to v10,  and there are continuing blog posts which would seem to indicate nothing much has changed. 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,  but my attitude is simply to wait and watch - if things go badly I'll worry about taking action.

 

[gazumped 11,639]

PS - If you want some direct feedback from Evernote / Spoons by the way - I'd suggest usaing Feedback or contacting Support;  we're mainly other users here,  so absolutely zero 'inside' information...

[PinkElephant 8,048]

To whom this may concern:

hello@bendingspoons.com

[WilliamL 653]

47 minutes ago, gazumped said:

The last major merger I was involved with had me travelling from the UK to Germany for 6 months as part of a new team developing the hybrid IT system.  None of that was possible until the financial and legal sides were sorted out somewhere well above our pay grade,  and none of the work affected our users directly - we didn't brief them on the developments and as long as they continued to receive the usual level of service (AFAIK) they continued to be happy.

Evernote  have a long history of not commenting unless and until they have something to say,  and 'Spoons have issued one encouraging statement (that I've seen) but probably won't share any detailed plans even when they're available,  because that's just asking for their (much younger,  much smaller and therefore much more agile) competitors to jump in and release similar features to steal -or at least share- any available publicity and poach some users.

Evernote just released another update to v10,  and there are continuing blog posts which would seem to indicate nothing much has changed. 

Everyone if entitled to their own opinion,  but my attitude is simply to wait and watch - if things go badly I'll worry about taking action.

 

To me communication is an essential, we can claim EN isn’t great at it, and maybe it’s not the best but Ian did give quarterly reports, he would do interviews, drop in here occasionally and engage with the user base. Bending spoons can be described most politely as aloof - they have not in any substantive way attempted to reassure a very committed and engaged EN user base. And IF the new owner was a user as they claimed surely they would have an inkling that there was such a user base. 

As I said, I have started moving to Craft, I made it clear today when I cancelled my subscription why, my sub here runs until September granted so I wouldn’t imagine it’s seen as that big a deal. I just think what they are doing is unfair and disrespectful, we spend hard earned money on this and they can’t be bothered communicating - nah that’s not for me. 

[PinkElephant 8,048]

Whoever cares ...

Doing things because being afraid of what might be is usually bad advise.

If I move I know what I want to achieve - not what I want to avoid because there might be a risk involved. The whole life is consciously taking risk. What's the worst thing that may happen here ? That I need to move my data in the future - so there is no gain at all in doing so today, just because I am afraid.

Moving because another solution suits me better would be another thing. But still have not found any solution even close to EN.