Increased subscription! It's only a note=taking app!!

[gazumped 11,709]

Another long screed from me (sorry).  I'm riffing on the blog post from @Federico Simionato so I hope I got everything correct - feel free to tell me if I didn't!

Don’t know about you but I’m really tired of the frustrated users’ continually dumb comments from “it’s only a note-taking app” to “they made it so much worse” and “there are no new features”.

Clearly these individuals don’t have the access or patience to have read through Federico’s blog post so I thought I’d do a TL:DR recap.   https://evernote.com/blog/2023-recap

IMHO Evernote is now faster and -mostly- easier to work with than it’s ever been.  If you’re finding it slower or less accurate,  there are fixes for that – and (mostly) it won’t be an Evernote issue.

In Federico’s view - 2023 was a whirlwind year, full of significant changes and exciting growth.

The new owners

• ensured the company’s financial stability
• introduced collaborative editing and new powerful AI features (both user requests)
• collected feedback from surveys, interviews, emails, forum posts, and more
• developed three clear goals:  to make Evernote Faster / more reliable / more secure
• Speed:
  • introduced new data structures that sync in real time so for the first time you can make ‘live’ changes in collaboration with one or more colleagues.
  • sped up syncing significantly especially for first time installs
  • went to a weekly update schedule to get new features and fixes out quicker

·         Reliability:

• cleaned up 40,000 lines of code
• more in-app comms and error warnings
• back-end monitoring to allow quicker fixes
• back-end architecture modernisation, upgrades and fixes
• migrated 200M+ data records to new systems
• rewrote part of Evernote’s base code for reliability and efficiency

·         Security

• replaced insecure SMS auth with better 2FA options
• reset insecure passwords and prompted users to replace (and improve) them
• set intelligent rate limits to block unusual (and probably unauthorised) system calls

Most of this took place at server level so to be fair many Evernote users may not have noticed much on the surface.

Coming in 2024

• substantial improvements to the user experience
• new user interface
• more modern client-side database
• RENT, a new metadata sync process
  users see changes to titles, thumbnails, dates, and note list content across all devices faster than ever before.

- Seems to me they did as much as we could reasonably expect in their first (short) year and I'm quite looking forward to the next 12 months!

If I missed anything significant - please let me know!

[s2sailor 2,251]

Well, that was certainly the cheerleader's view.  Here are my thoughts, with the optimism tamped down a bit.

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

Evernote is now faster and -mostly- easier to work with than it’s ever been.

The latest download is the best version of v10, I agree, but when compared to legacy it is not faster.  Legacy is still faster and for many easier to work with than v10.  Numerous posts detail that.  I understand that since built on Chromium there is a reason for that but stating it is faster, is inaccurate.

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

ensured the company’s financial stability

How do we know?  They definitely increased the price, and I agree altering the free plan was long overdue, but with the high price point, the jury is out on whether this leads to long-term stability or not.  I'm sure some previously free users are signing up, but also, current subscribers have been leaving.  It is hard to predict how the dust will settle.

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

introduced collaborative editing and new powerful AI features (both user requests)

RTE, developed under the old team was likely released too soon by the new team.  There were many initial reports of data loss and there are still some lingering effects.  It certainly seemed to me this was rushed out to help provide a bullet point justification for the price increase.

Powerful (??) AI features?  Well, I guess we can each define what powerful means. Note cleanup doesn't seem that useful at all.  Search may develop into something truly helpful, but your notes are sent to a third party.  I'm not comfortable with that and likely will not use this unless they manage to bring it in-house.

6 hours ago, gazumped said:

collected feedback from surveys, interviews, emails, forum posts, and more

Well, I would hope so, but we really have no indication if this is an empty statement or not.  There is essentially no forum presence and the bugs that I've seen fixed, are the ones they have introduced (sorry, but mostly true). 

The goals and comments are fine.  They have moved the ball forward on v10.  If security was a real concern, they should consider E2E encryption.  I know this is unlikely but I continue to hold out hope.  If it wasn't for hope, I wouldn't still be here with Evernote and active in the forum.  I hope I'm wowed with what is coming this year.  It would be nice to resign up in the fall automatically without considering whether the price is worth it or not and looking around to see what the other apps are like.

I do have a knee jerk reaction to overly, and what seems to me inaccurately, positive responses that we sometimes see on the forum.  I think Evernote would be better served by holding them accountable and providing accurate feedback, instead of glossing over and sometimes excusing the problems.  They have priced this as a premium app.  It needs to be better.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

The latest download is the best version of v10, I agree, but when compared to legacy it is not faster.  Legacy is still faster and for many easier to work with than v10.  Numerous posts detail that.  I understand that since built on Chromium there is a reason for that but stating it is faster, is inaccurate.

Just on this point, I don't have any detailed, objective speed comparison between v. 6 and v. 10 (been awhile since I used 6, and it's on an old, slow machine), which also means I have no reason to say that v. 10 is faster. What "numerous posts detail," IMHO, is numerous specific ways of using Evernote for particular purposes, which are said to have worked faster in Legacy. It's hard to find a one-to-one speed comparison between things Legacy did and the identical things as v. 10 does them. If you have such, please share!

[gazumped 11,709]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

Well, that was certainly the cheerleader's view.

LOL I'm not sure you should be calling Federico a 'cheerleader' - My comments were mostly using the exact words from his blog post.  My point was also that some users like to say 'no new features' or 'not worth the increase' and I was simply creating a resource that shows that 'Spoons may have done a bit of work in their first several months. 

When it first came out v10 was so bad that I wouldn't use it for more than a year;  but it has got to the stage that it is very usable (for me) now.  If it isn't as fast as legacy...  well, legacy is no more. If you need something to work faster,  then its up to you to work with Support (when they're not being slammed) to get the situation addressed.  But from Federico's summary of plans for the  new year it looks like new systems will improve speed anyway.  All we have to do is be patient.

And your point on financial stability?  Bending Spoons are a well respected commercial systems provider on a par with big games companies like Roblox.  They're not going to offer their services for free,  and they have no reason to make false claims about stability. 

[s2sailor 2,251]

17 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

It's hard to find a one-to-one speed comparison between things Legacy did and the identical things as v. 10 does them. If you have such, please share!

Agreed.  The easy one to share is the bulk moving of notes, but for me, the main things that bother me are extra clicks needed and the hidden until hover icons such as those used in move.  The overall v10 speed for me is fine but for those keyboard ninjas out there it is a slower experience.  I do have hope that the UI tweaks promised will help with this.

[s2sailor 2,251]

1 minute ago, gazumped said:

LOL I'm not sure you should be calling Federico a 'cheerleader' - My comments were mostly using the exact words from his blog post.

Yes, that was my point.  I do expect Federico to be a cheerleader for his app.  If you had just posted the blog link I would have left it alone, but then you quoted it almost entirely, making you the cheerleader.  Nothing personal, but I thought a, IMO more accurate, counterpoint was needed.

4 minutes ago, gazumped said:

And your point on financial stability?  Bending Spoons are a well respected commercial systems provider on a par with big games companies like Roblox.  They're not going to offer their services for free,  and they have no reason to make false claims about stability. 

Sorry, I never heard of Roblox and I never heard of Bending Spoons until the acquisition.  I never said they should offer their services for free.  Please see my earlier comments.  I agree with that change.  I hope they will become financially stable, I'm using this app too after all, but it is too soon to tell.  I'm concerned their price point will keep new users away and they will end up only relying on current users for revenue.

[VincentC 273]

Or there's an alternate approach... just don't engage with these kinds of comments.  For me, the value of this board is the chance to get the occasional insight about how to use Evernote more effectively and to occasionally offer a suggestion to someone else, which also helps me become more fluent. 

But I myself have no interest in managing a software company, commenting on pricing, marketing, UI design, code efficiency, or any of that stuff.  I'd rather use my limited time and energy to go for a motorcycle ride!  (And I understand that others may have different views, and more power to you!)

Vinnie

[mackid1993 776]

My only gripe has been slow support, which imho has started getting better. Hopefully soon they will have enough staff onboarded to offer chat again.

[s2sailor 2,251]

1 hour ago, VincentC said:

Or there's an alternate approach... just don't engage with these kinds of comments. 

I typically don't but occasionally I will see one that is so over the top that I feel the need to provide a, and again IMO, more accurate response.  Evernote should be encouraged to be better, especially at the new price.

1 hour ago, VincentC said:

For me, the value of this board is the chance to get the occasional insight about how to use Evernote more effectively

Same here actually.  I've been a user since the v2 days.  Considering the number of years, I post very little and am usually a forum reader hoping to find some new and useful information.

[PinkElephant 8,188]

Oh, they have enough support staff, I am sure about that.

Why ? Because they stopped hiring a few weeks ago, and the openings for support have not returned to the Career website.

[mackid1993 776]

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Oh, they have enough support staff, I am sure about that.

Why ? Because they stopped hiring a few weeks ago, and the openings for support have not returned to the Career website.

Tickets are getting answered now. Seems like they are digging out.

[VincentC 273]

It's not just the number of staff, though... it's the learning curve.  I imagine "I lost my password" and "I charged the wrong credit card" are pretty easy and not difficult to train on.  But a lot of the questions raise here, I barely understand myself, let alone be able to begin to answer them.  Pity the new desktop support person who has never learned Evernote, trying to get a handle on this "Swiss army knife" of software tools!  

 

Vinnie