How bug-free was Evernote Legacy?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,965]

OK, I'll start off by saying I've got a point to make here. Legacy enthusiasts (see, I avoided saying "fanboys") always complain about how "buggy" v. 10 is. So I did a pretty simple forum search: in the v. 6.25.1 technical issues forum (https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/forum/225-evernote-for-windows-issues-versions-6251-and-under/), I searched for "bug" in post titles or bodies. From the beginning of 2010 to the end of September 2020 (when v. 10 was introduced and development of v. 6 ceased), it gives 278 results. Just for 2019 and 2020, I think there are 165. Here's the link to the search, starting on p. 2 where 2020 begins: https://discussion.evernote.com/search/?&q=bug&type=forums_topic&page=2&quick=1&nodes=225&search_and_or=or&sortby=newest.

Proving what? This is not a count of individual bug reports, but total posts, which could range pretty widely. OTOH, it doesn't give any idea of the number of bug reports made to support during that period. My point is that this confirms my own personal recollection: before the introduction of v. 10, Evernote 6 and prior had bunches and bunches of bugs, many of which took months to fix, if they were ever fixed. Pre-v. 10 Evernote was no ideal app, no blissfully easy experience. For people who don't like specific things about v. 10, that's fine, you're welcome to your opinion. But please, no more "v. 10 is so buggy, Legacy never was."

[Mike P 2,643]

Some of us have been using EN long enough to remember the infamous article, "Evernote the Bug Ridden Elephant" written in Jan 2014. https://jasonkincaid.net/evernote-the-bug-ridden-elephant/

[ChristianJB 92]

And the endless we need "Dark Mode" discussions... 

 

[Razmataz 218]

@Dave-in-Decatur,

 

this 

 Legacy enthusiasts (see, I avoided saying "fanboys") always complain about how "buggy" v. 10 is

is quite slanted and doesn't take into account that some of us (like myself) are complaining because V10 is not just buggy (you can't deny that) but also underfeatured or at least very cumbersome (leading to much reduced productivity) than legacy.

If V10 were a great product, if it had a roadmap, a trouble-ticket system, a functioning customers support,….. there would be much less mentioning of bugs in V10.

It is very clear from psychology that people complain much less about anything (including partnerships etc.) if there is enough positive that they can like/love.

That's the problem of V10, I submit. 

And I don't like that many here equate "legacy enthusiast" with "V10 critic".

Wikipedia:

The word "critic" comes from Greek κριτικός (kritikós) 'able to discern', which is a Greek derivation of the word κριτής (krités), meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation or observation.

I am trying to offer reasoned critique and don't appreciate to be ridiculed or bullied for it.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,965]

1 hour ago, Razmataz said:

@Dave-in-Decatur,

 

this 

 Legacy enthusiasts (see, I avoided saying "fanboys") always complain about how "buggy" v. 10 is

is quite slanted and doesn't take into account that some of us (like myself) are complaining because V10 is not just buggy (you can't deny that) but also underfeatured or at least very cumbersome (leading to much reduced productivity) than legacy.

If V10 were a great product, if it had a roadmap, a trouble-ticket system, a functioning customers support,….. there would be much less mentioning of bugs in V10.

It is very clear from psychology that people complain much less about anything (including partnerships etc.) if there is enough positive that they can like/love.

That's the problem of V10, I submit. 

And I don't like that many here equate "legacy enthusiast" with "V10 critic".

Wikipedia:

The word "critic" comes from Greek κριτικός (kritikós) 'able to discern', which is a Greek derivation of the word κριτής (krités), meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation or observation.

I am trying to offer reasoned critique and don't appreciate to be ridiculed or bullied for it.

WRT being ridiculed or bullied for reasoned critique, believe me, I know what that's like.

V. 10 has bugs, as all software does. It also has feature differences from Legacy--but that includes several features that Legacy never had; I won't clog this with a recitation. "Underfeatured" and "cumbersome" are matters of personal experience, preference, and opinion. I don't find v. 10 to be any of that, which is my personal opinion based on my experiences and preferences. I think the thing I object to most is when v. 10 critics speak as if their preferences and workflows should be considered normative, so that if v. 10 doesn't work flawlessly for them, it just doesn't work. I've seen this time and again--I'm not directing this at you, just speaking about what I see here in general. I don't consider that approach to be reasonable criticism.

WRT specifically to this:

Quote

If V10 were a great product, if it had a roadmap, a trouble-ticket system, a functioning customers support,….. there would be much less mentioning of bugs in V10.

It is very clear from psychology that people complain much less about anything (including partnerships etc.) if there is enough positive that they can like/love.

That's the problem of V10, I submit. 

None of those things is a software bug. The support and trouble-ticket system are a horrible mess these last many months, as I think everyone agrees. "Great product" again is a matter of evaluation and judgement case-by-case. I don't see how improved customer support will make people complain less about bugs in v. 10, though hopefully they'll have someplace to report bugs and expect them to get fixed. As for "enough positive that they can like/love," I absolutely do find that in Evernote 10. And every time I say it, I get called a fanboy and even a paid shill. I don't think that that is the fault of v. 10.

[s2sailor 2,205]

1 hour ago, Razmataz said:

I am trying to offer reasoned critique

Reasoned critique is good and welcomed.  Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of generalized griping.  V10 is better in some ways and worse in others.  We could debate those details forever, but Legacy is no longer, for better or worse v10 is Evernote now.  Personally, I would prefer discussions on how we can make it better rather than how we can make it like legacy, and I admit some of the things in the make it better category may have been in Legacy.

IMO, one of the worst things that Evernote did was to call it an upgrade and label it v10.  When it was first available it was definitely not an upgrade.  They should have recognized it for what it was, a from the ground up new app never fully intended to replicate Legacy.

[PinkElephant 8,119]

Oh yes, legacy has a roadmap, but a very short one. It consists of 1 entry:

23rd of March 2024 - Game Over

The cry for a roadmap is as old as it is senseless. I don not subscribe because there is something on a roadmap, on some remote date in the future. This is no fundraising event like a kickstarter campaign. I subscribe exclusively for features that exist today, and that I can use NOW.

If they decide to surprise me during my subscription, I see my money well spend, and will likely subscribe again.

So let us see what I got this way:

• Import folders (not existent on legacy Mac)
• Home dashboard (not existent on legacy)
• Tasks (not existent on legacy)
• Backlinks (not existent on legacy)
• RTE / new syncing (the FIRST syncing ever that really works - not existent on legacy)

just to name a few. All of this without a roadmap - who needs a roadmap when things just roll out the gate like that ?

So first legacy is today painfully short of features compared to v10, and second the only roadmap EN ever needed to communicate is the one for legacy, that they published a week ago: Game over on the 23rd of march.

Because THIS users in fact needed to know with a little lead time.

[mackid1993 730]

13 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

Reasoned critique is good and welcomed.  Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of generalized griping.  V10 is better in some ways and worse in others.  We could debate those details forever, but Legacy is no longer, for better or worse v10 is Evernote now.  Personally, I would prefer discussions on how we can make it better rather than how we can make it like legacy, and I admit some of the things in the make it better category may have been in Legacy.

IMO, one of the worst things that Evernote did was to call it an upgrade and label it v10.  When it was first available it was definitely not an upgrade.  They should have recognized it for what it was, a from the ground up new app never fully intended to replicate Legacy.

I agree, why take a modern platform and make it work like something designed 15 years ago with early-2010s era technology? Rather than clinging on to the "comfortable" past with rose tinted glasses it would be more effective to look at ways to make the present and the future better.

No matter what Bending Spoons does a subset of users will complain. People hate any sort of change and no company can win, ever. Someone will be unreasonably angry no matter what. I guess we have to start ignoring those who want to rant into the void and not engage with those users as it's futile. They will never be happy.

[mackid1993 730]

1 minute ago, PinkElephant said:

RTE / new syncing (the FIRST syncing ever that really works - not existent on legacy)

Gotta love that GIANT "Sync" button on legacy. What a dated concept!

[PinkElephant 8,119]

I once send EN the proposal to include a sync button into v10.

You know, a large one, with a nice animation that gives the user the impression to be in command. But only this, a button with an animation, apart of it without a function.

It would have kept a lot of people off the forum, because instead of coming here they would be busy hitting that button, masters of their syncing fortunes.

[mackid1993 730]

Just now, PinkElephant said:

I once send EN the proposal to include a sync button into v10.

You know, a large one, with a nice animation that gives the user the impression to be in command. But only this, a button with an animation, apart of it without a function.

It would have kept a lot of people off the forum, because instead of coming here they would be busy hitting that button, masters of their syncing fortunes.

That's like when someone has a problem with their computer that isn't really a problem, so you update their BIOS and tell them it's fixed.

[WilliamL 654]

I always remember legacy as incredibly buggy. It would never correctly sync tags and notes that had been tagged between desktop and mobile etc. 10 is far more stable now than legacy was. 

[ferol 430]

1 minute ago, WilliamL said:

I always remember legacy as incredibly buggy. It would never correctly sync tags and notes that had been tagged between desktop and mobile etc. 10 is far more stable now than legacy was. 

I remember how I regularly had to replace the tags with new ones because my colleagues didn't see them in the shared laptops... I never figured out why they sometimes appeared right away and sometimes I had to do it repeatedly..

[Feitz 170]

In my experience - and I have been using Evernote up to 7.14 for a very long time on a mac - it always had issues, especially with note formatting inconsistencies and web clipper which was working on an on and off basis. BUT I didn't have ANY issues I can remember with 7.14, neither formatting, nor syncing, even web clipper behaved nicely.

7.14 was released in December 2019, so I had more than four trouble-free years just using it and never having to worry about any issues with it. During that time I was using it extensively for very important stuff and I would have noticed any glitches at once. 

Edit: At least for me tags worked and synced perfectly at least since 7.14. 

[mackid1993 730]

3 minutes ago, Feitz said:

In my experience - and I have been using Evernote up to 7.14 for a very long time on a mac - it always had issues, especially with note formatting inconsistencies and web clipper which was working on an on and off basis. BUT I didn't have ANY issues I can remember with 7.14, neither formatting, nor syncing, even web clipper behaved nicely.

7.14 was released in December 2019, so I had more than four trouble-free years just using it and never having to worry about any issues with it. During that time I was using it extensively for very important stuff and I would have noticed any glitches at once. 

Edit: At least for me tags worked and synced perfectly at least since 7.14. 

The problem would be if you also had EN on a Windows machine running 6.25. It's a totally different codebase with different formatting options, fonts, etc. Syncing between the two would likely have not been as consistent as it is with one platform agnostic codebase like we have now.

[CalS 5,280]

@Dave-in-Decatur Sort of an existential question.  Six people and an elephant as not everyone uses the same stuff.  🤷‍♂️

[Feitz 170]

1 minute ago, mackid1993 said:

The problem would be if you also had EN on a Windows machine running 6.25.

I only use Evernote on Macos. I quit Windows when Vista came out (having used and administered hundreds of windows clients and servers) for similar reasons like V10. 

[ferol 430]

But one thing is true. Until v.10 came to the forums I had no need to go to solve anything... v.6 had its flies, which I got used to over the years and could easily deal with. 

[mackid1993 730]

1 minute ago, Feitz said:

I only use Evernote on Macos. I quit Windows when Vista came out (having used and administered hundreds of windows clients and servers) for similar reasons like V10. 

That wasn't my point. I wasn't talking about you. I was referring to any potential user who may have a Mac at home and a PC at work for example and may wish to sync their notes between the two. That would not be a very good experience due to the limitations of the legacy clients. Note I said clients not client. Legacy had a different client for every platform. Evernote 10+ is platform agnostic. The same codebase is run on everything (except mobile), just the Chromium runtime is changed for the platform along with a few minor platform specific changes to interface with native APIs for things like notifications, system tray on Windows, the menu bar on macOS etc.

[mackid1993 730]

5 minutes ago, ferol said:

But one thing is true. Until v.10 came to the forums I had no need to go to solve anything... v.6 had its flies, which I got used to over the years and could easily deal with. 

I agree, v10 under the old team was poorly executed at launch. It seems that this memory has left a bad taste for many people.

I personally used Evernote many years ago and started using it again more recently as v10 was starting to stabilize, so I missed the s*** show. What I will say is I cannot live without tasks, that is one of the biggest draws to Evernote for me. I use recurring tasks to organize my day, the the Home screen helps keep me on track. If Evernote just did notes and nothing else I would never even think of using it.

It's the combination of knowledge management, task management, and document management that keeps me coming back for more.

[CalS 5,280]

Features varied a bit but data was solid when I used a mac and pc for a bit in the teens.

[Feitz 170]

3 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

That would not be a very good experience due to the limitations of the legacy clients

Can't comment on Windows, but I was using Macos, Android and iPadOS together and didn't stumble upon anything grave. I remember minor inconsistencies e.g. with checkboxes, but nothing serious. Had lots of self created documents with many images and attachments and edited them on all platforms without mayor issues. At least I didn't notice them as opposed to the issues in V10 that I stumble across all the time.

[s2sailor 2,205]

Mostly I noticed font and formatting differences when jumping between devices, no data issues.  I learned to live with it.

[Feitz 170]

2 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

Mostly I noticed font and formatting differences when jumping between devices, no data issues.  I learned to live with it.

exactly

[mackid1993 730]

2 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

Mostly I noticed font and formatting differences when jumping between devices, no data issues.  I learned to live with it.

See that would personally drive me crazy! A great example of why this all boils down to opinion.

[s2sailor 2,205]

7 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

I agree, v10 under the old team was poorly executed at launch.

I don’t know about poorly executed, but it was launched much too soon and then when the app “upgraded” to v10 it was a huge productivity hit to everyone.  Most of us, I think, then reinstalled legacy and continued on checking in occasionally on v10 to see if it improved.  It was close to two years later when I finally bit the bullet and moved over.

[mackid1993 730]

4 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

I don’t know about poorly executed, but it was launched much too soon and then when the app “upgraded” to v10 it was a huge productivity hit to everyone.  Most of us, I think, then reinstalled legacy and continued on checking in occasionally on v10 to see if it improved.  It was close to two years later when I finally bit the bullet and moved over.

So it needed more time to bake?

[Feitz 170]

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

See that would personally drive me crazy! A great example of why this all boils down to opinion.

It wasn't nice but at least I NEVER lost any data with pre-V10 as opposed to actual V10 where I did lose some notes / attachments. The moment I realise something misses I can correct it / rewrite it.

What is more bothersome to me is that I don't know what else was affected by data loss / data corruption. That defeats the purpose of a trusted platform for all of one's data and that is where I have zero tolerance for any app.

[mackid1993 730]

Just now, Feitz said:

It wasn't nice but at least I NEVER lost any data with pre-V10 as opposed to actual V10 where I did lose some notes / attachments. The moment I realise something misses I can correct it / rewrite it.

What is more bothersome to me is that I don't know what else was affected by data loss / data corruption. That defeats the purpose of a trusted platform for all of one's data and that is where I have zero tolerance for any app.

See I've never experienced data loss with v10, although to be safe I take nightly enex backups of each notebook that gets versioned and backed up offsite. So if I did ever have data loss I could pull a backup and restore the affected notebook.

[Feitz 170]

Just now, Feitz said:

What is more bothersome to me is that I don't know what else was affected by data loss / data corruption. That defeats the purpose of a trusted platform for all of one's data and that is where I have zero tolerance for any app.

But since Legacy has been taken off the board this has become irrelevant and only two options remain, hope and wait for V10 to get better or switch to something else.

[Feitz 170]

1 minute ago, mackid1993 said:

did ever have data loss I

Sure, I do have backups but in order to pull data from it I need to know when something misses which is difficult with thousands of notes. Backups age quickly and if you don't notice at once you will probably not have something to go back to.

[CalS 5,280]

Problem with data loss is sometimes you only find out when you look for it.  😒

EDIT:  Oops, ships in the @Feitz

[mackid1993 730]

Just now, Feitz said:

Sure, I do have backups but in order to pull data from it I need to know when something misses which is difficult with thousands of notes. Backups age quickly and if you don't notice at once you will probably not have something to go back to.

That's why I take them nightly. I have it automated. 😉

[s2sailor 2,205]

3 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

So it needed more time to bake?

Much more.  I don’t know if they released it early to hit a date or if they were looking for early crowd source input, but either way, IMO, it was a mistake.

[mackid1993 730]

Just now, s2sailor said:

Much more.  I don’t know if they released it early to hit a date or if they were looking for early crowd source input, but either way, IMO, it was a mistake.

Sounds like it. Anything with a cult-like following can't deliver disappointment like that, as we see goodwill only lasts so long.

[s2sailor 2,205]

7 minutes ago, Feitz said:

It wasn't nice but at least I NEVER lost any data with pre-V10 as opposed to actual V10

I first lost data ever with v10 during the RTE introduction, also rushed out in my opinion.  It was disheartening, but nothing major fortunately, mainly with tasks.

[Feitz 170]

11 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

I first lost data ever with v10 during the RTE introduction

Same, on my Ventura / V10 mac mini where Legacy didn't display correctly I lost several long texts immediately after I finished them, they where probably overwritten when another client became active and reversed the verson of the note to its initial state.

Lost many attachments that were suddenly 'untitled' with no hint as to what they originally were, not even the type of attachment (image, PDF, etc.). Since the affected notes were created from files imported to V10 and then not altered again, no note history was available to recover these files.

Edit: added V10 to the mac mini, because Legacy didn't play well with Ventura.

[Feitz 170]

16 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

with a cult-like following

No, I don't think this has anything to do with a cult, at least not for Legacy. If you rely on a tool for more than a decade and have your whole professional and personal life stored in it you are somewhat dependant on it, especially since there were absolutely no alternatives with a similar feature set and ease of use as a document dump.

For me I think I now have found a working alternative but this took A LOT of work that i found was basically lost time.

[mackid1993 730]

3 minutes ago, Feitz said:

No, I don't think this has anything to do with a cult, at least not for Legacy. If you rely on a tool for more than a decade and have your whole professional and personal life stored in it you are somewhat dependant on it, especially since there were absolutely no alternatives with a similar feature set and ease of use as a document dump.

For me I think I now have found a working alternative but this took A LOT of work that i found was basically lost time.

Out of curiosity what are you looking into as an alternative? It seems Obsidian + Plugins can get pretty close these days.

[Feitz 170]

45 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Out of curiosity what are you looking into as an alternative? It seems Obsidian + Plugins can get pretty close these days.

I had some prerequisites for an alternative:

- simplicity
- better integration with Macos finder, spotlight, finder tags etc.
- Sync through OS services or established sync providers that reliably support xattrs (finder tags, etc.) At the moment these are iCloud, Dropbox and Synology drive as well and resilio sync as a file sync tool that transports xattrs.
- Two-way editing, meaning I can edit within the tool of choice and outside of it, so that outside changes are reflected in the note tool.
- Better tag management than Evernote (Legacy and V10) with the use of standard finder tags so no need to maintain two tag systems
- easily accessible file format for notes with attachments, I prefer RTF / RTFD because I can edit these with anything and have good formatting options.
- native iPad client
- SUPPORT

At the moment I have all my currently important stuff transferred to KeepIT, a successor of Together which i used quite a bit before Evernote came around.

KeepIt stores everything in standard folders that can be accessed from Finder, so Spotlight search is available. KeepIt has a beautifully clean interface and has all the features I need for it to act as a document dump. Evernote-like 3-pane-layout,  thumbnails are similar to Legacy and I find better than V10 (smaller images within thumbnails). I can use folders, smart folders and tags within KeepIt and it comes with a beautiful tag management, so much better than Evernote (any version).

With this approach I can access my data from outside, preferably using LEAP.APP which is a very reliable and powerful tag-based file manager.

For the rest of my data I will export them from Legacy before the cut-off and import them into Eaglefiler, an equally stable app with a good reputation and more than enough features. I used Eaglefiler before but switched to Evernote in 2009. The Eaglefile database will rest on an Synology Drive, a self hosted service like Dropbox that also supports xattrs (tags etc.).

Both KeepIt and Eaglefiler have outstanding support, while I evaluated these two during the last few months I had several questions for both apps and regularly received an answer from the owners / developers that actually was a solution within 2-3 hours (EagleFiler) and 2 days max (KeepIt).

Normally I would not chose such small companies (probably both 1-man endeavours) but both are around for many years and have a good reputation (especially Michael Tsai from EagleFiler). Since I can search and access all files with other tools the risk is minimal, if any of them goes belly-up I can use the other or Leap or simply Macos finder.  

Since the Evernote web clipper is better than others I will continue to use Evernote for web clippings and export to EagleFiler regularly. Once my subscription ends in November the 50-notes-limit should be enough for this purpose, and if Evernote becomes usable for be until then I can easily revert everything to Evernote.

The only drawback I see is that there is no Android access other than iCloud via browser (neither Windows but that doesn't bother me). And KeepIt uses iCloud as a cloud service which i am not a big fan of. It works well but sync can be a bit unpredictable at times as to when it actually syncs. Legacy was my favourite, V10 is my least favourite, so I am somewhere in the middle with iCloud.

Since the amount of data I have inside KeepIt now is still limited, I can easily switch to another solution if I should hit a road block that can't be avoided.

BTW this is not a recommendation, but rather a snapshot of where I am at the moment.

 

EDIT: I will use this migration to do some house-keeping. Thanks to the availability of folders I have set up a system similar to the PARA method in KeepIt and use it strictly for what I'm actually working on, what I need for related reference and as a document storage for important personal stuff.

I made a promise to myself not to create as much digital chaos as in my years of Evernote use and thanks to better structural tools in KeepIt this seems achievable. So far full-text-search in Evernote always found what I needed but a little more structure and discipline might help in the future.

All the unrelated web clips, PDFs, etc. that have accumulated over time for 'just in case I need them again' will stay in Evernote (for the time being) and EagleFiler. Both have been paid so there is no additional cost but EagleFiler files sit on my on NAS as a backup. 

 

[mackid1993 730]

@Feitz The web clipper is exempt from the 50 notes limit so it should serve you well.

I agree, the most important thing to me in any software I pay for is timely support.

I actually opened a ticket about not getting the new UI on my work computer in the desktop app but getting it in the browser and support responded the next day, so I think they are starting to improve.

[Feitz 170]

1 minute ago, mackid1993 said:

I actually opened a ticket about not getting the new UI on my work computer in the desktop app but getting it in the browser and support responded the next day, so I think they are starting to improve.

Same, I recently had an urgent issue that was actually solved within 2 days by BS. Unfortunately for the next one I was again greeted with a canned answer that asked for a bazillion of unrelated information and that I didn' follow up on. So I think there is some sort of pre-filtering for issues that might be time critical for the user, which is a good thing. 

Again, I (almost) don't blame BS for any of the issues with V10, they probably inherited an utter mess of a code base and have a hard time deciding where to start fixing.

But in the end everyone is responsible for his own data and has to decide on his tolerance of data related issues.

[mackid1993 730]

3 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Same, I recently had an urgent issue that was actually solved within 2 days by BS. Unfortunately for the next one I was again greeted with a canned answer that asked for a bazillion of unrelated information and that I didn' follow up on. So I think there is some sort of pre-filtering for issues that might be time critical for the user, which is a good thing. 

Again, I (almost) don't blame BS for any of the issues with V10, they probably inherited an utter mess of a code base and have a hard time deciding where to start fixing.

But in the end everyone is responsible for his own data and has to decide on his tolerance of data related issues.

I got a canned response to my ticket right away. I replied to it right away, the issue was the canned response asked for information I already provided so I just stated my problem again. This pushed the ticket forward. I got an answer next day that the new UI was still rolling out.

I finally got the new UI on that machine today.

I would say if you get a canned response from them it is certainly automated based on the topic you chose for your ticket. Just reply to it, and usually support gets back.

I have a feeling that there is a large volume of tickets and not a lot of agents so to get through the workload they use a lot of these canned responses. Fortunately, it appears that when they acknowledge a bug as an issue, they really have logged it internally and will fix it.

[Feitz 170]

1 minute ago, mackid1993 said:

I finally got the new UI on that machine today.

Great, maybe they somewhat get ahead of the wave after all...

[mackid1993 730]

6 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Great, maybe they somewhat get ahead of the wave after all...

I think they will. I'm pretty sure @PinkElephant mentioned a while back that Bending Spoons was hiring for customer support roles.

It would make sense that if this were the case these new people will take some time to be trained and then to learn on the job too.

I ran into an issue where I paid at my job but we're tax exempt so I needed the sales tax refunded. This was back in December. It took 30 days to get a response and when I did it was someone who told me I was already tax exempt. I finally got someone on a different ticket on my personal account who was actively responding to me about a different issue so I mentioned to them that I have this tax issue on my work account.

The next day the tax was refunded and my account was made tax exempt, that 30+ day ticket was responded to and they told me everything was taken care of.

Then the agent that was responding on my personal account checked with me to make sure my work issue was resolved.

They've gotten MUCH better since December/January. I'm hopeful that by the summer once most people have been onboarded to v10 and the confusion/outrage over the free plans/price increase has calmed down because either people have accepted the changes or left to a competitor support will have freed up.

I also know you are a fan of legacy but there's the argument that discontinuing legacy will likely free up resources that can be placed into fixing outstanding issues with v10 as right now they have to make sure all changes they make in v10 don't break legacy, not to mention the man hours and testing needed to ensure this. Soon they won't have to do that, so it opens up possibilities that didn't exist previously as well. Perhaps we'll all find that in a few months Evernote will be more stable because of this change. I guess we can only hope, and if it doesn't work out vote with our wallets.

Joplin has added full OCR now, and their paid sync service supports email to note. If they can get their Android app a little bit more stable that's likely where I'd land if if I decided to leave Evernote.

[Feitz 170]

5 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Perhaps we'll all find that in a few months Evernote will be more stable because of this change.

I do hope you are right and they set aside some resources to streamline things. 

[Feitz 170]

13 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

I also know you are a fan of legacy

It's not so much legacy but in legacy lots of things were much more reliable and easier to achieve. I am not very tolerant when things that worked perfectly fine and efficient are changed for the worse. And tbh. I am not a great fan of one-size-fits-all frameworks. Same with Java apps, I avoided them whenever possible. 

[mackid1993 730]

6 minutes ago, Feitz said:

I do hope you are right and they set aside some resources to streamline things. 

If I'm not I don't think I'll stick around. I'm giving them a chance to transition and smooth things out. So far I'm happy with the improvements they've made and the new features they are teasing.

2 minutes ago, Feitz said:

It's not so much legacy but in legacy lots of things were much more reliable and easier to achieve. I am not very tolerant when things that worked perfectly fine and efficient are changed for the worse. And tbh. I am not a great fan of one-size-fits-all frameworks. Same with Java apps, I avoided them whenever possible. 

I agree, native frameworks are nicer but these days are only used for platform specific apps. Most apps are cross platform now and that's why pretty much everything is built on Electron. In my opinion Java apps are much much slower than Electron. Plenty of Electron apps perform quite well such as VSCode and Discord. That gives me hope for Evernote.

[Feitz 170]

3 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

That gives me hope for Evernote

I guess we'll find out rather sooner than later... 

[Feitz 170]

Well, upon second thought I do remember an issue with Legacy that I did't care for at all: I use and need lots of PDFs within Evernote and in 7.14 (and probably before that) oftentimes the first page of a pdf didn't show in the note. That was rather unpleasant, I don't remember I saw this in V10.

[mackid1993 730]

3 minutes ago, Feitz said:

I guess we'll find out rather sooner than later... 

I think we will, I'm not sure if you follow Federico on Twitter but he is super active on there and based on what he's posting I'm optimistic for the future.

[Feitz 170]

Just now, mackid1993 said:

Federico on Twitter

I do of course... 

[mackid1993 730]

Just now, Feitz said:

Well, upon second thought I do remember an issue with Legacy that I did't care for at all: I use and need lots of PDFs within Evernote and in 7.14 (and probably before that) oftentimes the first page of a pdf didn't show in the note. That was rather unpleasant, I don't remember I saw this in V10.

Not sure about Legacy but in v10 you can display a PDF as just the label, the first page, or all pages in the document. This can also be set as a default on a per client basis.

[Feitz 170]

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

This can also be set as a default on a per client basis.

I liked the way Legacy worked better - when it worked. Last time I checked V10 hat converted them from a single line reference to full inline display of all these PDFs.

I had to change the view option of each and every single PDF in a note with 20 or so PDFs instead of changing them all in one go...

But maybe that has changed with the last versions as well, if not, I will ask @ferol to add it to his list which I find is a very good idea. Nobody from BS can be bothered to follow all of the partly chaotic threads. A consolidated buglist / wishlist might serve them better.

[mackid1993 730]

4 minutes ago, Feitz said:

I liked the way Legacy worked better - when it worked. Last time I checked V10 hat converted them from a single line reference to full inline display of all these PDFs.

I had to change the view option of each and every single PDF in a note with 20 or so PDFs instead of changing them all in one go...

But maybe that has changed with the last versions as well, if not, I will ask @ferol to add it to his list which I find is a very good idea. Nobody from BS can be bothered to follow all of the partly chaotic threads. A consolidated buglist / wishlist might serve them better.

This may be the option you want? 

It looks like this:

It can also be changed on the document itself.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,965]

4 hours ago, Feitz said:

In my experience - and I have been using Evernote up to 7.14 for a very long time on a mac - it always had issues, especially with note formatting inconsistencies and web clipper which was working on an on and off basis. BUT I didn't have ANY issues I can remember with 7.14, neither formatting, nor syncing, even web clipper behaved nicely.

7.14 was released in December 2019, so I had more than four trouble-free years just using it and never having to worry about any issues with it. During that time I was using it extensively for very important stuff and I would have noticed any glitches at once. 

Edit: At least for me tags worked and synced perfectly at least since 7.14. 

I apologize for being a little insistent about this. I should have said in my OP here that I only did the forum search on the Windows forum; searches on other platforms' forums will reveal other masses of bug reports pre-v. 10. Here's the search on the Mac forum, which turns up almost 150 posts discussing "bug": https://discussion.evernote.com/search/?&q=bug&type=forums_topic&page=1&quick=1&nodes=219&search_and_or=or&start_after=1262304000&start_before=1609372800&sortby=newest. For example, from October 2020, so I presume on v. 7.14, concerning a sync/duplication issue:

I'm glad you had a near-perfect experience with 7.14, but I doubt that it was universally so.

 

[mackid1993 730]

It sounds like software always has bugs, tis' the nature of the beast.

I'd be lying if I said Evernote was the only piece of software I've used with known bugs that I've reported that are acknowledged by the developer but still waiting to be fixed.

If someone can come along and suggest a 100% bug free notetaking and task management app I'll gladly cancel my Evernote sub and switch.

[Jon/t 1,293]

I left Evernote in 2017 'cos Legacy was like using Word 97 20 years later! It was pants lol. No paragraph headings, different fonts on different devices so notes looked different, import folders on my PC but not on my Mac, tabs on my Mac but not on my PC... I moved to the Win 10 version on OneNote.

Came back to Evernote when Version 10 was launched... Paragraph Headings, consistency!!

V10 now is utterly different now to when it launched and I don't get the performance issues some folk have. Its like butter for me and I have a cheap PC.

I remember conversations from the old Evernote team when V10 launched and some of the missing functionality was deliberate because so few people used it.

It was never meant to be a replica.

Still miss the OneNote ruler though!

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,965]

@Jon/t, yes! Butter, not pants! Wait a minute....