(Archived) NEWS: Penultimate Acquisition

[gbarry 2,657]

In case you hadn't heard, we have big news! We're incredibly proud to announce that Evernote has acquired Cocoa Box, the minds behind one of the iPad's best selling apps, Penultimate. What does it all mean?

Cross-posted on our Noteworthy Blog from Cocoa Box:

Realizing that Evernote and Penultimate have such obviously complementary technologies, we’re teaming up. Evernote has acquired Penultimate, and I’ll be joining Evernote to help bring their significant resources to bear on making Penultimate better, faster. You’ll also start seeing Penultimate (finally!) on other devices, and we’ll be bringing great handwriting into other parts of Evernote.

Importantly, Penultimate is not going away: it remains an independent application, and will continue to espouse the virtues of ease of use, elegance, and “that special something” that have kept you coming back. But I also think you’ll be thrilled, and even surprised, by how much more the app will be able to do for you as we work together to improve it and connect more profoundly with Evernote’s capabilities.

So basically, lots of magic. Feel free to post your responses below, or create your own threads on Penultimate. Find the (slightly) earlier announcement on our blog here.

[May 268]

This is nice. I'm personally not crazy about handwriting only and I don't need an app which does handwriting only and saves it as a separate note only.

What I'd personally like is a combination of mostly typed text notes with some addition of handwriting here and there, hence I use Notability for this.

here is an example of this

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8159/7157706958_99d70e36a6_b.jpg

But anyway I do like where this is going, looking forward for some cool stuff in terms of integration, hopefully it's going to get more advanced than just saving Penultimate notes to Evernote

[danielegold 26]

Hey all. Thought I'd chim in here as well. I think this is a really great business move by Evernote. Ultimately, I imagine the long term plan here would be to integrate the handwriting technology right into the app itself, allowing for users to type and write at the same time - and likely add the zoom feature. Personally, I've been so thrilled with my Livescribe pen that I gaveaway my styli for my iPad. There seemed to be too much frustration in "getting it right". The LS pen allows me to take notes and instantly send to Evernote. Pretty sweet - and it's a real pen! Bonus.

[csmark 1]

As I read the release of Evernote's acquisition of Penultimate my mental jutebox switched over to Big Time" by Peter Gabriel.

I’ve been with Evernote since 2008 and watching it grow has been amazing. I've been apathetic as to the source of the increase in "secondary" apps. Before this, Microsoft could have added an expansion and I wouldn't have noticed. I don't own or want the currently supported platform. If Penultimate is never developed for my devices I'll still enjoy the memory of this purchase. I'm not going to go into all the emotional "happy happy joy joy" stuff but it's awesome to see Evernote's expansion.

Congratulations & continue the great work Evernote.

C. S. Mark

[heather 604]

What would be really nice is to have a full featured app (e.g. Notability which has both handwriting and typed text, zoom, voice recording and so on) and also a full integration with Evernote, so you would be able to add Notebooks/tags and sync/save the note into Evernote right away and then also edit it again whenever necessary and sync the changes automatically. Now that (or some similar and streamlined workflow) would be great (or perfect even).

I emailed Penultimate's generic enquiries email recently with the exact same suggestion/request - received a rather non-committal "thanks for your comments, we'll keep it in mind" response.

Still, I'll be keeping an eye on the app's progress

Evernote does not share our product development roadmap, however we're always happy to accept new feature suggestions.

[seven_neves 2]

What would be really nice is to have a full featured app (e.g. Notability which has both handwriting and typed text, zoom, voice recording and so on) and also a full integration with Evernote, so you would be able to add Notebooks/tags and sync/save the note into Evernote right away and then also edit it again whenever necessary and sync the changes automatically. Now that (or some similar and streamlined workflow) would be great (or perfect even).

I emailed Penultimate's generic enquiries email recently with the exact same suggestion/request - received a rather non-committal "thanks for your comments, we'll keep it in mind" response.

Still, I'll be keeping an eye on the app's progress

[jbenson2 2,146]

rotate images! nice

and resize images! very nice

I think there are a few Evernote users who will like that.

Especially with Evernote's desire to support features across platfoms.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

CONGRATULATIONS TO BOTH COMPANIES!

Penultimate is one of the best-looking apps on the iPad. I'm afraid that it isn't one I use very much, though, because it lacks a zoom feature. Any chance that this is coming? I certainly hope so

[wussery 4]

I have several note taking apps on my Ipad including Penultimate and I have found that this is the one that I don't use that often. It does not have a recording option as Notabiltiy and Notes Plus have and I also like the ability to draw vector graphics by hand on Notes Plus. The ability to draw a circle or a rectangle free hand and have the software automatically correct the shape for you is awesome to have in an app. Notes Plus has the ability to export to iTunes, email, Dropbox, Google Docs or as a PDF. Notability allows syncing directly to Dropbox in pdf format.

I wish Evernote would have selected a richer feature set as the APP to use for seamless intergration with Evernote.

[mrgoerend 89]

I'd like be able to pull up any note in Penultimate then draw on top of it, while maintaining the ability to edit is in Evernote (if it's a text note, for example).

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

I have several note taking apps on my Ipad including Penultimate and I have found that this is the one that I don't use that often. It does not have a recording option as Notabiltiy and Notes Plus have and I also like the ability to draw vector graphics by hand on Notes Plus. The ability to draw a circle or a rectangle free hand and have the software automatically correct the shape for you is awesome to have in an app. Notes Plus has the ability to export to iTunes, email, Dropbox, Google Docs or as a PDF. Notability allows syncing directly to Dropbox in pdf format.

I wish Evernote would have selected a richer feature set as the APP to use for seamless intergration with Evernote.

Hi. I merged your thread with the existing one.

I actually do not want to have a recording function in my handwriting app (I run recorder pro in the background separately). But, I can see why someone would. My personal favorite (because of functionality) is currently Notetaker HD. Although, I've always like Penultimate, without a zoom feature I just cannot use it for my stuff. Too bad.

[KazMogi 1]

Awesome! I hope this means there will FINALLY be a zoom feature for this app!

[May 268]

@Danielgold,

Do you mean integrating handwriting directly into Evernote native note editor? If that's the goal then I don't really see much point in acquiring Penultimate and keeping it as a separate app.

Livescribe pen looks nice but it's a step backwards for people with tablets.

I haven't personally tried it but I don't think it's an optimal solution because you can do handwriting only and then you also have to deal with sending data from the pen into other apps (even if it's instant, it's still an additional step), also the exported data would probably be not editable (maybe I'm wrong).

Why bother with this when you have a tablet and can do handwriting directly on the screen and also lots of other additional stuff, e.g. typed text, rich multimedia, hyper links, etc. and keep it all editable and organize it directly in Evernote without any export/import.

What would be really nice is to have a full featured app (e.g. Notability which has both handwriting and typed text, zoom, voice recording and so on) and also a full integration with Evernote, so you would be able to add Notebooks/tags and sync/save the note into Evernote right away and then also edit it again whenever necessary and sync the changes automatically. Now that (or some similar and streamlined workflow) would be great (or perfect even).

[nova47 60]

Meh. The integration could be great, but I won't consider the app until it gets a zoom feature. Get it up to the level of Notability, Notetaker HD and others and I'm in.

[Martin Packer 162]

I also wonder if it does handwriting recognition. Somehow I doubt it - but I'm beginning to give up on handwriting recognition anyway. My interest in it is to provide retrieval.

Still, I "went out" :-) and bought it - on the strength of the acquisition.

Martin

[Metrodon 2,177]

I think it's interesting that they haven't made it free immediately like they did with Skitch.....

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

I also wonder if it does handwriting recognition. Somehow I doubt it - but I'm beginning to give up on handwriting recognition anyway. My interest in it is to provide retrieval.

Still, I "went out" :-) and bought it - on the strength of the acquisition.

Martin

if you want handwriting recognition, see 7 notes hd premium. i reviewed it a while back (shared notebook in my sig).