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Blueadept

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  1. That's a fair enough point... so I'd like to clarify a little where I'm coming from. Although I don't take it as a personal afront, I do think it's inappropriate and should be called out... not because I really think that Evernote is disrespecting the Linux community but because it is certainly a historical issue that many companies assume there are no linux users and the more cases where they say something a little stupid about Linux and one of the users calls them out on it, the more likely they are to realise those users are there. It is a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy too, because in the case of many of those companies they will cite the lack of Linux enquiries as a reason for a policy of not supporting the platform... when often it is the long term policy of not supporting the platform which is the cause of the lack of enquiries. Actually, I did mean it when I said that having a publically accessible API is visionary... I just don't think it can replace a baseline, reliable vendor supported app. That's what would make me subscribe to the service, even tho it might be the API that ultimately keeps me there, and I don't think I'm alone. Who doesn't like the cool free app that does some neat thing?... would you like to rely on that cool free app for everything with no safety net? No. As for using Linux themselves... that's a given, noone in their right mind would be using Windows as a server for an enterprise web platform these days unless their company name started in Micro and ended in Soft... So, honestly your choices are Linux, BSD or Solaris... and Solaris will ultimately cost lots more, so you'll end up using BSD or Linux.... ultimately Linux is more mainstream out of the two, so you'll find yourself spending more time deciding what type of Linux server to use than any of those other decisions! To my knowledge, Evernote has never lied to me about their position on Linux or withdrawn support after taking people's money or actively tried to detect and block Linux users... so they're already way ahead of many of the other online services I've queried about Linux in the past.
  2. I simply consider it a civic duty to raise these issues... most Linux users have spent a long time assuming that they won't be supported regardless of the money they absolutely do have to spend... and most companies assume that Linux users are mostly spotty kids with no money to spend... the cycle perpetuates. Meanwhile Humble Bundle repeatedly proves that Linux users are typically prepared to pay more on average for software and services than other users. If that sometimes means raising an issue like this, then so be it.... and your implication that I should not raise these issues and should just keep quiet an move just makes me consider you to be part of the problem. I don't necessarily want to labour the point, but at the same time... it's long past time that as a group of computer users we made our presence known.
  3. 1. I didn't have time to review which podcast it was in, and at the time I wasn't sure if I wanted to call out a specific person.. although I didn't want to leave your question unanswered either. As for it being a general attitude, perhaps that's unfair when speaking specifically about Evernote... although it certainly isn't when taking the proliferation of online services as a whole. I've had many exchanges with Audible on the same issue, and /their/ standard response for example has not changed in 2 years... and is very clearly knowingly untrue. Many Linux users were essentially ripped off by LoveFilm who moved to Silverlight leaving their Linux users unable to view content they had paid for.... the list goes on. This is the reason why overt support however minimal, is needed to attract Linux users. 2. There was a lot of content to review to find the specific quote, so there was a delay.. I apologize for that. I did originally suggest that you had added "almost", but immediately edited the post to say "someone"... since I realized that you were quoting another article.... As for my attitude in these posts, I hope it's obvious that I do try to be fair... even if I do ultimately have some agenda. The thing to realize is that I've been using this platform pretty much exclusively for 20 years, certainly 15 years and for most of that time my approach has been "Well, there's really not enough of an installed base, and most users are students with no money".. so we'll do what we can with Wine, NDISWrapper, Java etc. etc. to get what we need running... but more recently I've come to the realization that there are certainly 50 million users, and many of them were students 10 or 20 years ago... Now the issue is not having the money to spend on these products, it is the companies involved realizing that there are a lot of potential customers if it's approached correctly. Audible is a prime example, they have retained strong DRM, and refused to provide a Linux client for years... I wouldn't think twice about buying audiobooks from Audible in MP3 format, even knowing that I could just as easily get them from youtube, or wherever... I want to pay for what is otherwise an excellent service, but I absolutely refuse to buy a copy of Windows to run in a VM so that I can jump through hoops to pay for their content when someone else has probably already posted it on youtube anyway... I work hard to find a vendor who does provide the content in a standard format, or supports Linux... but most people would simply take the easy route and use youtube, or torrents to get that content simply because it is so hard to do anything else.... it doesn't help anyone.
  4. I'd like to add a slightly unrelated comment, related to the original posters question. If my primary platform was Mac, or even Windows although I can't imagine that ever happening... and I had a couple of occasional Linux machines then I would perhaps already have an Evernote account, and have data in there, in which case, being able to use a relatively good (well integrated) free client would be a godsend. However, this is not the case. My primary platform has been Linux (Occasionally Solaris) since the early 90's, and if that free client goes away I would be left high and dry, this is why I would rather pay for a product this critical to my workflow than rely on the good will of an unknown developer who could abandon the project tomorrow.
  5. Someone seems to have added the word "Almost"... I wasn't sure I was going to name specific people, since I'm talking about a general attitude, but since your "quote" doesn't match what was said, I invite people to listen to TWiT Ep. 392 starting at 41:30. I have transcribed relevant section as accurately as I am able... there is no "almost" in there. Leo: "There is no evernote on Blackberry 10 yet right? Or is there?" Rafe: "There's an evernote for blackberry and..." Leo: "Blackberry 10 has it integrated in!" Rafe: "Yeah, it ships with a... err, evernote integration." Leo: "Share to evernote kinda is everywhere" Rafe: "Yeah" Leo: "I like that!" Rafe: "We believe on being err, native on all platforms, that matter" Leo: "That's very interesting, it makes me want to try blackberry 10" John: "Are you on Linux?" Rafe: "*Cough*" Leo?: "Only on the web" Jason?: "He said platforms that matter" ***Inaudible John: "He said the word 'Matter', so now all you Linux people out there know what he thinks about your pl...". Rafe: "Here's my target, shoot at me. There is an API and people have written evernote aerr, desktops, or applications to that - for our API... inaudible" Leo: "You know phil liben, and and, by the way and I'm not taking a job with evernote, but phil liben once told me that 4% of evernote referals were by leo laporte...... " Also, I'll grant you that there might possibly be a good number of potential users for Blackberry 10, it's a good product (A fact which surprised me in the end)... but it will still be a long time before there are more BB10 users than Ubuntu users alone.
  6. I seem to be missing a comment here, perhaps I simply screwed up submitting it... I'll summarize below. With regard to your first comment... I was referring to the comments made on the podcast I referred to earlier, not to yours. I respect the decision not to support a client on Linux, and I view the decision to provide a public API as visionary.... moreover I also realize that there would be no benefit in deliberately sabotaging any given user of the API. That said, I am acutely aware that both the product, and the platform will evolve over time and the client software will need to be maintained.... so, with regard to the safety of the data, while I have no doubt that Evernote can retain it, I would be relying on the good will of a single, unpaid developer working in his spare time and most likely for his own benefit to provide a client, without which the utility of storing data with this tool is almost completely lost. I find the comment "we already support all the platforms that matter", flippant, and somewhat offensive... especially in the current climate. The future direction of Windows is making it far less likley that I, and many other people will ever use that platform, and several other commercial service vendors are moving to support Linux, particularly the Ubuntu ecosystem which is soon to include phones and tablets which presumably will also not be supported. As regards to your comments about the Evernote business model, I pay for Ubuntu One cloud storage for much of my data, and I don't see why I would not pay for a premium account with Evernote if the situation were more favourable towards me using that service. I have certainly paid a good deal of money to Steam since they launched their Linux client.
  7. I agree. However... any application which is produced by the good will of a single developer is at risk to changes in API's required to interface with the desktop, with Evernote and with any other components... and that developer may have other priorities... Everpad itself is extremely nice... and I do appreciate the previous posters comments that evernote is not a large company. I cannot help thinking however that the actual cost of supporting that app/developer and perhaps committing to continuing it's development even if the current developer were to give it up would be quite small... one part time employee at most, and I'd like to think that you could recover those costs in good will, and additional paying customers. Surely this is better than flippant comments made in online media consumed by those potential customers. Finally, when I say I want my notes to be available in the future, I should point out that they started in a tickertape style system using a customized version of xedit on my Sparc ELC workstation in 1993, and so I am quite serious when I say I'd like to be confident that I would still have them in /another/ 20 years, as moving many hundreds of internally linked notes to Evernote acceptably would be no small task.
  8. I was recently listening to one of Leo Laporte's podcasts on the TWiT network, and somone from Evernote who described themselves as a "Platform Evangelist" made the comment that they already support all the platforms that matter... and then repeated that statement when asked about Linux. Well, given some issues with the changes to UbuntuOne, and Tomboy, I was thinking about moving to Evernote... I had almost convinced myself that it is reasonable for Evernote to make the API available for 3rd party applications, but now I have to admit that if Evernote think that Linux doesn't matter... then they are free to make changes whcih are detrimental without considering the impact on our platform and it really makes me think twice about moving my data to this service. Great Evangalism! I think Everpad is very nice indeed... but it doesn't excuse the lack of an officially supported client as I need to guarantee that my data will be accessible into the future, and I can't always rely on an unknown, free client... I'd rather pay for a reliable client that I know will be there into the future, but if Evernode takes the position that Linux doesn't matter, then my subscribing isn't paying for that. It's frustrating, and I hope Evernote will look to Steam for some feedback on how Linux users are an untapped market who does have money to spend on quality software for our platform.
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