Bill Myers

Hi. I realize this is a thoroughly inappropriate use of this forum, but rather than complain bitterly about Evernote's feature set, stability, or pricing; or call for all Bending Spoons employees to be incarcerated; or discuss last year's bowling scores; I would like to ask other users for help. Specifically, I'm interested in learning how people use Evernote to manage their work. I'll further ignore all that is good and decent by trying to provide some helpful context about me and my use case. I have ADHD and I find that the more complex my systems are, the more I have trouble managing them. Some people speak of "curating" their notes or using "taxonomies" but I find that the more I have to remember the more apt I am to miss a step. I recent culled roughly 2,500 notes down to about 170 that I want to keep. I expect to grow that over time, now that I have a better idea of what I might want to use Evernote for. I currently have three notebook stacks: one for checklists, one for project support, and one for reference. I have multiple notebooks within each stack, which is primarily how I narrow down what I want to find. I don't currently feel I have a use for tags but am open to suggestions (which I realize is a horrible thing to admit when, by forum rules, I should take the position that I know everything). My concern is that as I grow my collection of notes, I might outgrow this simple way of organizing things. Furthermore, I am a practitioner of a life management system called Getting Things Done, or GTD. I use a tool called Nirvana to manage all of my action and projects lists and therefore have no desire to use Evernote tasks. I realize a lot of people are happy with tasks. I just don't think I fit the profile of the intended target user for that feature. (I understand that such neutral language about a feature I don't use has no place here. Clearly I ought to be saying that whoever came up with this awful tasks feature should burn for all eternity in the fires of hell, but I just don't feel that way. I am obviously an awful, awful person.) Evernote is primarily the means by which I store any digital content that doesn't have a home elsewhere. I feel that email lives nicely in Gmail or Outlook, and both have search features that allow me to find what I need. I also find that for most documents, spreadsheets, and PDF files, storing them in folders in the Documents directory in Windows works fine for my needs. I use Evernote to store free-form notes, tables I create for simple needs, web clippings, and things like that. Although if someone can suggest a reason why using Evernote to do more could be useful, I'm all ears. I was in sales until I lost my job at the end of February. I've been interviewing for sales jobs, but also am in the running for a sales support job that would involve being a subject matter expert at a SaaS provider, doing demos and providing expertise to salespeople, as well as training and technical support for customers. My hobbies include comic-book writing and illustration (I'm working on creating my own comic, and right now a lot of the preliminary story ideas, character bios, and story outlines live in a project folder in Evernote). I'm married. I have no children, but I have two greyhounds and three cats who mean the world to me. I don't know if that context helps but thought I'd provide it to further help people understand the kinds of things I need and want to manage. I guess because I'm paying for an Evernote subscription (and I realize it takes some serious gall to be willing pay for the service) I'm wondering if I'm using it for all it's worth. Right now I don't use the Home screen in any way. I don't know if there's anything else I might be missing in terms of using the tool well. Ultimately I realize I'm the only one who can decide how to use the tool to my satisfaction but I'd really love to hear other people's ideas and learn from them if anyone would care to share. (And yes, I do realize that being a relatively happy paying customer means I have no place here. Clearly a lifetime of hard labor in a North Korean prison camp is too good for the likes of me. But if you all could see past my depravity and take pity on me, I'd really be grateful for people's suggestions.) (I also apologize for the heaps of sarcasm. I'm kind of in a mood today, and partly this is just how I am. Hopefully I haven't turned away any people who might otherwise be inclined to help. I really am coming here in all humility, firmly believing that a lot of people here know a great deal more than I do and might have something to teach me. Thanks.)

Like all stereotypes, it's stupid. Just about every nation and ethnicity has some version of an organized crime syndicate. The Japanese have the Yakuza. The Russians have the Odessa Mafia, among other organizations. During prohibition in the U.S., the Jewish mob was particularly prominent. I could go on and on. I have friends of many races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and too many other things to mention. If I can't do the bare minimum by at least speaking up for them, I'm not being much a friend. I wish you the best in your move to Italy. Moving from one nation to another is a big undertaking. And law enforcement is never an easy career. I have multiple friends in the field. Is your husband going to be doing that in Italy? I understand being in that job in one country doesn't automatically mean you can do it in another; they all have their own rules and requirements. In any event, best of luck to you both. At least Evernote is cloud-based, that will be one thing you won't have to worry about when you move.

By the way, I don't want to belabor my point but resorting to the stereotype of Italians being organized criminals isn't just crass, it's hateful. I don't expect to persuade anyone who would say such a thing to admit that it's hate speech, or to be willing to change their ways (in fact, I expect the opposite of them). But I feel it needs saying. One could argue that "hate speech" is too strong a phrase and I'm just being "woke." I would disagree. And one could argue that it's best to just ignore such things. But I feel people of goodwill need to step up and stand up for our fellow humans. Bending Spoons saw an opportunity to acquire a product and add it to their portfolio, almost certainly for less money than they could have had the prior owners been able to maximize its potential. They're betting that they can make that investment pay off. That's not a crime. And they sure as hell don't deserve to be smeared for that (to be clear, ethnic slurs are never deserved, though). Whether I choose to remain a customer or not (and for at least the next twelve months, I'll remain a customer), I wish them success.

I decided to re-up for a year to take advantage of a discount. Like I said, I placed a bet. If it turns out to be a bad one, it will be far from the costliest mistake I've made.

Hi, @Federico Simionato. I wouldn't call it "worry," at least not on my part. Just an observation. And I've been a member of this forum for awhile. Sometimes I've participated more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all. But I've been a pretty consistent lurker and this is really nothing new. It's the internet, you know? Nevertheless, I appreciate seeing communication from the "head of Evernote" at Bending Spoons. I understand that due to normal M&A stuff, communication from Bending Spoons needed to be limited for a time. Still, I think the more you can communicate with us customers, the better it will be both for us and your company. Please understand, it's been quite a ride for customers. While I don't share the intensity of emotion from some of my fellow Evernote subscribers, I have a times asked myself "oh, Lord, what now?" in response to some of the developments over the years. Former Evernote CEO Phil Libin promised a focus on quality that never seemed to materialize. Ian Small promised changes to Evernote that would simply make things better without disrupting how people did their work (he even claimed he once rearranged things in the refrigerators in the company breakroom to illustrate to employees how unhappy it makes customers when you break their workflows), only to release a new version of Evernote that did a lot things he promised not to. Ultimately, a lot of people who were initially unhappy with v10 have made their peace with it, myself included. Although some clearer communication wouldn't have hurt. Had Small told us that in order to create a more stable, higher quality product, they would have to streamline things, deprecate some features and change others, I would have been able to accept that. No one can please everyone. No one can make a circle that's also a square. Some features that were my favorites might simply not have been important enough to the entire user base to justify the cost of building them into the new version. But, again, good communication would be a really welcome change. So would keeping promises. I really don't know what to make of Bending Spoons. Never heard of you before this. But if you keep in mind the two things I've mentioned, I don't think it will be too hard to keep a lot of us happy, and make your investment in Evernote profitable. I wish you the best of luck with the acquisition.

Well, given the level of vitriol I've seen on this forum over a number of years, it's not just about the Bending Spoons acquisition and it's a lot more than just frustration and disappointment. Obviously, referring to Bending Spoons as a "greedy Italian mob" is one of the more extreme examples, but it's not isolated. And it represents a lot more than just "uncertainty" on people's part. I disagree. At one time, Evernote was very important to my "workflow," now it is much less so. But the decision to leave or stay is a simple, binary choice. It may not be easy, but it is simple. Again, I think everyone would be well-served to make peace with their choice. I have doubts and concerns about Bending Spoons, but I've placed my bet. Fretting or being pissed off won't change the outcome. If I get too uncomfortable, I'm free to leave. But if people prefer to stick around in a situation that makes them miserable, they're free to do so. And if they want to wrongly convince themselves that their performative anger is hurting anyone else as much as it is them, they're free to do that, too. I understand that when you've come to rely on a product in a certain way and can no longer do so, that can be stressful. Nevertheless, I refuse to go to my grave someday (hopefully decades from now, but one never knows what the next moment will bring) thinking, "Damn it, I gave up a chunk of my life to hating on Evernote when I could have used that time and energy to smell the roses, or appreciate my loved ones, or stuff like that."

Yeah. I understand why people might want to air out criticisms in this forum. Sometimes Evernote employees used to peek in here. Now, apparently at least one person from Bending Spoons is doing so. Constructive criticism from customers is fair game. And some feedback isn't necessarily suited for a support ticket. Good companies make use of customer communication across multiple channels. But if you're angry and not getting satisfaction from a company, though, it's time to leave. I hate to break it to people, but no matter how justifiable you believe your anger to be, the targets of your feelings are just going to go on with their lives. If you choose not to do the same, the only person you're hurting is you. And whether you want to accept it or not, you're making a deliberate choice. Again, I'm probably shouting into the wind. There's probably not much more to say than I already have.

Seriously, in 2023, are we still doing this? I realize this is probably doing as much good as shouting into the wind, but can't we have this conversation without resorting to idiotic stereotypes? I will confess I've had trepidations about the Bending Spoons acquisition. I have no idea what they'll eventually do with respect to pricing, features, and functionality. I also have no idea whether they'll be successful with the product. It's not as though Evernote's old investors would have any reason to care about the long-term viability of the product in this situation. They've cashed out. The rest isn't their problem. I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's just what it is. Still, it seems to me we have only three options in this situation: 1. Stay with Evernote and make our peace with the uncertainty. (That's the option I've chosen.) 2. Decide that Evernote for whatever reason no longer suits us, and leave for another product. (I think that's a totally legit and reasonable choice.) 3. Decide we hate Evernote for whatever reason (quality, features, pricing, whatever) but refuse to leave, instead bitterly complaining on a user forum to other users who have no more ability to control or influence things than we do. You know, in other words, just decide to be miserable. I have no idea why, but it seems to me a lot of people are picking this option even though it seems to be the worst of the three. I don't think anyone on their deathbed will look back and think, "Boy, I wish I had spent more time being angry about cloud-based notetaking apps." I've got far more important things to invest my emotions in than Evernote. If the product goes belly up, becomes pricier than I'm willing to pay, or otherwise ceases to meet my needs, I can move on and be fine. I think users helping other users is a great use of this forum. I think coming on here and being miserable about something outside of our control may not be. But... hey, it's your life and your choice.

Wow. Kudos for a super-great explanation that translated the technical into layperson's terms AND tied it to things important to customers. For the longest time I felt that Evernote was delivering "innovations" no one was asking for while ignoring fundamental problems. It was as though the company was adding floors to a structure with a rotted foundation. No more. Now Evernote is focusing on the problems users have been begging to have solved: quality, performance, scalability. I truly have confidence in Evernote's team to deliver on its promises. Yes, I understand the company is behind where it wanted to be (I saw Ian Small's update in my email this morning) in terms of delivering on certain promises. As far as I'm concerned, though, Evernote has not exhausted my patience. As long as the company keeps focusing on the things that matter I'm happy to stay on board for the ride. And when the time to comes to surprise us with innovations, I have confidence they'll be things to get excited about.

I moved my GTD lists to another application so I could easily link projects and actions. There are workarounds for doing that in Evernote but none of them are easy. That's beyond the scope of this thread, though. And there may not be a good use case for Evernote to ever offer that kind of functionality. But there's a part of me that misses having everything, including my GTD lists, in Evernote. I used reminders liberally, and they were an important part of my action management scheme in Evernote. I thought they worked OK... but left some things to be desired. When Evernote decides to tackle them, I'd love an opportunity to be part of a preview and/or beta group. Depending on what Evernote does in the future, I could be lured into bringing my action management lists back into the Evernote world.

I have nothing but positive feelings about this video, the functionality that was demo'd in it, Evernote's new transparency, and the overall strategy. I think the company is fully delivering on its promises for the first time that I can remember. To another poster's point: yes, this stuff is to an extent "basic" and foundational. But for Evernote to truly innovate, it must do so from a solid foundation. For the longest time Evernote's leadership showed no evidence of grasping that. Now they do. When @Ian Small started as CEO I was using Evernote more than I do today. It's no reflection on him or the company's strategy. I am a practitioner of Getting Things Done (GTD), and I decided I could benefit from a task manager more dedicated to GTD. But... the more I see from Evernote recently, the more interested I am in finding more ways to leverage the product again. And when it comes time for the company to shift gears from foundation work to innovation (which is where I'm guessing it will head), I think we'll have reason to be excited. Because Evernote will be able to do so with a product that is strong on quality and consistency, and with a leadership team that shows an ability to truly listen to customers and deliver answers to our problems. Mr. Small: great job so far. Thanks for getting me excited about Evernote again.

I'm very happy to hear feature parity across platforms is a priority. At times it feels like a completely separate product on each platform. I'm particularly happy to hear that syncing is being addressed. The main reason I almost never use Evernote web is the absence of the saved search feature which is critical to my workflow. I've always been astonished that that was not included in the new version. (And yes, I realize I could roll back to the prior version of Evernote Web but that has its own issues.) I'm hoping that's one of the features that will be prioritized at some point because I'd like to have Evernote web as an option.

Hi, @Ian Small. I was one of the people who complained pretty loudly about this one the forum subsection for the preview I was invited to test. I understand there's no perfect way to communicate with customers about this, but simply saying "here's an experimental preview -- do you like it?" wasn't good enough. I had no idea what I was looking at or what kind of feedback to provide. From what I've read in this thread and one other, part of the reason behind letting customers view a feature-incomplete experimental preview is to gauge what features to prioritize based on user feedback. So... it sounds like some of my feedback was useful -- but it would have been nice to understand that upfront. Now that I have a better understanding of the concept of the "experimental preview" I'd welcome the chance to participate in future ones. I'd also like to say I find the way you're communicating with customers is refreshing. I had been considering jumping off the Evernote ship. When you came onboard and acknowledged that Evernote's foundations needed work and that there were unacceptable quality problems with the product, I thought, "It sounds like this guy really gets it." Everything I've seen since then is reinforcing that belief. I've been increasing my usage of and reliance on Evernote because you're making me feel confident about the company and the product. Keep heading in this direction, and I will gladly remain a paying customer.

All I can say is: I really, really, really like this. A lot.

One other thing: I love the fact that the old checkbox feature will be left intact for those of us who are used to it. I like the idea of checklists -- and I may use them -- but I also like Evernote's commitment to adding options rather than subtracting them. 😊

None of these changes really mean a lot to me, but nevertheless this video increases my enthusiasm for the new direction at Evernote. For one thing, a greater attention to quality and ease-of-use in one area will, I think, naturally lead to improvements in other areas that are more important to me. For another, I haven't used the note editor extensively (a lot of my notes are just plain text, attachments or web clips) because it's so clunky and has often been buggy. If the editor gets easier to use, more stable and provides a better experience, I may start doing more with Evernote than I'm doing today

@Ian Small: Holy cow. I don't recall seeing your predecessors addressing customer concerns directly in this forum. And you responded to them with substance, to boot. As a customer, I'm impressed. You've further boosted my confidence in this company. As for the interactive search? This is very cool. I'm no longer just cautiously optimistic. I'm outright excited about the future of Evernote.

There's an app called Swipes (https://swipesapp.com/) that had such an integration. I've never used it seriously, but have only played around with it. So I'm unsure whether they still offer the Evernote checkbox integration, and if they do I can't say how well it works. There are other to-do list apps with Evernote integration. You can find a list of them on the apps section of the Evernote web site. Those apps should provide enough information on their own web sites to help you decide whether they're worth exploring.

No, I don't. I happened to quote his/her post and type my reply, then get pulled away from my computer, and when I came back I forgot to remove that snippet before publishing. My apologies. I did agree with his/her overall statement, though, because these forums ARE filled with nitpicking over minute concerns that, when taken in scope of the larger picture, are pretty insignificant, and distract from more productive discussions. Oftentimes, little teeny problems are blown up into huge, SIGNIFICANT CONCERNS, when really, IMO, that time could be spent being productive instead - like the link I posted suggests. It really resonated with me, and made me take some steps back and look at the bigger picture and my bigger goals. Why was I really trying 34897 tools in search of the "perfect one?" What did I really want out of my tools? I do think in general, these forums could use less name-calling and judgments upon others as well. There's a whole lot of embittered commentary in the forums, both about Evernote and other forum users, and while sometimes "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all" doesn't account for constructive criticism, "If you don't have something polite to say, don't say anything at all" certainly does. Not that I'm targeting any one person with this — just that I empathize with lykoz's general assessment (and recognize the irony of it fitting the description I just made). Some of it, I'm sure, is language/typing barrier, but I just don't see the point in calling people out publicly, calling their posts "nonsense," or in general, the entire Mac Design Feedback thread (which was the most frustrating and disappointing thread on any forum I've ever read). Surely there are more productive and polite ways for people to get their points across. Maybe I'm alone in thinking that, too. But I'm pretty proud that I've never had to ignore or block users while on here (though admittedly, I haven't been on these forums for very long). Anyway, back on topic... No, you are not alone. Thanks for being a voice of reason in a venue where those are rare.