Stathis
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Stathis last won the day on January 5 2022
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Please give us old and good Evernote back
Stathis replied to persiomenezes's topic in Evernote General Discussions
@persiomenezes Evernote has a chosen a path that is better from a business POV. Their ‘Electron’ approach means that they now have to write code once and it would then build into multiple platforms, after minimal amendments. I have myself complained a lot about those changes, including features that are no longer supported, like EN Moleskine notebooks for example, which I had stocked for good or glitches and performance issues that got better but not completely eliminated. The thing is, the architectural approach will never compete with native apps, which is why I ended up switching to Craft since I am solely in the Apple ecosystem They are not going to change their path now, since they are highly invested in it. Maybe if they see substantial drop in user count, they might listen. This is why I recommend switching to one of the solutions that I analyzed in my post below -
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Farewell everyone ! It was a nice 10 year journey. I will be happy to return if EN comes back with a native app and a respectful -not luring- approach towards premium users. 👇 Below my transition experience
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1 month later… After 1 month of using my new setup (DS Note for OCR file dumps, Craft for note taking), I can now say that I am glad I did the transition. I ‘d be happier if I kept EN for file dumps, but decided that expressing my disappointment by cancelling my >6 years premium subscription was far more important. Craft is a very accurate example of how EN really messed up. The note sync is not just fast, it’s blazing fast ! You can type in your iPad and see your changes almost instantaneously on your Mac and vice versa. In addition, it comes with great features that I just loved using from the very beginning, such as backlinks, workspaces, calendar notes, unlimited depth of creating notes without cluttering your note view and so much more. The only features I miss are : Clipping options Email note Tags Tags are coming soon and clipping options are easily handled using Shortcuts or SnagIt. I can live without e-mailing my notes to my note app, especially when compared to the performance and overall much higher value gotten. The app is only offered in the Apple ecosystem, highlighting the importance of building a native app, instead of a hybrid Electron. Another great aspect of Craft is its Slack channel. Enthusiast users like us chat about the platform and Craft founders, including devs, contribute to the discussions, adding features in their backlog, identifying bugs and helping users make use of their awesome features. Lessons learnt There are only a handful of note apps that support in-document OCR and even less supporting OCR in handwritten documents. Cloud storage services tend to support OCR, but you are losing the note aspect, which is obviously changing the use case Migrating data from EN is not as simple as it might seem. Notes that contain a lot of documents might not get migrated properly and new apps do not have a .enex import option. Bear seems to be the best tool to import .enex format, whilst DS Note was quite good as well. Markdown and textbundle are the most supported formats, both not supported by EN Your note app of choice needs to be ‘offline first’. When you need to grab your medical record number or your boarding pass, the information should already exist in your device Your note app of choice needs to be trustworthy, it is not acceptable to become unresponsive while taking notes during a meeting or a class Plan your switch, test it before actually making it Conclusion I strongly recommend switching from EN if your main use case is not dumping files. From my research I found that Nimbus and Amplenote are the best candidates for the switch, being the closest to the EN experience/features you are used to. If you don’t user all EN’s features, identify which ones you are using and which apps are matching those requirements. For me switching to 2 apps did the trick; DS Note for dumping files for OCR with note taking capabilities and Craft for my main note taking tool Notable Resources Keep Productive Tom Solid - Paperless movement Paperless X P.S. Amplenote founder sent me a personal e-mail requesting feedback. We ended up having a pleasant discussion of what a note taking app should be like with him explaining why they made some hard choices related to my concerns. This is an example of apps caring for their user base instead of disrespecting them with banners and limitations in premium.
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Good point, forgot to mention that ! In Synology Note Station, the only export option is nsx, a Synology format which is basically a zip file of all the assets. In other words, if you need to migrate from Synology Note Station, it will require a lot of time. Here is a post on how you can migrate away. In Craft, you got all the usual suspects: Markdown, Textbundle, pdf and MS Word. Craft is also very agile app, meaning I expect to have more formats available in no time. In addition, if you request a feature in their Slack channel, they will get it into their backlog if it makes sense for their users. But generally speaking, most note editors I 've checked, import markdown. In Apple Notes, again not a lot of choices; just pdf.
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I finally finished transitioning from EN. The mistake I did last time was I was looking for 1 app that covers my needs in whole and initiated the transition without a plan. A. My Plan v2.0 1. Synology Note Station Only for document dumps, such as: Invoices Receipts Scans Bills Payments Supports OCR Plays well within the Synology ecosystem App issues are not important using it solely as a document dump Generally speaking, document dumps are 'cold' data, meaning it is not crucial for me to have an outstanding performance for getting access to those documents. However, this crappy, 5 year old app is syncing notes, which means every note you ever synced will be with your device The only downside is that this app does not play well in the iOS ecosystem, not providing a simple way to import a file directly to the app, but decided to go for it. I was between Evernote and Synology Note Station for that and Evernote is the correct app for this task, but I am so frustrated with Evernote that I decided letting them go is more important for me. Not out of spite, but mainly because I hope this great app gets back on track. And my way of enforcing it is showcasing my dislike by discontinuing my paid membership and posting here in the forums, so anyone knows I am sad, but still here. 2. Craft Anything but document dump Supports multiple workspaces, which is nice because I migrated all notes and plan to move notes from 'Evernote Archive' workspace to the appropriate one if needed. So I also clean up my 10 years old notes database. The workspaces I created are: Personal Work A Work B Evernote Archive Clean, powerful, beautiful app, with outstanding users communication (Slack channel) and performance 3. Apple Notes Initially planned to use Drafts for this purpose, because of the limitless capabilities of integrating notes to whichever service required. I decided to go with Apple Notes though, because Shortcuts is filling this hole for me, and the speed of jotting something down in the Apple ecosystem has changed dramatically with the latest iOS/macOS updates. Just Jots Scribbles Anything that it is not a note yet and if someone deleted it I wouldn't care. B. Migration Process 1. Synology Note Station I have already described the migration process in Synology Note Station in a post above. Amazing process, as painless as migration can be. The automatic import doesn't work or I didn't gave it the required time. The enex import is great, you basically select all notebooks and imports it in a batch. Really amazing ! 2. Craft Unfortunately, migrating to Craft was far less exciting than DS Notes. The only way to migrate notes from Evernote to Craft including attachments was: Import notebooks 1-1 from Evernote to Bear Export notes from Bear in textbundle format Import in Craft Whilst importing from Evernote to Bear was easy, basically similar to Note Station, with the difference that Bear won't import .enex files as a batch like DS Note. You need to import notebooks 1-1 and in the process rename the #evernote tag to #notebooks/YourNotebook if you want to keep your notebooks organisation. Then, importing to Craft was similarly bad. Craft has a limit of 2000 items, including notes' assets, which means depending on how many assets per note, you need to import in batches of 300-500. In addition, files bigger than 10000 characters (maybe close to 10mb ?), can't be imported. So basically, you need again notebook by notebook to import and if a notebook is big, do it in batches. Don't forget when exporting data from Bear, to check the options base64 images; export attachments After a long process of migration, you are complete, away from EN and the migration is complete in two apps actually: Bear and Craft. So, you can test your options thoroughly until you complete the move. That's it folks, migration complete. Farewell elephant
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It's ok @RobertJLee, I am more than happy to take this, it's just proving my point even more. Sorry @PinkElephant, but it wasn't an iOS, nor internet connection thing. It's easy to blame others when your home is full of garbage. Downloaded 1 season (12 episodes 45' each) in Netflix in 20 seconds. Evernote was still grasping to download 3 notes of a total size <0,5mb. I am fully aware of the app states iOS has, the app was not in the background nor inactive. I was looking it at it for more than 5 minutes to allow me access my note. Wasn't syncing 3 notes, wasn't allowing me to abort it, could not view the note in the app I don't care about the price, I am already the neighbour that has everything better than you. The price has changed in the past, but that's not relevant. What is relevant though is that 'Evernote Personal' is more expensive than Jira, Notion, Slack, Google and Microsoft Office 365, and the user experience a premium user gets is forcing to upgrade premium tier. Why don't they add some ads as well in the premium membership ? Why upgrade if I don't need the tier's offerings ? To be able to connect more than 1 Google Calendar; have more than 1 filtered notes card in the ***** dashboard and finally don't get the ridiculous badge. How confident can one be when the company that keeps your external brain is begging to get more money and also losing a gigantic flow of users ? The thing is @PinkElephant , leaving everything aside, one would expect a note taking app is good for note taking. For EN, that's not the case: You are taking notes for a meeting ? Evernote will lock your note while you are taking important notes in your NOTE APP. Hey important people in the meeting, could you please wait a minute until Evernote is back. You need to access a note in airport ? Sorry mate, you might not get access. Would be best if you kept your documents elsewhere as well. You need to clip a web page ? Doesn't work; What's your EN version ? What's your web clipper version ? Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling ? Could you send us troubleshooting log The conclusion for me is that Evernote can no longer be a note taking app, basically because a note taking app needs to be offline first. From what I 've read, this is also the only reason why users leave Notion. And this is why, if you look around, every respectful note taking / paperless expert is not recommending Evernote for anything but saving documents/receipts; a document dump.
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Following my Is this a farewell ? and Not a farewell after all, I would like to share my newest dislikes about the elephant, hoping an EN engineer or someone who give a heckle pays attention. The app sucks, I was in the airport the other day, having all my flight related documents in my EN app and once again Evernote hung me. I had enabled offline mode for my literally 3 notes notebook and the whole thing stuck. It stuck that bad, that I had to open EN in the browser to showcase my travel documents. 3 notes notebook. iPadOS just sucks, buttons are not visible, shortcuts are very limited and so many other issues I have already enlisted in the blog posts above. Talking about EN hanging you dry, I have also experienced dozens of times, being in a meeting and my note getting a circle of death, not letting me edit my note. I took the time to report it and after EN support requested logs and videos and e-mails etc, they replied that they are aware of the issue and they are currently fixing it. Well, if you are aware of the issue, why waste my time asking for more information ? As explained in the Not a farewell after all, I tried several other apps but found none providing the features I was looking for. So, how do you call this situation where you have no other option but to stick and pay a ***** service that hangs you dry ? Captivity This is what describes my user experience with EN. What’s most disturbing of all, is the fact that they are now pushing to get premium users to the higher paying tier, by limiting ***** functionality and adding this kind of distractions I am already paying ffs That’s just another example of EN delivering freemium user experience to premium users. 10 years premium by the way. I have started searching again for a candidate to transition to, hopefully this time I won’t repeat the same mistake, transitioning before using it. The 3 candidates that are now on the top of my list are all great apps and somehow managed to miss them in my previous and first attempt Nimbus Amplenote Craft I am currently researching those 3 apps in detail and I will come back with a report. Thankfully by the time I do the report, Craft will have introduced tags, a functionality currently under construction. If anyone has transitioned to Amplenote, it would be very helpful if provided some feedback Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year
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I use and strongly recommend Bitwarden. 1. It is free 2. The paid tier includes one time passwords generation and it is so cheap for what if offers 3. It is the proper place to store passwords
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Just wanted to share my feedback to Evernote staff @Shane D. and @Scott T. From a user engagement perspective, it is at least humiliating to your loyal premium users offering a service but limited. It is essentially creating a freemium experience to a premium user and this is definitely not creating an engaging, loyal customer. After all, tasks, widgets and viewing your calendar in a widget are not functionalities to make a tier out of it. Assigning tasks to another person, yes that would make sense. You are not professional, you don’t need to assign tasks to others. But, widgets and calendars ? Come on ! So, I am allowed to get 1 filtered notes widget but not 2 ? 1 integrated calendar, but not 2. You make me feel like a child that can get 1 ice cream, but not 2. 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 P.S. How about you integrate to more calendars before asking more money ?
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Howdy everyone, Following up my Is this a farewell ? post a couple months ago, I thought it would be nice to share why after wasting a gigantic amount of time, I am back in EN. Applications I tried to migrate too OneNote Synology Note Station Bear Obsidian Joplin Drafts Notion Also, I would like to outline my use case, so readers understand what I am looking for in the note taking app [Personal] Bills & Bills’ payments [Personal] Family’s documents [Business] Meeting notes [Business] Clients’ information and notes [Business & Personal] Knowledge base [Business & Personal] Saving web articles OneNote I was very close at transitioning to OneNote, but I eventually decided not to because of the difficulty finding staff and the crippled tagging system. What I liked: The iPad app, including its free hand annotating capabilities OneNote notebook databases are stored files Notebook > Sections > Pages give an extra depth of organization Ability to write anything wherever on screen, endless canvas Integrating options What I didn’t like: Migration tool didn’t work Could not find my content OCR not supported in attachments Crippled tagging Microsoft ribbon Sharing only available with a Microsoft account Synology Note Station Really awesome functionalities, being a proper Evernote copycat. It also has a tasks feature, that EN just introduced ! Despite not ending up in it, I am keeping it as a local backup of EN, sadly this includes manually exporting and importing notebooks. What I liked: Self-hosting The ability to create parent/children tags Part of the Synology ecosystem, meaning all my backup strategies apply to my notes too All functionalities I need What I didn’t like Limited shortcuts, very hard to discover Attachments were not inline, but hidden in a popover Tasks could not be viewed in a summary, but again hidden in a popover iPadOS app doesn’t work, it is crashing The app has a lot of annoying glitches 0 integration options Bear What an awesome app. Beautiful, amazing organization -only by tagging- system, full markdown support, amazing exports. Still keeping it as a markdown composer, but not as a note app. What I liked The UI Tagging Archiving Full markdown support Export to html What I didn’t like Deployment; The app is using a sqlite database syncing to iCloud Just a markdown editor after all No OCR to attachments Obsidian, Joplin, Drafts & Notion Won’t make the comparison, because I didn’t use the apps a lot. Mainly, I didn’t like the UI. I am keeping that Drafts app though, because it offers unlimited (no joking) integrating capabilities Why I came back While testing the other options, EN fixed its abysmal performance to a point that it is -almost- functional and introduced the Tasks feature, offering a functionality I need. The most important reason why I came back though is experiencing the hard way that keeping a lot of productivity apps is the biggest productivity killer. EN is far from great, but it is a one app fits most for me. Keeping 1 app ended up being my most important criterion, so came back to EN. Why I am frustrated, again Cannot create 2 filtered notes snippets in dashboard, because I am not paying the highest tier !! Cannot add 2 calendars, because I am not paying the highest tier !! iPad app is still crippled, including a frustrating issue where while being in a client meeting, EN locks my editing capabilities while writing in a note !!!! Only Google support for calendars and documents Tasks is great, how about focusing in other functionalities now that aren’t That’s it, from my experience transitioning is a painful and time consuming process and I strongly recommend analyzing the transition app a lot before moving forward. Most important thing to avoid is keeping multiple productivity apps, ending up in a situation where you don’t know what to use for what, searching where you saved what and struggling to find a way to integrate where most note taking apps are still crippled at that section. It’s sad for EN, because it was the most integrated app a decade ago. Happy note taking !