James Longley

On 2/28/2024 at 10:32 PM, fuchsfr said:

All ready available on OBSIDIAN.

That was one of the reasons I moved there.

Works on heading and any tab indentation.

Plus I can have nested collapsible sections.

Just saying not so special.

 

"Other cars have had air conditioning for years. Why are you excited about your car getting air conditioning? Don't you realise that I've been over here at my optimum temperature ever since I bought my new air conditioned car? I'm so pleased with my car and its air conditioning (which has been available for a while), in fact, that I still spend time over here with you overheated dummies. #AIRCONDITIONING"

We've been waiting for and requesting this feature FOR 10 YEARS!! This is FAN-TAS-TIC. 

I'd love to see some Evernote users stop for a moment and actually celebrate the rapid pace of development and new feature rollout since the acquisition. 

Let's not all default to complaining about the aspects we don't like in the things we've been waiting (literally) years for 🙌

I'm not a Notion fan for a number of reasons ranging from aesthetic to the fact that I find the infinite nesting overwhelming and confusing. I tend to lean more towards the more structured approach Evernote defaults to. Though the topic is specifically about those two tools, I will add Coda.io into the mix here for those who are looking for a really versatile tool with a beautiful UI in which to do certain types of work.

In my case I treat Evernote as my single source of truth for all research, journalling, Readwise imports etc and then use Coda as a kind of Google Docs on steroids to actually do the work (e.g. content writing, strategy planning, drafting website copy etc.). The "hard edges" between the two tools (essentially broken down into reference and implementation) makes sense for the way my brain seems to prefer working (likely because I've programmed it for GTD thinking).

Note: If Notion's to your liking, all of the above would still apply to Notion.

7 hours ago, gazumped said:

Since I'm addressing HQ I'd like to note that I'm standing to attention as I type this..  but - you could try to change your account to Basic as of your next payment date and see what offers come up...

And yes this practice sucks - I could get a huge discount if I was a new customer to my current insurance company(ies) forinstance;  but 'new users' only is a standard term.  I suspect this level of offer is mainly because the 'free' option got severely reduced and some people might actually want to stay on.  It makes no sense to offer a deal which essentially means the whole company takes a 40% drop in revenue over the next year...

I've managed to convince myself that having multiple calendars connected and having Boolean search (which, to be fair, I do use regularly) is worth the price of admission. Again, I'm willing to pay the higher price for what is essentially the place I spend most of my working day but having that reminder in front of me just after price hikes is a bit galling.

I'm all for ensuring the sustainability of the product and investing in its future but it grates my proverbial when I have to pay twice what I paid before and then there's constantly 40% and 50% discounts being advertised to new users. 

From a business perspective I get it but it feels like a slap in the face to existing users.

24 minutes ago, Constantine001 said:

This might explain why I've been struggling to find the pricing on the Evernote website for the last couple of days and there was no sight of it. Even on the plan comparison page, there is a button to purchase each plan without mentioning their prices.

Since when is charging people different amounts based on anything other than their plan a thing? Never encountered that before... 

40 minutes ago, eric99 said:

Out of curiosity, I asked Bing AI for a summary of the transcript, I must admit I'm surprised!

• James is a customer of Evernote who is concerned about the price increase of the service.
• Evernote Support is Renier, who tries to explain the reasons for the price increase and the benefits of the service.
• James is not satisfied with the explanation and accuses Evernote of being unethical and greedy.
• Evernote Support does not answer James’ questions about the percentage of the increase and the different rates for different customers.

Damn, that's a good sentiment analysis... 

21 minutes ago, eric99 said:

Hmm, this seems to be summarized by chatGPT: where do you read in the transcript a price increase of 80% or more (apart from your own speculations)  ?

I'm flattered that you think my summary is as effective as one done by ChatGPT but I assure you it's an artisanally-crafted DIY summary. Good suggestion though. 

Quote

"The bracket would be up to 80% increase. I'm not positive about the 100% increase. This could be an error in their billing."

2 hours ago, Alxa said:

Yes, some of the new features could have been impressive.

But...with EN10 they decided to stop developing native apps and changed to imprison unified code in frameworks. Performance has gone and never catched up. The old dev team even after 2 years was incapable of bringing this to the level you expect from a note taking app in 2023: That is being snappy on real world devices (not only top notch or on iOS). Using EN on an Android was and is a PIA if not running on the latest devices. That's why none of the new features are usable on my devices in an every day manner. Quick note taking, quick capturing -> go for a native app like Keep, OneNote.

I hope Bending Spoons with their skills in creating native mobile apps will get things right and make EN a technically future proof note taking app again on mobile.

(btw: as a paying customer I welcomed the lay off rounds of the Android devs / product manager for the above reason)

Welcoming people being laid off isn't a particularly pleasant thing to do but each to their own I guess. As long as we get an app that meets your speed expectations I guess it's all good. 

5 hours ago, jjordan said:

The issue with Evernote is not its price increase, it is its lack of performance on features 

Home, tasks (now recurring), calendar events and now backlinks. Not sure what you're hoping for but the shipping of new features has been impressive since V10 was released. 

Remember, Evernote is a note-taking tool. Notion, Craft, Coda etc are all-in-one team workspaces first and foremost. Trying to do like-for-like comparisons between them is like comparing running shoes with UGG Boots. They're both shoes but I sure as hell won't be going for a run in UGGs. 

42 minutes ago, AlanH said:

Well, if it is a glitch, Evernote is taking a long time to tell me!

I find it difficult to believe I have been singled out for this treatment so this "automatically-generated" update that consisted of the update on my account and an email suggests I am not alone. I look forward to their explanation of the "glitch." 

So a question for you @James | Headquarters, if you see this type of increase, when would a YouTube video or social media post be appropriate? The "glitch" makes an interesting statement about the new owner's quality control of change. 

Indeed and I can't speak for or to their customer support, particularly after only just hearing that they've laid people off. 

In short, it's not hard to imagine that there _are_ price increases coming but an increase of that size couldn't possibly be done (even legally) without you being given proper notice.

It's very likely that it's a glitch (backed up further by the numbers that come out when you do the conversion and the inconsistent Pro to Teams figures) and we could all afford to give them a little grace in the transition.

If you think about it through the lens of handling the takeover of a company with millions of users and over a decade of history (which I haven't, and most haven't, done) you'll likely be a bit more understanding of errors along the way. 

Re: timing of a video. The answer is very simple: you create a video about how Evernote IS lifting prices when you have something official that proves that's the case. Prior to that you make videos saying "there's lots of noise about a possible price increase, will that be the case?" 

I won't go so far as to say he's acting in bad faith but framing the video as if the increase is a fact before it's actually confirmed is intentionally jumping on the "Evernote's over, see I told you " bandwagon because he knows that that's a talking point. Effective for marketing and channel growth in the short-term perhaps but definitely not how I would run a channel if I wanted to be seen as a trusted source vs a BuzzFeed.

9 hours ago, Mike P said:

Please look again at the screen shot he provided which clearly says 

That's not an email announcing a price increase. That's a single screenshot of an automatically-generated invoice amongst a feed full of people confirming that their price is unchanged.

Aside from the currency explanation, it's also odd that Pro is priced higher than teams in the plans screenshot. Almost certainly just a glitch. 

Making YouTube videos about a MASSIVE price increase before it's even slightly verified is clickbait tactics 101 @Tom Solid.

19 hours ago, AlanH said:

I've received "the" email advising me of my new cost to continue to use Evernote. This will mean that, to retain the same category of features, my costs have gone from USD70 to USD180.

I clearly have a choice to make, but the new owners of Evernote are not giving me any guidance on the new features. Will they apply to me? Is a cost that has increased by a factor of 2.5 in the last two years really justified? 

I was hoping that Bending Spoons would provide more usable functionality. But to have this scale of price increase, on top of what Evernote had already done without providing a reason to stay, appears to be a move to drive long-term customers away.

And @PinkElephant, if you haven't already, have a look at Tana or Loqseq or Obsidian or Notion (or even Roam Research) for much more usable implementations of bidirectional linking. Evernote's implementation takes a lot more time to both create a backlink and make use of a backlink. It is an improvement but falls well short of the more usable implementations out there.

 

@AlanHplease share a screenshot of that email (or a note with it saved). No one's provided any evidence of this price increase so far. 

So I've seen a few people making a lot of noise about "outrageous" price increases and have so far seen 0 evidence that it's even slightly true. 

If you've received an email about this price increase, please share a screenshot in the forum. 

On 12/29/2021 at 6:23 PM, DTLow said:

I merged new posts with this discussion and am posting my own departure announcement

I was a long time Evernote user and hung on with the Legacy product to see how v10 progressed

Thanks to Evernote for storing my notes over the years, and support for the final data export   
Also thanks for introducing me to the value of organization using tag methodology,    
and automation using applescript 

Seriously @DTLow? Where are you heading? That's a sad day in the Evernote world.

On 1/1/2021 at 5:05 PM, QFieldBoden said:

I am in a very similar situation with thousands of notes and  a long time paid user. I just hate the system now. The lack of a viable backup option is a disaster for me, I also attach PDFs to notes all the time but the new version just shows you that the file is there, but not it's contents. I'm struggling to find things, it doesn't seem to search within PDFs any more and it's just now generally horrible. I wish I could find a workable alternative that I could migrate to easily. In the meantime the legacy version is just about doing the job but as things stand I would NEVER recommend Evernote to anyone again.

You have the option to set PDFs to attachment, single page or full document view. OCR is pretty much flawless.

People love bitching without having the facts straight. 

https://share.getcloudapp.com/o0uZmW0b

9 minutes ago, patrickhart1 said:

I’m done with Evernote. This is just ridiculous.

Literally no one cares 

On 7/22/2021 at 8:58 PM, PinkElephant said:

All search capabilities are supported by all accounts, except

- geographical search (new)

- full Boolean search (new)

Since geo-search was removed years ago (then called Atlas), and boolean search was never supported, the „current“ search is as advanced as it used to be. To get the two newly developed search methods, an upgrade to Professional or Teams (former Business) is needed.

Here is an official description of search options:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040282613-Search-overview

The search available to all users was improved as well, with the new „contains“ operator. Everybody who could do with the current search syntax (including the „advanced search syntax“) up to now can IMHO do without Boolean and geo-based. This is an updated version of the search syntax description:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828-How-to-use-Evernote-s-advanced-search-syntax

Who wants it „all“ needs to upgrade. I will try in a few days by using the 14 day trial - currently I doubt there is a need for my use cases to spend the extra money.

@PinkElephantdo you know how to use the geo search? I can't find any info on it.

32 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

EN since „ever“ had a unique denominator for each note. This is nothing new, it was the backbone of sharing notes ever since. You can treat a note as an information block, just another name for the same thing.

Linking as well is nothing new to EN. The difference is that (as I understand it) Roam creates a backlink with each link, so you can explore the network in all directions. I think this would be a nice idea for EN as well - let us wait what will happen.

Agreed, there is a way to look at it with note as unit (and I use internal links extensively). Where Roam's implementation differs - and where the major difference would be - is treating the individual elements (e.g. bullets or even tasks) as unique entities. 

I'm not sure how I would feel about backlinks being implemented - we'll have to see where it goes. 

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I'm still seeing a note centric product

Where do you see blocks?

Here's what I mean by 'block' https://share.getcloudapp.com/E0uYRgO5

In case you're not familiar with Roam and how it works, this will give you a better idea of how blocks are implemented there: https://share.getcloudapp.com/jkuLOXgg

20 minutes ago, gazumped said:

It's a point of view,  but like any process backlinking isn't a bad thing provided you use it correctly.  IMHO it's wasteful to keep on describing devices or processes each time they're mentioned,  so linking to a [[continuum transfunctioner]] when you mention it in context is useful to ensure that every reader of that entry is on exactly the same page as to the definition of the device.  Likewise should a practice ever change to use a different device, it's easy to link to that instead.

For internal use,  the linked text could be acceptable - a quick lookup and return to the narrative enables readers to understand exactly what is intended here.

For external use or training,  it would be better to expand the links into definitions so that the content is 'complete' on one page.

Linking to other content isn't always necessary and should not be routine anyway - making a [[pot]] of [[tea]] by [[boiling]] the [[kettle]] and adding [[teabags]] and providing [[milk]] and [[sugar]]  is a well-enough understood process (at least in the UK!) so's not to need the definitions at all.

Linking is (IME) a Good Thing in small,  carefully selected doses.

Good points and agree that if you keep hard edges on how you use things and [[don't]] make [[too]] many [[cups]] of [[tea]], the utilitarian elements of backlinking can be handy. I have also found that the ability to link things easily does lead to more flow in writing, I just wasn't sufficiently sold to move all of my knowledge management into another location or split my work into two separate locations. For a tool like Roam or Obsidian to have maximum effect it would need to be the place where you capture your knowledge and that's no the route I'm wanting to take. 

I do wonder if EN will implement backlinks in one way or another. I get the sense from the features that have been implemented so far that they're moving more towards 'blocks' in a similar way to Notion, in which case I imagine blocks can have individual IDs. We shall see. 

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

This guy wrote everything by hand, or cut and glued stuff in paper, and created the links by hand as well.

It goes on turbo mode when you can clip the content digitally, and maybe have some AI do the linking. Zettelkasten on speed ...

The auto backlinking is one of the reasons I stay away from tools like Roam. An interesting article from zettelkasten.de on the topic: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/backlinks-are-bad-links/

5 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

There is an absolute Maximum of 100.000 notes per account ...

Using zettelkasten plus modern abilities to create digital content this limit may be closer than it seems.

True and it's something I'm mindful of. In fairness though Luhmann only managed 90k-odd and I'm not expecting to hit quite his rate.

20 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I'm using Evernote Legacy and have no problem with 20k+ notes   
I would expect less impact with Version 10 since it's server based

Server-based means it's less heavy on your system I assume? Is the fact that it's server-based the reason that all notes need to sync up to the web version before changes reflect on desktop and Android?