NorcalScott

2 hours ago, TaskClone said:

• Will it be over soon?  Sorta.  I suspect in 120 days, the worst will be over.  The features with broadest appeal and ease of implementation will be back.  Speed and syncing will be improved, but probably not finished or back to the "old days".  Most importantly, the loudest and most hurt by the changes will be gone.  This will allow greater focus on the new paying customers that can be brought in.

Interesting take - so you are saying that Evernote will benefit from some of their most passionate paying customers leaving the platform to one of the many other competing solutions, and that there is somehow a large number of “new”paying customers who will come in and ensure profitability?  Who do you see as these new customers?

Note taking and task apps are not a new and exciting industry - most users who are willing to pay anything for a solution are either using Evernote and feeling certain levels of pain from this recent debacle, or have used Evernote and left for various reasons.  I don’t see these users coming back any time soon unless Evernote is offering something truly remarkable, which v10 most definitely is not.  If a “win” is getting a product after 18 months that finally matches the previous product’s functionality, then Evernote is going to be in big trouble, in my opinion.

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

Last days, I've been testing Joplin import of my full database (3700 notes). At a certain point I got an import problem for a single web clip note, due to an inconsistent Enex file (invalid XML). I reported this problem on the joplin forum and within 10 minutes,  the Joplin author asked me some info, and after less than half an hour, he worked around the enex problem and released it, problem solved 🙂

In the mean time, he's still improving the import of web clipped notes. He's now at the point that these clipped notes looks sometimes better in Joplin than in EN. All this progress in a few days...

Also interesting to know, Joplin is built on electron too, exactly the same platform as EN V10. So there is still hope for EN, performance shouldn't be an issue...

Yes, the responsiveness of the Joplin author, Laurent, is great, and he is always cordial no matter how basic the question.  I am fully up and running now on Joplin and really liking it.  I have about 10,000 notes loaded and syncing through DropBox between my Windows laptop, iPad (Air 2019) and Android phone (LG G7).

The biggest surprise with Joplin is how good the web clipper is.  I have tried all the different page capture formats and am finding that "Clip Simplified Page" is almost always perfect.  Search also is superb - results on all platforms come up in seconds.

It is strange that both Evernote 10 and Joplin are both written in Electron, considering how better performing Joplin is on the desktop.  I think that the database part of it is the difference - hopefully Evernote can make that work better, because for someone with a lot of note, it is a deal breaker.

34 minutes ago, eric99 said:

The ENEX format is a very strict XML format, actually a XHTML subset with only a few extra EN tags. It is formally well described in a XML scheme http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export3.dtd which can be used to validate the notes against.  There is plenty of software available to parse XML, which makes the import into other note taking apps much easier.

At the other hand, mark down format looks great, but I have the impression that it is not standardized very well. There are  several incompatible flavors of it. Maybe, this has been solved in the mean time?

Markdown is also very limited, see the comments from the Joplin author:  https://joplinapp.org/rich_text_editor/

 

Evernote export of complete notebooks is already possible in V10, so this 50 files limit is no issue for a full  database export. What is still missing is the HTML export but EN promised that other options will come.

 

..."

You are right that mark down is somewhat limited but there are some very good open source command line tools that can do quite a bit with it for getting data into and out of other systems.

Good to know that the 50 file limit is no longer an issue.  That alone would be a show stopper for me.

It may be good if Evernote would just provide a full accounting of what they are planning, and when the legacy products will be deprecated.  If their intentions are in the user's best long-term interests, they have certainly caused themselves a lot of harm with the lack of communications.

28 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I use the HTML export option - it's not proprietary

>>Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know

Our expectation is the 50 note limit will be removed as the project development proceeds
Note: There is no limit when exporting entire notebooks

fwiw   Export is a local function, not cloud
            The export is from the local database

I've not had much success doing anything with the HTML export - most of the other products do not interpret it correctly and you end up with a lot of orphan files if you try to import it.  However, as a strict backup it does make a lot of sense, and I'll give credit to Evernote for providing this.

Regarding the export - I understand that "today" the export is from the local database, but my understanding is that the new platform will do the export from the cloud.  I may be wrong, as there has been very little information provided as to the future plans (that I've seen).  If that is the case, then the 50 limit (or maybe a moderately higher number) makes sense as exported GBs worth of data from the cloud will be cumbersome.

Not to be a Joplin fanboy, because it does have its quirks - but it allows for a "RAW" export in which data is saved to a directory and each item represented by a single file.  This is very handy for future proofing.

56 minutes ago, eric99 said:

What makes you so sure that your work is not at the mercy of decisions by the Joplin team? Does the Joplin team has sufficient human and financial resources to survive?

Joplin is led by the creator of the project, and there are around 30-40 other developers who work on it in their spare time.  There are no guarantees, of course, but the work there is motivated by a desire to move the solution ahead, not by the profit and loss of venture capitalist funds.  Many folks also contribute money to Joplin to help cover costs.

In any event, as it is open source and the data files are easily exported as mark down text, I don't see much risk, but your opinion of that risk may be different than mine.

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

For me, it is really important to be able to exit from a proprietary system   
Evernote's export feature provides the assurance that my data is not locked in  

In the meantime, I'm able to make use of the Evernote features; organization, search, ...   

Note, I'm using Evernote's Legacy product    
I won't consider using the Version 10 product until the ongoing work is completed

I agree that to date Evernote has made it somewhat easy to export files that can be imported into other solutions.  However, these exports in the ENEX format are still proprietary and require quite a bit of manipulation in order to handle in another application, which is one reason for some of my problems.  Joplin can export in mark-down text which is much easier to manipulate on import into a different product.

One thing all Evernote subscribers should be aware of - Evernote 10 only allows for export of 50 files at a time as the database will be cloud hosted only as far as we know. (I suppose they could change all this, but the indications so far are troubling)  As long as you can use the Legacy product, you can get at all your files.  However, once this goes away, you may not have that luxury, and it will go away, we just don't know when.

1 hour ago, Chris Darby said:

I keep running into this issue with technology and I suspect others do as well. We invest significant time and effort over years to make use of some incredible tools that people create, like Evernote, and we are more than happy to continue to purchase or subscribe to their services as a result, but then our "house of cards" teeter on the brink of collapse when the product suddenly and unexpectedly breaks or dissolves. As you alluded to, as we each organize and tag thousands of records, enabling us to rapidly retrieve past thoughts and concepts through indexed searches, leaves us dependent on tools like this as a sort of auxiliary brain. Ultimately I only have myself to blame for this, investing so much confidence and faith in a single tool and service provider, rather than breaking it out among different products. If I were to start over, I would rearchitect my approach by possibly focusing on open source software (although there are certainly support and maintenance pitfalls there as well), as well as spreading out the approach to data organizing among multiple different products. The problem with splitting up our auxiliary brains between multiple products is that we lose data correlation (record "A" now relates to record "B" in a different information ecosystem). I suppose the only potential for rearchitecting one's approach would be to focus on using open standards (i.e., service-oriented architecture, microservices) in which different products can communicate back and forth, ideally between each other within an isolated offline instance and online. Or maybe Evernote will surprise us and fix their previously product offering, and I can continue my dependency on their previously awesome software even in light of its proprietary nature.

This whole episode with Evernote 10 has made me realize that it is really important for me to break away from a proprietary system in which 10 years of my work could possibly be at the mercy of decisions made that do not necessarily consider my best interests at heart.  Even if Evernote were to completely reverse their decision on rolling out what I believe to be an inferior solution, I would still feel this way.

But, to be clear, choosing an open source solution like Joplin is not for everyone.  I am very close to having transferred all 10 years of my notes and attachments into Joplin, to sync between my Windows laptop, my iPad and my Android phone.  I've spent about 20 hours on this in the past 2 weeks and below are some of the issues I have encountered:

- Just the process of importing Evernote files into Joplin is not without difficulty.  I tried doing a mass import but found that many notes coming from Evernote needed some handling and manipulating once imported, for example, Joplin's sync system does not handle large (>10MB) files too well.  That's fine as I have decided that I do not want to attach anything that large, but it made mass imports unworkable, so I ended up importing Evernote files ~150 at a time, then checking attachments and pruning after each import.

- The biggest challenge of Joplin itself is the syncing process.  If you will only use one computer, it is easy and you can back everything up locally for safe keeping.  In my case, I need to sync between the 3 devices mentioned above.  In order to do this you need to choose a cloud provider that is compatible with syncing.  For this you have 3 choices - NextCloud/WebDAV, Microsoft OneDrive, or DropBox.  I tried each of these in order, and even though WebDAV holds great promise ($17 per year for 50GB of space from Cloudamo, for example), but the management of this was too difficult for my large number of files.   OneDrive worked really well and you can get 100GB for $1.99 per month.  Unfortunately, there is an issue in Joplin (being worked on) where if a note is 4MB or larger OneDrive sync fails and it is almost impossible to recover.  Some of my notes are that size, but it is hard to know which ones were causing the problem, and I had to give up for now.  Until this is fixed, I don't recommend OneDrive.  There is a way to setup your own NextCloud server using a Raspberry Pi and I am looking into that.

I finally settled on DropBox and it works really well.  Unfortunately, their lowest cost paid plan is $12 per month for 2TB of storage, and I already pay Google for 2TB of Drive storage (doesn't work for Joplin reliably, unfortunately) and I don't want to change.  Luckily, after I pruned things,   my total storage is around 3GB and I have 6GB of DropBox storage, so I will be OK there for a while.  I did encounter an issue where a few very small image files were stopping sync from completing, but I was able to track that down and delete the offending files.

There are things about Joplin I really like: The Windows client is very similar to Evernote; searching is fast and accurate - way better than Evernote 10; the web clipper of Joplin is VERY nice, better than Evernote's.  One missing feature is that you cannot email into Joplin to create notes, but that is a small sacrifice and one I can work around.  Tags work the same in Joplin as in Evernote and much to Ian Small's chagrin, I have about 500 tags   

Overall, if you are willing to put in the effort, Joplin is very much a viable alternative, and I expect it is going to continue to get better and better as the development team is motivated and talented.

2 hours ago, Piotas said:

You cannot blame Electron framework for Evernote v10 being extremely slow. There are note taking apps written in Electron that are EXTREMELY FAST (for example Recollector - https://recollectr.io/) or very fast (see Joplin - https://joplinapp.org). I used both while searching for Evernote alternative.

Currently ALL alternative solutions I tried are FASTER than Evernote v10 during my usage scenarios.

Agreed about Joplin - I am trying it out and both desktop (Windows) and mobile apps (iPad and Android) are very fast.  Searching is amazingly fast.  Downside with Joplin is no good way to create notes from emails, but I think I can get around that.  It should be embarrassing to Evernote that an open source app is so much better performing than their app, even with encryption enabled (which is a major perk of Joplin by the way).

1 minute ago, MB11 said:

That blog post inspires less confidence than I had before.

And maybe I missed it but he didn't address the tortoise-like speed of the new version.

Agreed, not a lot of inspiration there - maybe an acknowledgement that they will need to support the legacy app much longer than they hoped.

As a product manager working on cross platform software products, I suspected that this whole thing is driven by cutting down the effort from supporting several platforms with several teams to several platforms with a single team.  (I've gone through this a few times)  That's much easier desired than done without a lot of turmoil, and it has been seriously mishandled here in my view.  

I'll continue to use the legacy app as long as I can, and I will give the 10x app another go at some point, but to be honest, I'm not holding out a lot of hope and I am actively looking at other platforms.  All the alternatives so far have shortcomings, but also some compelling features that may actually improve my workflows.

Update from the CEO of Evernote pertinent to this discussion:

https://evernote.com/blog/state-of-the-product/

He acknowledges they screwed up pushing not ready for prime time versions out.

4 hours ago, oliverthom707 said:

I have 10000 notes is my favourite... like you even look at 5% of them. I suggest if someone has 10000 notes that relies on colour coded tags you aren’t managing your information  very well.

Hmmm, I have about 8,000 work notes from over 10 years.  Do I look at 5% of them?  No, not really, but that is missing the point of a solution like Evernote completely.  I may need to find a contact or a bit of information from one of those notes from 2012, and there is this thing called "Search" that lets me pull that up from the records database quite easily (in the legacy app, but not in the 10.x app currently).  I don't use color coding, but I do use tags extensively, so really, if I have a note from Company X from 2012, I can just click that tag and what I am looking for is likely no more than 10 records deep.

51 minutes ago, DTLow said:

No sunset date specified for the Legacy product.    
I just know it's working well in the  present, and immediate future 

I'm impressed with your confidence in a company that has shown on more than one occasion in the past that they do not always have the best interests of their customers in mind when they make decisions.

I've been a heavy user of a paid Evernote account for about 10 years.  I rely on this product, that I am happy to pay for in my day-to-day work.  I am a busy person and Evernote is a critical part of my workflow.  When I am presented with a notice that "The new Evernote has arrived" and really coerced into installing it, and then after trying to use it for a day finding it absolutely unusable - that to me is a giant red flag that foretells bad things about the future of a product that is very ingrained into my productivity workflow.  I would expect a company that is looking out for me to be a little more careful about coercing me into installing a vastly inferior product that replaces what has generally worked well for over a decade on multiple platforms.

I know, I can, and will use the legacy product, but they are making it very clear that this is for limited time use - the icon is even now grey which indicates to me that this thing is on borrowed time.  You are on a Mac, so maybe the new app works better there, but on Windows, it is terrible both visually and functionally. (have they even tested this on a PC?)  

I am a product manager for a software company, and if our company put out something this raw, someone would be in big trouble and our customers would crucify us.  I am not hysterical as someone accused those of us complaining - I am simply coming to the conclusion that Evernote is heading in a direction that is not compatible with my needs.  This has forced me to look at some alternatives, and not having done that for quite some time, I am finding some very interesting replacements (Amplenote and Nimble Notes to name just two).  My Evernote subscription runs through next July, so I have some time to decide what to do, but I am not going to wait around for EN to pull the rug out from what I need.