I understand the at-best skeptical and at-worst irritated reaction to this self-proclaimed and entirely vague refreshing. However, I can also understand the thinking behind such a refreshing effort despite its lack of initial substance.
Consider the following two scenarios:
-An introduction of several user-requested features along with general performance improvements followed by a rebranding marketing campaign.
-An initial rebranding marketing campaign followed by the introduction of several user-requested features along with general performance improvements.
If I am Evernote, I would go with Option B over Option A every time. Or, better yet, Option C, where Evernote would have announced this refresh alongside a description of meaningful changes. I guess that would have been asking for too much. /s
Without a doubt, we should be highly skeptical of Evernote suddenly doing a 180 with regard to long-standing performance and functionality issues, but maybe this truly is the start of a change in priorities. The combination of this announced refresh, a few high-level executives leaving the company and the aforementioned glaring issues which, I would suspect, have impacted Evernote's bottom line give me at least some hope of them having finally seen the light. With that said, there remains the risk Evernote will instead make the choice to put fluff innovation first before core functionality, which will only alienate us moderate-to-heavy users even further. Just how important we are to Evernote compared to new and/or casual users remains to be seen, but we should find out soon enough.
I won't be holding my breath obviously, but I'm willing to give Evernote a bit of time to show us something. If they are truly serious about this rebranding effort, they should follow up with something of substance soon. If nothing comes of it, I think it's safe to say Evernote will never put reliability first.