Julian Winter

@gazumped & @Dave-in-Decatur. squidgwinkle is absolutely right, even Windows Notepad can open a file with the cursor at the end of the text, to facilitate a sequence of entries. It is neither an obscure scenario nor a complicated one, particularly in a program for writing and managing notes. Don't lecture users. Don't tell them that the way they are using the product is wrong. If you don't listen to them, then another product will. That is the way to go out of business.

In my opinion - wrong choice. If you try to swim against this tide you will be swept away. The world of GUI interfaces has worked out how to do the folder metaphor and moved on. If you use folders in your product then people expect them to behave in a certain way (e.g. have nesting) or they will not understand your product and will choose not to use it when a more natural alternative presents itself - as it will. It's not really about the merits of the case it's about what people want, what feels natural to them. Apple have built an empire developing products which are built on this idea and have crushed numerous "superior" products in the process. Take your engineer's hat off and consider a 17 year old with an Iphone and laptop and a million apps to choose from. Any patience there, do you think, for non standard folders and a quirky way of using tags? Now, you may say that 17 year olds are not today's typical Evernote users - but they are tomorrow's, they have to be or Evernote doesn't have a future. The IT world is littered with the corpses of perfectly good products which didn't heed this message. In the 1990s WordPerfect used to rule the universe of word processing and used to lecture the IT world with the arguments in favour of non GUI editors with keyboard shortcuts (they were faster, more efficient, typists preferred them etc.) and then Word came along with its GUI and point and click and WordPerfect disappeared overnight. It's about survival.

You do want the product to sell, right? I find this attitude incomprehensible. If Evernote doesn't have key GUI Windows/Mac features like this it will not sell (well enough to compete). And if it doesn't sell it will die.

Sometimes I think it's as if Evernote speaks a different app language from the rest of us. It sounds like the sort of thing that Unix "gurus" used to say when visual text editors were first introduced. The command line model had worked fine for them and so everyone else should just get with the program. The problem with that was that they just got washed away with the tide. It's not really about the merits of the case it's about what people want and if you offer people folders then they have expectations as to how they should work. That is like the folders in WIndows Explorer or Mac Finder - and, in fact, everywhere else. It is basic GUI syntax. I love Evernote but this is the sort of thing that kills applications and there is too much of it in Evernote - people will just drift over to new apps which work the way they natually work. Getting this stuff done is not an option, whatever the technical hurdles. These things move very quickly and either you give people ("the public" - not your core users or "gurus") what they are looking for soon or someone else will and you will be toast.

Incredible that this issue has still not been dealt with 15 months after the initial post. I love Evernote but this is the sort of thing that kills applications and there is too much of it in Evernote - people will just drift over to new apps which offer the facilities they want. Having "recent searches", and "saved searches" instantly there when you click on the search box is what people expect to see in even fairly basic web sites these days and not to have it in an app as sophisticated as Evernote is kinda shocking. It's only a small issue, but it matters. (And keyboard shortcuts don't count - remember Wordstar? No, no one does). Every time I run up against this sort of friction using Evernote I take another look at OneNote and think, "Maybe I am backing the losing horse?" And what is it with no folders (sorry "stacks") within folders. Sometimes I think it's as if Evernote speaks a different app language from the rest of us. Getting this stuff done is not an option. These things move very quickly and either you give people ("the public" - not your core users) what they are looking for soon or someone else will and you will be toast. Get a grip.