Twitchly

The only thing I would use with any regularity on the new homepage is the “new note” button. The other widgets are distant edge cases for me, or completely useless. (I do not use Evernote for my calendar or for managing tasks.)

There are other major use cases for Evernote besides “create something new.” The previous home screen was much more useful for me with its scratch pad, pinned notes, recent notes, and shortcuts link. I’m glad I can still get to it through the hamburger menu. But I dislike having to go through that menu every time I boot up the app.

Sending my feedback to EN now.

On 1/16/2024 at 1:45 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Smaller, lighter type on a light background degrades readability

Yes, yes, yes. 

On 1/13/2024 at 2:33 PM, gazumped said:

D'you know I wrote to Elon a little while ago pointing out that I didn't need the 300 mile range,  or all the fancy gadgets,  I just wanted a Tesla to get me to the local shops and back at 10% of the current price.  He didn't even bother to be rude to me...

Hey, at least Tesla offers a range of options. Granted, they run from very expensive to insanely expensive. Perhaps Bending Spoon folks are admirers. 

19 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Personally, I hope that once the dust settles, Evernote will once again offer a low-cost, low-feature-set option for users such as yourself.

This.

I was a free subscriber for years, then upgraded to paid in order to help keep Evernote great. Then after some years I upgraded again when the tiers changed. But Evernote has now increased its fees to a level that makes sense only to super-users, with costs surpassing even MS Office and Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge.

I can only assume Bending Spoons wants to maintain its business with fewer customers paying premium prices. But I hope I’m wrong; I’d love to see them offer a (much cheaper) basic plan with fewer monthly uploads and no business features. Preferably before my subscription expires in the spring. 

In the meantime, I’ve started transferring my Evernote content to another app. It’s a hassle but a good learning experience: shame on me for having put all my eggs in one basket in this fickle business. I’m going forward with an eye toward flexibility.

Evernote’s current pricing model starts with a magnum of Pinot Noir and goes up from there. Some of us would be content paying for just a basic bottle version. I hope BS considers offering a pared-down option before my subscription expires this spring. (No team access, no priority support, reduced upload volume per month…)

23 hours ago, dhbevernote said:

The absolute best part of EN is the Web Clipper...sadly, no one else comes close to the functionality or accuracy, so I'll have to just get used to poorer quality clips.

Bear has a decent clipper. It doesn’t keep the format of the original article, but it manages to clip things EN can’t manage to handle anymore, like anything from the WSJ and NYTimes. (Or any other subscription site I log into.) Bear manages these easily.

10 hours ago, gazumped said:

Evernote is the largest repository of private information in the world.

This is striking. What is this based on? 

It’s mainly just the price for me. I’m mostly fine with the app, except the web clipper has taken a few steps backward over the years. I can no longer get the clipper to work for articles from sites requiring passwords, even after I’ve signed in.

I’m no power user, but I use EN frequently, mostly to clip something I want to save. (When possible.) I don’t really care for the editor so don’t use it as much for writing as I used to. I never use the to-do lists or team stuff. And I use Dropbox rather than EN for storage of documents, photos, etc.

Honestly, I’d probably do fine with a free EN account. I mostly subscribed initially to help support them because I liked the app. With the big price hike, I’ve had to step back and ask how much EN is truly worth to me. Which is why I canceled, then took the reduced-price offer. I’ll pay $60-70.  Not more.

16 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

 

At least all current rebates are for one year only. So we meet again, next year. Until then the recipe seems to be to cancel, get an offer, and decide.

Yup. That’s what I just did. I intended to actually cancel and was surprised by the reduced offer. I’m willing to pay the reduced amount (which is still a significant increase over last year), but not the crazy new full price. Not for a digital filing cabinet, which is how I use Evernote. I’ve already got a decent backup plan for next year if the offer isn’t repeated. 

I get depressed reading threads like this. I’m no techie. I just want a way to regularly back up my Evernote data without having to use command lines or pay for yet another tool. You’ve all found ways to make up the lack in Evernote itself, but this shouldn’t take a knowledge of coding and databases, and it shouldn’t cost extra. 

I decided to cancel today and go the free route, and EN offered me 40% off. The new price is just a few dollars higher than last year, which I’m fine with. So I’ll be an EN subscriber for a while yet.

Once I run out of discounts, I’ll jump.

12 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I'd be happy if the same happens to Evernote.

So would I.

I have worked at several software companies now that got bought out, all with assurances to customers and staff that “nothing will change.“ And of course everything changed. The software was either discontinued right away or left to decay without maintenance. Four of the five corporations that bought out the companies where I worked folded not long after. The only one still standing, a behemoth, quickly junked our software  after the buyout. I don’t have high hopes in situations like this. 

How tech-savvy does one need to be to use Obsidian’s EN-similar features? I’m not a coder and don’t want to become one in order to use a virtual filing cabinet. 

On 7/13/2023 at 2:45 AM, PinkElephant said:

Apple Notes has folders (= notebooks), and they can be nested. Tags are a pale shadow of EN tags, however.

Thanks; I’ll look into that. Now if only Apple offered a clipper. 

How do Apple notes tags differ from those of EN? I must not be using EN tags to their full capacity, because the two seem pretty similar to me. Apple requires you to type a hashtag symbol, and EN requires you to go into a separate tags window. (On the phone; I rarely use the PC version.) What else?

Sorry for the huge text; no idea why that happened (or how to fix it). 

Well, I’m glad to see the topic here because I’d like to hear from other knowledgeable EN users how other apps currently compare to Evernote. I’m a big fan of EN, just not of the new price. So I’m looking around.

My use case: I mostly use EN as a virtual filing cabinet. I am a heavy clipper user, which sadly puts apps like Apple Notes out of the running.

So I just started looking into Bear 2.0, and here’s what I’m seeing so far:

At this point, I’ve just played with it on my iPhone (which is where I mostly use EN). Very promising. The clipper actually works better than EN’s when dealing with subscription sites. On EN, whenever I try to clip from a paywalled site where I have a subscription, I get just a fragment of the article. Bear gets the whole thing. 

I just tried importing a notebook from EN, and it worked well. Even brought in the tags! Bear uses its own formatting, overriding that of whatever you clip or import. Not an issue for me, may be for some.

No notebooks in Bear, which doesn’t thrill me. They do allow nested tags, though that feels a little kludgy to me compared to notebooks.

The ability to clip and to import tags from EN were two biggies for me and the main reasons why I’ve been reluctant to move entirely to Apple Notes.  (Which also doesn’t have notebooks.) Very happy to see them in Bear. 

Need to research how easy it is to export a bunch of notes from Bear rather than individually.

5 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Would love to hear your results!

So far, I’ve just played with it on my iPhone (which is where I mostly use EN). Very promising. I’m going to post over in another thread about alternatives to EN rather than clog up this one. See you there!

6 hours ago, ChristianJB said:

Depends on your profession, but I use EN more often than PS ...

 

I pay half that. But I’ve used PS for years, often for work. It’s a far more complicated program than EN, to use, to build, and to maintain.

But I suppose something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it, and it looks like EN’s new owners are testing those waters. 

3 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Look at today's release of the (eagerly anticipated and years-in-development) Bear 2.0. It's not a full Evernote clone, but they've added many features that are popular on Evernote (and some popular feature requests on these forums that Evernote doesn't have yet.) Price: $30/year, and they have an Evernote importer.

And — drum roll — they have a web clipper! Yesss!

I am downloading Bear as we speak. This may be the app that finally gets me off Evernote. Very curious to see how it handles EN imports.

I’m a big fan of EN, but not for $130/year. Holy tamole. That’s more than I pay for Photoshop. 

On 7/4/2023 at 3:22 AM, PinkElephant said:

There are other ways to backup, by scripting or by an export through the API. You can use the professional service by Backuppery as well, but it cost a subscription.

https://www.backupery.com/products/backupery-for-evernote/ 

https://github.com/vzhd1701/evernote-backup 

I just tried GitHub unsuccessfully. I'm no coder, so I'm just trying to follow steps. I installed everything in the ReadMe file and got as far as trying to initialize the database. When I entered my login credentials, it ran a bunch of crud and then said 'User.tooManyMessageAttemptsTryAgainLater'  So I'm stuck.

Guess I'll just stick with the time-consuming process of exporting one notebook at a time. 

I’ve noticed some increased lag time when clipping from the web to Evernote on my iPhone, up to hours in some cases. This just started a few days ago.  

Same problem. I open a note to edit it, but it says “View Only.” I have to reboot Evernote each time.

I’m running the latest Evernote on the beta of iOS 15, so it may be related to the new iOS.

Thanks for the Apple summary. Very interesting. I just took a quick look as well, and I must say it’s very intriguing.

I wonder if Apple Notes will have anything similar to Evernote‘s ability to clip articles from the web. That’s my primary use case for Evernote. (Which sadly isn’t working as well after the update.) And shortcuts, the ability to quickly pull up certain notes. 

Looking forward to trying out the new Notes in the fall. Maybe with Apple’s addition of tags functionality, I’ll be able to export my Evernote files into Notes without losing my tags. (I currently can’t figure out how to do this.)

56 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Hey, guys, just watching the WWDC keynote.

No spoilers, please 😉

I watched some of it but don’t recall anything that resembled Evernote functionality. What did I miss?