Mountainside
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As a life-long programmer, software architecht and former CEO of a Nasdaq traded technology company...it is crystal clear to me what's wrong with the latest release of Evernote. They're trying to "sync" the way the desktop and browser implementations of Evernote work from a procedural perspective, making both dependent on databases in the cloud--but the reality is, as of this year internet latency and bandwidth is still not enough for most people to make the "cloud-like" dependencies they're starting to use in the desktop version, responsive enough to be comfortable for desktop users.
A lot of what made Evernote great on the desktop was zero latency to add and update notes and so forth. This might be practical to implement with cloud/public internet dependencies five or ten years from now, but as of right now, by transitioning a lot of the Evernote processes to depend on network connections, they've turned the desktop version into a sloth that hangs/freezes a lot of the time while waiting for network traffic. The way I see it, that's a big mistake--possibly fatal for the product. Hopefully they've amassed a big stockpile of cash to withstand the upcoming cancellations and hit to the brand while their user base seeks other products that can bring their desktop experiences back to where they -used- to be with Evernote: Fast, seamless, with some kind of background "sync" process available to update things while not cutting in to the desktop user's productivity and valuable time.
Our time is too valuable to be spend waiting for network traffic on our desktops. It wasn't necessary to make the desktop version dependent on the cloud ... if that's what we wanted, we could have simply run evernote in our web browsers. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course but the way I see it, most of what made evernote great was the speed available with the desktop version while being able to occasionally log in from a browser if necessary.
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14
Anyone Else Thinking of Switching?
in Evernote General Discussions
Posted
It's not about lag while typing. It's about network lag when adding new records, updating old records, and from what I can tell, more or less anything that modifies the evernote database...all of those processes are hitting the cloud database in real time, in the foreground--instead of syncing in the background, as they did before, thus dramatically slowing down the responsiveness of the desktop app.
Needless to say, not a fan.
I understand that new versions of software are generally met with protest from users who need to re-learn and adapt to the new way of doing things. Experienced many "user base revolts" over the years in my career while designing upgrades to software products. However the point is, once the users *do* learn how to adapt to the new system, it should be better in some way..."syncing" the desktop UI with the cloud in real time is a laudable goal--I'd imagine the team is working towards real time collaboration at some point in the future which would admittedly be awesome--but the reality is public networks are just too darn slow in terms of latency, still, to make it a wonderful experience for desktop users.
If we were all sitting 1ms away from the cloud with no network interruptions, ever, on gigabit connection, it would probably be different. We're not there yet.
At least for the desktop version, processes that depend on network traffic should be relegated to the background, where they were. At least for now. They can be made to run in the background a few hundred milliseconds behind the desktop user and update on the fly...but the desktop interface should not freeze/hang while waiting for traffic. Ever.
The hit to performance on the new desktop version is painful ... seriously painful. I'm not whining here for no reason...the hanging and experience-wide slowdowns are not a good thing.
A disappointment indeed because EN has been great to work with until now.