Recently I've read Ian's new blog post - State of the Product. What he said is promising... that Evernote devs will continue to improve the app debacle continuously. But I already had months of frustration with this half-arsed, far from complete, and unstable program.
Am I missing something? I don't have much knowledge on product quality management, but you can't put raw dough on a bakery shelf. You have to bake in the oven for adequate time. Until then, no one should experience the taste of awful raw flour, especially when the bakery put that as a "cooked" bread. I'm just a customer walking into the bakery expecting delicious, golden brown bread. I don't give a flip about whether this is a beta, or in development, blablabla. I want it COMPLETE. Especially when I'm paying this $50 or so for years. At this stage, I'm feeling like Evernote is ripping me off. Legacy version? I'm using it, but who in the right mind recommend older version, while focusing all of the attention to the new version and giving zero concern to the legacy ver? It doesn't make any sense.
If I was to release the new product with different "code base" or "some hard-to-understand techie words", I would simply put that in a beta stage, and wait until something is considered as done. No one asked for fancy reactive UI or newer fonts, something like that. I just want to store my notes, as the way I've done before. Change is inevitable and I agree with that, but it has to be done with minimal interference with user experience. Why do I have to search for user forums? Why do I have to read the "state of the product" that is in a dedicated blog page which is not directly accessible from the front page of the product? Why do I have to understand Evernote staffs when they do things that will never be understood? No preferences menu on public release of word processing software, that needs some annual purchase to sync over 2 devices? Do you really think this is finished?
I'm not saying there will be no hope for this app. I'm still have trust to Evernote devs who are writing codes around the clock. Eventually all will be good. What I'm saying is that problems are just too overwhelming that the software is almost unusable, so it would have been better just not releasing new version, rather than continuously giving suffering on the entire userbase. So I decided to leave Evernote for some months, sticking to the legacy version.
Never, ever release a product that is not complete. I still suffer from inability to disable spellcheck red lines for several months. Darn it.