GrumpyMonkey

Hey gaz. Good strategy. I use EN in tandem with other apps (for example, I need encryption for many things, or not to have them synced at all), so I could shift entirely over to them anytime. As for EN, I have explored all of the new stuff at length, and whatever welcome changes I found, they were insignificant in comparison to everything we have to give up in order to move “forward.” If there comes a point when Legacy is no longer viable, and we are forced into anything like the current state of the new app version, I’d be unlikely to renew my subscription. Actually, I was planning to cancel, and even let the subscription lapse, but the Legacy app tempted me to subscribe one more time. I am not paying for the new features, but in spite of them. LOL. Go figure. Gaz is right. I don’t need the drama. In the end, I have stuff to do. As long as Evernote keeps helping with that, I’ll re-up. No interest at all in being dragged through a house of new-feature/broken-feature/abandoned-feature horrors. I don’t know why the plans to scrap things and plans to add them back in are secret, but I have better stuff to do with my time than play that game.

Thanks for the kind words. I always welcome developer and staff engagement here, but if they are too busy, I also appreciate them just taking our suggestions and implementing them tl;dr I was speaking about the checkmark, actually. <What’s my deal with the checkmark?> In iOS we now need to tap the checkmark to confirm an edit. That is an extra tap of literally no utility. For example, is there an X to reject the edits? No. In fact, you can close the app, open it again, and find the edited content saved, so the checkmark doesn’t even funtion as the icon suggests! It’s like the Hollywood version of Ghost in the Shell when the main character refuses to give her consent to a medical procedure and her owner/creator says they never needed her consent and goes forward with it anyhow (kind of—watch the movie for more). If it’s not serving a purpose, and increases the tapping we have to do, then it fails for all of my criteria. Instead, you could accomplish the same result as the checkmark by just moving away from the note, and then you would be someplace useful. Perhaps they thought we would want to hang out in the note admiring it after finishing our glorious edits. But, it is wisiwyg, so what is the point of staring at the same note after you tap the checkmark? <How do we fix it?> By the way, perhaps because I am several generations behind on my iOS devices, no home screen on my phone and on my ipad I am even running the old version of the app. Whatever good intentions the developers had, and I am sure they had many, as evidenced by comments and peeks behind the scenes, the new app objectively fails to improve the experience in several key ways for the users. On my iPad, I only need one tap to edit a note. Tap in the note and start editing. That’s it. When you are done, just tap in a note from the list displayed on the left and edit another one (in that case, you’d have two taps: one on the list to get the content of the other note to display and another in that note to begin editing). This thing has basically been streamlined to achieve maximum efficiency. How did it get that way? Lots and lots of work by the developers. I know that because users (including me) were brought into the process to help redesign the interface from the ground up, including video calls, so my Zoom meeting reference above was partly a joke / partly a suggestion for inprovement to the design process. Can we get to a single tap in the new app on all iOS devices? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I have no doubt the developers could do it if they wanted. <Priorities> How do my priorities look in practice? Well, a lot like the old app. One tap to search on the iPad. One tap to access shortcuts. One tap to add a new note, even if you are in the middle of editing another one. Elegant simplicity. Is it perfect? Well, no. The old app could have used some improvements. When you tapped to make a new note on the ipad, the note filled the screen, and there was a word (完了 in Japanese for me) in the upper left corner you had to tap to confirm the content and go back. Basically, it was detritus from the earlier iterations of the app, but instead of taking this opportunity to excise it, the developers added checkmarks into every edit, and put a home screen on for good measure. New crud on top of old crud, if you ask me, and their redesign time could have been better spent building on the great work earlier developers did in refining the app. By the way, using three different versions of the app (old ios, deprecated ios?, and android), some of the problems are glaringly obvious in daily use. ios downloaded all of my notebook content for offline use in a timely manner. Android still hasn’t after about three weeks, and that was after reinstalling the app when it became unable to recognize the existence of any content at all in some notebooks. Yes, it’s a bug of some kind, and I am not suggesting they abandon development of new things for debugging, but the layering of a home screen on top of a poor experience was especially unwelcome. Timing and execution—fix the broken stuff in the premium features I pay for first and then give me the option to upgrade to the new features rather than hijacking the app (if I am using it you can assume I am working) to show me a tutorial about a feature I don’t even want. Definitely too long. Sorry about that. And, totally the opposite of my message: Keep it simple! In practice, that could mean making it faster, reducing the effort involved, making sure the core features work as intended, and gently rolling out new features (including the option not to have them at all or to turn them off).

I am not sure what the subscription has to do with it. I am a premium user with the Home window. I don't want it. But, now I am forced to use it. If I crashed one of the Zoom development meetings at Evernote, I would recommend having some of these concepts / questions at the front of my mind for any design issues. 1. Does it require more clicks / taps? If so, then it probably isn't worth it. For example, we now have to tap several times just to edit a note on mobile. I have no idea why more clicks / taps were added to the process. 2. Does it increase the information density while keeping things easy to read / making them easier to read? If not, then it probably isn't worth it. Why in the world would you remove data about our notes and make it impossible to know some basic stuff like how many notes have been downloaded in an offline notebook? There is space for it. A while back in mobile (a few versions ago) we could see it. Not anymore. Days and days I have been waiting for the notebooks in my Android to download. Maybe next month will be the one when I finally get to see everything. 3. Is it faster (to do what you want to do)? If not, then it probably isn't worth it. The entire app is slower (on iOS and Android). I don't see how that makes it more productive. My notes aren't downloaded, so that slows me down. I have to tap more to edit notes. That is definitely not speeding things up. And, now we have a home screen to tap through as well. It's as if Evernote re-designed the app to be slower to use. If anyone is still around reading this, I'd suggest re-thinking how resources are prioritized and getting back to some of the core features of the app that have kept some of us around all of these years. Search, for example, is one of the most important features of the app for me (on OSX, Windows, Android, and iOS). Sometimes it has worked better than other times over the years, and we have often had long discussions about search discrepancies. I don't know about other folks, but my search results are all over the place (working with CJK, so that may have an effect). In my opinion, new search features, better search quality, and so forth will pay off more in the long run than any visual enhancements or widgety / portal screens (in general, it is never a good idea to add new screens to anything, in my opinon). OK. That's enough. I can see that Evernote has invested a lot of time and effort into developing the Home screen, and they are probably loathe to backtrack. Maybe they even think I will learn to like being slower, less productive, and irritated Until that day comes, please just give me a way to turn it off--an added benefit is that I won't be able to complain about it on the forums anymore!

I don't have an opinion on the aesthetics. Maybe it is beautiful. Maybe it is not. But, the home screen definitely does nothing for my workflow. Se the default to "home screen" for everyone if you want, but please let us turn it off if we don't want to use the app that way. And, while you are at it, let us turn off any other popup tutorial. I just want to use the app. How does this look in the real world? This is my anecdote from today. Cue the world's tiniest violin to provide background music for it. I open my phone (Android / Premium subscription), press the icon, and wait several seconds for the app to load. Why is the new app slower than the old one? Then, I get ready to search, but the entire screen is covered by some kind of home screen tutorial. Meanwhile, my colleague is waiting for me to find the document I said I'd have in just a second... I navigate through the home screen, search, and finally locate the document. Great! But, it still isn't downloaded. So, it's going to take a bit longer. Actually, I've been waiting for days to get this notebook offline, sometimes leaving the phone unlocked and the app open on my desk for an hour or two. I am kind of unsure I'll ever get to see the file. Eventually, the PDF comes up, but by then my colleague has fished his own version out of his own pile of papers. What's the point of having this productivity app if I'm less productive than a pile of papers? I can pile up my papers on my desk for free My recommendation is to help us use the app to get stuff done instead of slowing it down, hijacking the app with tutorials / home screens, or degrading functionality (notebooks downloaded for offline use not working properly, for example). I don't see how this experience is "better" than what I had last year.

Of course, everyone can respond as they would like, but my recommendation was not to invest such strong emotions into it. I found it helped to step back from it, consider it in relation to my use case, and uninstall it If I could have escaped from the iOS update as well, I would have, but we’re stuck with that. But, this pattern of rolling out an update before it is ready has happened before. We’ve both been around long enough to be wary. In my case, once it became clear that even if Evernote’s stated aspirations for the app matched the reality, it’d still be a terrible fit for me, the decision about what to do was easy. In other words, hating on the update (I think I have some fairly acerbic posts out there) wasn’t productive, but re-evaluating my workflow was.

EN and DEVONthink are unique, and difficult to compare to one another or other apps, so it’s probably best to think about it like this: look for something (or some combination of somethings) that solves your problems with the least amount of effort/stress/money. Compare the apps that way. The solution you choose will probably seem like it requires less effort, because it is working for you. I’d say DT has far more depth, but you can choose whether you want to dig into it or not—I think that within seconds you’ll have everything you need up and running (backups with TimeMachine, databases in the cloud just like with Evernote, smart rules to automatically file everything for you, AI to suggest locations for files, and no limits (upload, file size, database size, etc.)). It’ll even import Evernote in a format that (in my opinion) is better than Evernote’s own export. The iOS app is phenomenal. Show me another app that has zero-knowledge encryption for your entire database and can sync without wifi (if you want). Amazing, but, as gaz said, why bother fiddling around with something else if your workflow is good enough? EN, even in its current state, probably still checks a lot of boxes for a lot of people. I know I really appreciate several of its features. I posted a while back in this thread about letting my premium subscription lapse. I did that for a couple weeks, and then bought another month of premium with EN to iron out some wrinkles in my workflow (legacy). I’ll be a freemium user soon, and that’ll last until the equation changes for my situation. EN used to be well-suited to my workflow (or a decade plus of use has made me well-suited to it), but not so much anymore, and their plans / development priorities make it even less likely to fit my needs in the future. Too bad for me, but they surely have their own reasons. Loyalty is a nice quality to have, but this isn’t a virtual feudal state in which our Silicon Valley overlords require us to bend the knee and pledge fealty to their apps (in this analogy the legacy app might be the Hand (Ned in GoT) and the new app might be... Oh no). I recommend saving the “hate” for something else besides a lackluster update. Instead, I’d say we ought to thank the EN developers for their tremendous effort, point out what does or doesn’t work for you, and figure out what app(s) best suit your needs.

Search will work for any language combination, as far as I know, but OCR is only done for certain language combinations, and this is one reason why I OCR before putting things in Evernote. Of course, this raises the question: why use Evernote at all if feature X isn't working for you? The problem, as I see it, is that Evernote is probably designed really well for someone who is not me. Again, this isn't necessarily a criticism of Evernote. They have to make design decisions. However, their design decisions increasingly reflect a certain kind of workflow that doesn't fit me--multiple language use, especially with CJK, which tend to require different thinking about search. Some problems I have had for over a decade, and I pop into the forums every once in a while to poke Evernote about them (woefully inadequate encryption options). Others come up with each update that removes or radically alters stuff to "improve" the app. @tavor Good to see you I have posted a few times since the latest update, but I have tried to refrain from saying too much, because I wanted to see how they got this mess sorted without gumming up the works. Unfortunately, in my case, there has been almost no progress on the issues I need to see resolved, so now that I am hitting up against my renewal date, I wanted to let Evernote and other users know my thought processes. It may serve as some useful data for someone. @DTLow Yep. Same here. Well, actually, I've been using a bunch of apps over a decade or so, with Evernote as my main work application sometimes, and shifting work to other ones when Evernote has hit bumps in the road. There is nothing quite like Evernote, but there are some great alternatives (they meet my needs in different ways), and for some reason Evernote has chosen to make its core features even less appealing to someone with my workflow. This time, it seems more like a detour and an entirely new direction, pushing me off onto the bumpy shoulder, so I may not renew for a while. We'll see.

Hi. I am on Mac and iOS. I don’t hate the new Evernote (thread title), but they have removed support for features I used to use, features I rely on do not work as well, I have experienced numerous bugs, and nothing I see in the current directory of app development meets my needs or promises to improve my situation. That’s a grim assessment, I am afraid. This update may be a wonderful one for many users, but it hasn’t been for me. In particular, there is no opt-out for iOS. One day your workflow is just destroyed by a sub-par experience, and that is that. There is an opt-out for the Mac, but when you see how the rollout was bungled and what is in store for the future, it’s not a terribly great incentive to re-up. It’s not as if the Legacy version is perfect, either. <Re-up?> I am due to renew my premium subscription in one week (my forum account is different than my regular one). I turned off the automatic renewal when I experienced the update. I haven’t decided yet if I will let the subscription lapse, but it seems likely at this point. This isn’t a rage quit post. I am not leaving. I am still going to have the app installed on all of my devices. I’ll continue using it. I just may not be able to justify the cost for its greatly diminished role in my workflow. I want to support companies and their employees when they make products I use and enjoy, but this is such a mess, I’m thinking it doesn’t make sense when my usage has plummeted to just a tiny fraction of what it was. <What went wrong?> I’d like to see Evernote do a better job with its rollout of updates, and I would like it to rethink some of its development decisions. Evernote does a lot of things really well, like its syncing, and the general structure of having data in a note as a container linking its contents to other note containers in a flat hierarchy (at least, on the backend). Brilliant. But, that’s been there for 12+ years. Who thought stripping down the sync controls / information (resulting in sync conflicts) would be an improvement? Who thought completely blank notes (I guess while stuff that ought to habe been there already loads) is an improvement, especially on iOS? Who thought making us double-click links would make sense (yes, I realize there is a shortcut-key workaround, but why)? Who thought limiting the amount of notes we can select would improve our workflows? Who thought hiding note content from Spotlight searches would help us? I wonder how many heavy users of the app were brought into the development process. <Evernote wish list> - Encrypted notes (all content) and notebooks (Apple Notes, DEVONthink, OneNote, etc. have had equivalent features for years now). Getting rid of local notebooks leaves many of us with no option but to shift sensitive / confidential work to other apps. Eventually, we just migrate other stuff away as well, and then we wonder why we still have a subscription to an app that insufficiently values privacy and security. - Fine-grained control over features. Make a default sync, display, etc. for users who don’t care. Give us options for displaying sync information, managing syncs, etc. - Improve searches, especially for CJK languages.Search results have often been poor in the past, but now we are stuck with Evernote only, so you have to do better. - Make Evernote data searchable in Spotlight.This would at least lessen the frustration with search deficiencies in the app. - The editor still has irritating bugs. I generally don’t get too worked up about such things, but if the rewrite from the ground up was supposed to fix things, but produced a buggy editor instead, especially on iOS, then something has gone terribly wrong. Please don’t ever dump half-baked products onto iOS, because we are stuck with the mistakes. * Evernote is a great idea, I’ve spent over a decade with it and enjoyed interactions with the wonderful employees, and it seems to have a capable CEO at the helm. Everything is in place to do well, but somehow the design process designed me and my workflow out of the app. Mybe that’s OK for the company, who is angling for better users, but anecdotally speaking, it is not so great for me. At any rate, I am not leaving, and I’ll be keeping an eye on the app, wishing Evernote and all its users well.

Regarding the original question, it is really difficult to find a good note-taking app (however one defines it), and few of my favorites have survived well over time--all too many are abandonware or buggy now, with only a few remaining in any usable state. The more complicated apps have their share of complicated problems. I imagine Evernote is one of the most challenging of all the apps (at least on the back end), because it has to reliably sync for millions of users across multiple, constantly changing platforms (Android must be a truly harrowing developer experience). It looks simple from our end, but the fact that so few developers get it "right" suggests that it is easier said than done.The original poster seems to know far more about developing than I do, so this is probably already well understood. On to the specifics in the thread. Apple Notes. A lovely app. It's "free" with the purchase of your iOS device--remember when we didn't spend 1000 dollars every three or four years for a new phone? I have used it a lot over the last decade or so. Try to get your data out of it, though. Good luck! Try saving a website to it. Oh no... Try linking notes. Impossible. The list goes on. Even one of the most richest and most powerful companies in world history seems to have trouble doing things we take for granted in Evernote Obsidian? Yes. It is nice. I am afraid I am unlikely to use it over the long term, though. The subscription business model is all the rage, isn't it, and while it isn't especially expensive, few individual apps or services are. The problem is that everything is a subscription, and it isn't a question of one particular app's pricing, but how much of your budget you are willing to allocate to subscription services that (generally speaking) are constantly increasing in price. I think Dropbox has increased 25%, Evernote over 60%? How many of us are seeing equivalent increases in our salaries every few years? It's probably a tough sell, especially if you are into other subscriptions like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. etc. There's less and less money to go around, so no matter how inexpensive apps are, you have to prioritize. I am guessing a lot of folks have a tough time justifying a note-taking app subscription. The original poster makes a good point--look back at your usage and consider if your subscriptions are worth it. In the case of Evernote, I'm in a similar position, because the updates (including on iOS, which cannot be rolled back) have dramatically decreased my usage. That's only anecdotal, though, and perhaps simply inevitable when the app goes one way and my workflow goes another. In the end, considering the context in which Evernote operates, it's pretty amazing. I'm having issues with it right now, I'm afraid, but a lot of folks seem to be enjoying it, and if I were one of them, I think I'd be reasonably confident in the security (given all of the drawbacks inherent in any app with such meagre encryption options) and I'd have few concerns about having copies of my data in my local drive (Evernote data is kept in the cloud, of course, but it all resides on your drive as well).

Data loss and sync conflicts here. It's not rocket science, I think, because it has already been discussed ad nauseam. The thing is that Evernote has already developed some really detailed sync features in the past. It's all been done before, and they could have been building on their past successes little by little over the last decade + to develop an amazing app, but instead we have to go through this cycle of scrapping it all and restarting from scratch again (this "complete redesign" has been done before as well---2010, 2012, 2014, etc.). Yes, I know someone on the developer team would likely say that this time is "different." But, is it? At one point, the code was entirely rewritten from C#/WPF to C++. Recognize any of the reasoning? "...As a result, we ended up chasing down platform bugs rather than adding the great features our users wanted. So we decided to start over from scratch, with fast, native C++ that we knew we could rely on. As you’ll see, the results are amazing. This new version will set a foundation for rapid improvement." Sounds the same to me... too many bugs, too many problems, this is all to add great features, and now we can have more rapid improvement! Actually, I'm fine if they want to rebuild the app, and I'm fine if they want to re-shuffle the UI, etc. It's not as if the previous version of the app was perfect or anything close to it. I can adapt to just about anything, except an app that doesn't work as well, loses data, or is missing features that are never to return. That's not an app I find especially useful. In the end, whatever you call this "upgrade," great features and design elements that benefitted from years of developer thought and user feedback have been scrapped because someone decided it wasn't necessary. I feel pretty confident in saying that no actual users contacted Evernote and asked them to get rid of the sync button!

Hi. It seems to me that almost all of your posts on the Evernote forums are about how to leave Evernote. Ultimately, it is up to Evernote what to allow in their forums, but from one user to another, I’d like to ask you to stop posting about how to leave the app, because your point has already been made—there are other options out there. If you would like to use the other apps, we wish you the best of luck with them. The information you are posting seems genuinely helpful for other information workers, but please post about other apps in other forums. Thanks.

I doubt there is anything nefarious going on here. Unfortunately, I don’t know the thread or posts we are discussing, but it should be noted that many of us users are automatically given administrative permissions, and posts are automatically promoted, so at least some of the behavior (moderation and promotion) may be attributable to something else. Staff are around and will moderate things according to the forum guidelines, but this is generally only tangentially related to any criticisms of the app. If you have criticism and post it according to the rules, it’ll be fine (in my experience).

Hi. DEVONthink is a pretty impressive app. However, I think each of us has all kinds of workflow peculiarities, priorities, and so forth. There probably isn't a concise, satisfactory answer to your question. The best thing is probably to go to the DEVONthink forums, read up, and give it a spin. Personally, I've been using both apps side by side for over a decade now, so you may also find yourself in a situation where it isn't an either / or decision. Evernote's latest update and development direction has convinced me to greatly reduce the amount of time I spend in Evernote, but it seems unlikely that I will ever be able to commit completely to one app or another.

I am sorry to hear about the poor experience that danio72 had. It is an Apple only product, which enables it to take full advantage of the OS to offer all kinds of wonderful features that Evernote will probably never have. On the other hand, Evernote is quite rare to be platform agnostic. I think that DEVONthink's sync is finicky at times (perhaps because it relies on iCloud or Dropbox to sync through the cloud), and I have tried to minimize my reliance on mobile apps with it, so if you are heavily invested in working through a mobile app, you'll want to experiment a lot with your workflow before purchasing a license. In contrast, I don't remember when I last had a problem with syncing Evernote. As for DEVONthink's OCR, I believe that is done with ABBY, which ought to be the same company doing Evernote's, though my data on Evernote might be out-of-date. I've been OK with the OCR (Japanese/English), but it is helpful to know that it doesn't work well for everyone. Again, Evernote shines here, with OCR of not only PDFs, but images (and handwriting) as well. Despite my best efforts to stick with one or the other, I've been using both for about a decade now. My usage varies from time to time, but with Evernote's recent update, I've shifted about 90% of my work to DEVONthink. There are certainly pros and cons, but in the end, I think of the two as apples and oranges, even if they overlap in many ways. They simply do different things with some significant differences in philosophy, priorities, and execution. One example would be security/privacy, which both apps value, but implement in a totally different manner. The encryption is effortless in DEVONthink (everything is encrypted and that's that...searching works, everything is accessible, and you just don't have to think about security, because everything is always secure without effort). At this point, I don't have time for shenanigans from any app developer, so it's nothing personal, but if an app is going to try and steal my time it gets deleted. I spend my time elsewhere, even if there are features I miss. Whatever workflow folks pick, I highly recommend thinking about how you are spending your time, and if you find that you ware wasting it or not enjoying it, then move on to something else. If any developers are reading this, I recommend you think of the app like the TV show 24--Jack wouldn't have had even seconds to spare swiping through that irritating reboot of the new app on iOS, running the gauntlet of new feature introductions, and then finally having to figure out the new interface (inexplicably missing some key features). In the fantasy world of 24, it'd always boot up fast, work immediately, work reliably, have all the features he needs (not added in after the detonation), and help him get stuff done at a frantic pace. If this was the new version 10, we'd all be on board

I can’t predict the future, but if past performance is any indication of future success, then Devonthink ought to be fine, because it has been around a lot longer than Evernote (as an app since at least 2004 (2002 for the company)). As for data portability, it is probably the most robust app on the market: if you “index” files, they are never actually put into the app, so there is no need to leave—you just stop using it if you want. If you “import” files, they are also quite easy to export. Amazingly well done, with smooth rollouts of updates (in my experience) and I don’t remember if it has lost a feature in the last decade—it has definitely gained some along with a solid iOS app. I hope EN “recovers” as well, but I am afraid that this rollout is probably seen as a “success,” so there isn’t any recovery to do. Onwards and upwards. This is probably the shape of things to come. The good news is that the principles seem to have remained in place, so data portability will be a priority, and I think we can reasonably expect to be able to export in multiple formats at some point. And, they are certainly continuing to innovate. As for Evernote’s longevity, prognosticating isn’t my strong suit, but I think they at least seem to have a solid performance record and a clear path forward, so that puts them ahead of most competitors, especially their cross-platform rivals.

Hi. I don't know that the post can be made editable by anyone else. At least, not by me. Sorry.

Hi. Evernote keeps a copy of your notes on your computer’s hard drive, so while it is true that ultimately the server version is the ”official” one, it is not the only one. Dropbox, iCloud, etc. work a similar way. If there is a problem, Evernote also records note histories (I assume this remains in v10), so you can revert to earlier versions of a note. Exporting as .html is one option, .enex is another. At least, those options used to exist, and will probably be added again. Competitors make some pretty slick import options (for the legacy app), so I’ve found it almost effortless to move everything out of Evernote. Markdown is wonderful, but something quite different than what Evernote is doing. The comparioson only works well if you primarily use text. The more you use other formats, the more useful Evernote is. If you are only using text, Evernote probably seems like it has a lot of unnecessary features!

Hmm. Must be user error somewhere along the way. Weird. Perhaps renaming will help. Thanks for the advice.

Thanks. I did completely get rid of version 10, as far as I can tell (after scouring my drive, searches for hidden files and so forth turned up nothing, so it should have been gone). Did I miss something? Maybe. That would be user error on my part. However, my conclusion to shift the bulk of my work elsewhere seems justified, given the circumstances, and Evernote's official stance that the legacy app is only available for a limited time, and they will probably not address any bugs (recommendations will be to upgrade).

Good point. Thanks for stressing this. I think they are likely to have some sort of export, because they are talking about different formats, but when will that come? And, is only being able to select 50 notes at a time a feature or a "missing to be added later" element? I don't know, and I would recommend not waiting to find out. As always, it's good practice to keep daily backups (Time Machine on Mac) and to keep an exported version of your notes on hand (.enex and/or .html). But, as you said, the exports may not be possible for long, so tonight might be a good night to get it done. By the way, Apple Notes (infamously) doesn't even offer a way out of their application. If you are on Mac, I'd recommend something with better portability as an alternative place to put your notes.

Quoting myself a couple of times to clarify what is happening. I "upgraded," found the experience of the current version 10 incompatible with my workflow, downgraded, and have now encountered an irritating bug in the "new" legacy version (7.4.1). Although the new version is disappointing (for me), I had been pleased to see that they kept a legacy version around in order to help us make the transition, but that was before I discovered the legacy app was going to impact my workflow as well. It's nothing critical, but given the circumstances, not really worth enduring, especially when other apps that accomplish the same task are just a click away for me. This will be the second day in a row (since "upgrading") of me shifting the bulk of my daily work to another app (insert name of Evernote competitor here). I won't say I'm leaving, because that would be silly. I've been around for 12 years now, and it's something I've always found more or less useful (depending on the state of the service, which fluctuates over time). I don't really have much patience for a legacy app that is already losing functionality, though, or a new app that is missing a lot of important features, not to mention many that have been abandoned completely. It's difficult to see how the path Evernote is on right now will produce a better experience (at least for me), so I have little incentive to keep trudging along with the legacy app. The developers who have poured so much effort into the app can take some comfort in the fact that I'm probably just an edge case and not representative of the experience the vast majority of users are having. Let's hope that the app improves and that this re-invigorates the brand, even if they may have to slough off a few of us edge cases to get there.

I'm not sure if this is user error or some cosmic event interfering, but printing a website page to save as a PDF in Evernote on the Mac (the way I have generally saved PDFs to Evernote for years now) stopped working when I downgraded to the legacy version (7.14.1 from the Evernote website). It goes through the process and looks OK, but when I go to view it in Evernote, even after forcing a sync (something we can no longer do in the new version), nothing appears. I can still accomplish this task on a different Mac computer that never got upgraded / downgraded (version 7.14 before the legacy release). In other words, the legacy version is now broken in new ways since the release of 10. I assume this is a bug. I assume it will be fixed at some point. But, my concern is that the legacy app will increasingly become incompatible with me and my workflow as time goes on, forcing me onto 10, which is entirely incompatible with my workflow. This plan (?) seems like a terrible one for releasing a new version (however nice the new stuff is), and a terrible idea if you want to retain your existing customers, especially the ones who love the product and pay for it. My warning to fellow users would be to try to avoid the downgrading scenario, if possible, because you may encounter unpleasant problems. I could revert to an even earlier version of the app if I scrounge around on the Internet looking for it, but I think I won't waste the time (I've got more to say on this in another thread).

Thanks so much for this wonderful contribution to the community! It's nice to hear what the CEO thinks about the business. It's also good to know that it is inspiring and hopeful for other users. One of the nice things about using Evernote is that there is a massive user base, so they generally tend to get lots of input from folks about the app. The downside, though, is that I seem to have a very different workflow from them. Perhaps I am simply an edge case. I prefer to think that the problem is more that there are casual and beginning users who will not encounter a lot of the issues that someone who uses the app all day every day will encounter, kind of like the difference between driving a car a few times a month and driving one every day--that missing cup holder, the roof pillar that slightly obstructs your view, the lack of cruise control, or the lack of AI assistance (traffic jam automated driving) become serious irritations / deal breakers. It's not that it is poorly designed or that they didn't put enough effort into it. Rather, it's that they failed to adequately account for and address the needs of the users who are going to be spending the most amount of time with the product. Personally, I think that innovating for these years (to some degree) will have a dramatic and quite beneficial effect down the line. For example, ordinary users may not feel the need for better encryption options, but no one is going to feel put out if their data is more secure, especially if it is effortless. Competitors have noticed this (Apple gives seamless encryption at the individual note level with slight effort and DEVONthink encrypts the entire database all of the time with 0 effort). I need the encryption, though, and for one reason or another (2013 should have been a turning point for the entire tech sector, but some companies continue to design for a pre-2013 world), EN's competitors have placed an emphasis on security and confidentiality that aligns with mine. That commitment to certain design principles may not be easy to quantify, but it results in some really impressive feats of engineering that are deeply appreciated. Of course, they are restricted to the Appleverse, and that at least partly explains their capabilities, but that's one of the reasons few people try to have a single unified code base / experience across multiple operating systems--they design for the environments in which users find themselves. Concretely speaking, there is a lot to like in what the CEO says, and I can't fault him for the opinions he has expressed, but in most of them I can see why my needs aren't being addressed. That's OK. It is, after all, Evernote's product to do with what they please. But, in its current state (even with some of the missing features returned), it is difficult for me to see a way forward at the moment. I'll have to rethink a lot of my workflow. I suspect many users are in a similar predicament, even if we aren't among those huge numbers that were surveyed.

Talking about leaving is fine. I think talking about alternatives is fine as well, to a point. I've mentioned both things in other threads--indeed, tonight I am having to work with competitor because we just lost local notebooks. That's quite a blow. The confidential stuff has to go somewhere, and apparently "remembering everything important" at Evernote doesn't account for stuff I am ethically and sometimes legally obligated to keep encrypted and/or out of the cloud (other folks' servers). Encrypted notebooks, please... I was responding specifically to calling out one of the Evernote staff for a "soulless" response, getting into the weeds about how to use other alternative apps (not so much in this thread, but in others), and the attempts to bring legal action or instigate a mass migration away from Evernote. I don't think the *Evernote* forums are a place for doing these things. I don't remember calling anything negative, per se. Rather, I am trying to focus the thread on the original topic and to encourage everyone to maintain a certain level of respect for one another and the developers. As you said, most folks are doing fine. We all slip once in a while, but as much as possible, I'd like to keep the thread helpful (for us and the developers) and on topic.

The customer support staff (Jeffrey) are people too, and I don’t think we should be demonizing them for doing their job. The same is true for the developers. This is their livelihood, and I’m sure they are doing their best to develop a quality product, so threatening legal action or trying to organize a mass cancelation of subscriptions (their income) is quite unfair. I think we ought to voice our opinions (I have in many places in this forum), even (especially?) if they are at odds with Evernote’s, but we should try our best to do it in a mutually respectful manner. This is an app we all care about, right? We want to see it succeed and be better. I agree that there are problems eith the current release (enumerated elsewhere), but I think arguing the merits of our position is a better strategy than threats to leave or using the *Evernote* forums to promote alternatives. Let’s try and keep it positive, and give Evernote something they can work with