Fascinating article. I'd also like to point out that Google, who Evernote hopes to compete with as a cross platform editing suite, is working on a smart car. I find THIS ARTICLE to also be relevant, particularly this part:
Now, I'm absolutely certain that Evernote's development team has a bug detection sub-team. What I'm not certain of is why nothing appears to ever be done about major bugs in the system. Seriously, I'm not a Mac user, but eight friggin' years to fix the bulleted lists? That is absolutely inexcusable. I don't know, and I don't care what else Evernote was working on during that time. That is a failure so epic that there is no meme suitable even on 4Chan to describe it.
NAILED IT! And this has been my major frustration with Evernote. The individual developers are saints. Management, on the other hand, needs a stern talking to. And by "stern talking to," I mean "Needs to be fired, escorted to the door by security, and have their personal belongings mailed to them."
As a security professional, I will volunteer my services to assist.
Yes and no. As @WeCanLearnAnything demonstrated, error free programming is eminently possible. And we can't say that "NASA has more resources than Evernote." We don't actually know what resources of its funding NASA commits to software development, but the article she linked to said there were just 276 programmers working on shuttle software in the 1990s. We do know that NASA has been in a funding crisis for the last twenty years, and their computers for most of their equipment are about on a level with an Activision. Heck, they put men on the moon with a slide rule. Up until a few years ago, THEY USED A SINGLE WOMAN TO CHECK THEIR MATH. You've got more computing power in your pocket than was used to land a rover on Mars.
I think a better company to compare Evernote to is Google. Both were modern computer-era startups. Both offer similar features. (Cross platform editing and functionality.) Despite the fact that no feedback to Google is ever acknowledged or apparently listened to, they somehow managed to navigate the treacherous shoals of cross platform computing and be successful.
I'm a rather bluntspoken person. I've coached and/or taught my entire adult life and published two books on coaching youth sports. I currently teach firearm safety, NRA Basic Pistol, and Concealed Carry Handgun for the State of North Carolina. I'm also a certified Krav Maga instructor who teaches self defense.
The things I do are often dangerous and potentially life threatening, so let me say that I take a dim view of people saying it's "too hard" to fix bugs in software. In coaching and teaching we have a maxim that is very straightforward: What you tolerate you encourage. I absolutely don't tolerate unsafe actions on the range or in the studio. I didn't tolerate horseplay on my football field or wrestling mat, either. I don't tolerate these things because I refuse to encourage them.
Evernote has bugs because they tolerate having bugs. Evernote has pissed off users because they tolerate having bugs. Evernote has used up the goodwill they developed by having an awesome product that people wanted to use because they tolerate having bugs!
When I first started posting in these forums I was a polite and friendly guy. I was pretty tolerant. Now, not so much, because I am tired of tolerating Evernote's bugs.When I encounter one that has a significant impact to my workflow, I'm going to make sure it's loudly trumpeted here. If it turns out to be something stupid I'm doing, I'm certain other users will happily point out my blunders, and I will accept that because, hey, I fouled up.
If it's an Evernote problem, they will fix it, listen to my voice get louder and louder, or kick me out of the forums and forever lose me as a potential paying customer. They really have those three options, because I have done runned out of tolerance.
When the core features of a product are not functioning properly, such as bulleted lists and cross-platform editing that does not introduce errors into the text (Like the space stripping bug that took literally five years to fix), one must call into question the priorities of a company that focuses on releasing new features instead of fixing that functionality.
Fonts are, in fact, the core feature of a RTF editor. If you can't manipulate text and choose fonts, styles, and sizes, then you might as well be running emacs on a 286. Why the heck would you pay for an editor that can't do these basic features? THERE ARE 422,000 HITS ON "ANDROID TEXT EDITORS" UNDER "APPS." Evernote is competing with all of them. I assume there are a similar number of iOs apps.
I,too, was a subscriber with a paid Evernote account. I canceled it when I realized the space stripping bug wasn't getting fixed. Why would I pay for a product that doesn't work, especially when the management indicates that their priority is useless non-core features rather than fixing the broken stuff? Seriously, I keep asking, but to date not one single person has come forward to tell me they actually use work chat! Why was it the focus of Evernote's development for years instead of bug fixes?
Seems to me that nearly everyone who runs Evernote uses text editing. Kinda think that making that work right should be the biggest and most important priority of the management team.
Let me close with this: I am both Evernote's harshest critic and biggest fan! As I have mentioned several times, the easiest thing for me to do is walk away. I have chosen, actively made an informed decision, to continue using Evernote. That means my continued presence here doing what I can to make things better. Anyone can bytch. Anyone can complain. I try to make my complaints constructive, even if cranky. Ultimately, I want Evernote to succeed.