Why is Evernote so slow lately?

[steve257 1]

Anyone know why Evernote is so slow lately? Takes forever for notes to load and/or create new notes.

Have even gone back to version 6.5.4.4720 ... but hasn't solved the problem. Thanks.

[bitkahuna 0]

yes it is pretty much UNUSABLE for me also. i've uninstalled, reinstalled, blown away the entire folder between, done everything i can think of.

my laptop has 32gb ram, m.2 drive (blazing fast) and a xeon processor. when i click on a note in the list, it take 10+ seconds for it to appear in the pane to view it. this is RIDICULOUS.

if i could migrate my notes to google keep i would...

 

 

[antoinebugleboy 2]

I'm on Windows 10 Home, and my Evernote was unusable as well. After a lot of cussing and teeth gnashing, disabling Windows Defender "Control Flow Guar" (CFG) finally made Evernote work like it always should have. I don't know if this is a fault on Microsoft's end or Evernote's, but someone messed up.

[Peakdecibel 0]

Just noticing I'm not the only one who stares at the evernote screen watching the little circle spinning and being able to do nothing. I am way to invested in time and information stored in evernote for it to not work. I really don't want to have to do all this firewall stuff if possible. I've been dealing with this way over a year and very frustrating. Evernote technicians please please fix your program.

[gazumped 11,639]

Hi.  There are lots of suggestions in the forums,  from restarting / rebuilding indexes / reinstalling right up to getting an SSD for storage.  Have you tried anything other than downgrading?

In general,  Evernote has its moments,  but it shouldn't be unusably slow.  I'm on Win 10 with 40,000+ notes and Evernote is still working for me.  Which version of Windows do you run,  and how many notes do you have?

Please be aware that this is a (mainly) user-supported forum where you'll get the benefit(!) of my,  and other experienced users' suggestions.   Evernote staff do read these posts,  but they're not support - just developers looking for new ideas and generic issues with various applications .  I'd suggest you,  and anyone else with this issue,  contact the Support team on https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action if you're a paying customer,  Twitter - https://twitter.com/evernotehelps if not.  Evernote can judge how much of a problem this is and -maybe- do something about it,  but only if we tell 'em...

 

[TK0047 422]

It has been slower than usual for me lately. The 6.8 update was horrible, I was getting the UNRESPONSIVE and the freezing numerous times a day. I am back to 6.7 and it seems a little slower than normal.

12,147 notes.

I have done uninstall/reinstall. Have not tried the re-indexing however. It is ok at this time but if it gets worse, I will revisit this thread.

[fjgirante 1]

On 2/13/2018 at 6:25 PM, bitkahuna said:

yes it is pretty much UNUSABLE for me also. i've uninstalled, reinstalled, blown away the entire folder between, done everything i can think of.

my laptop has 32gb ram, m.2 drive (blazing fast) and a xeon processor. when i click on a note in the list, it take 10+ seconds for it to appear in the pane to view it. this is RIDICULOUS.

if i could migrate my notes to google keep i would...

 

 

Yes. True. I have the same issue. I simply cannot use Web version... simply doesn't work, and the desktop version is horrible.

I'm a long time user. I was a premium...

Now, I almost stop using it.

Shame on you!  

[mkanakos 11]

You would be surprised how much reindexing helps. I would say that is should be an annual task; especially if you have alot of note deletes or are making wholesale changes to tags and tag hierarchy. 

[ej8899 175]

29,000 notes, database just over 10gb, running on an i7, 16gb ram, 512gb hdd and no performance issues at all for me.  I'm in Evernote pretty much all day as a central work hub for tasks, projects, social media planning, RSS feed reader, receipt tracking, daily journal and much more - currently quite please with the performance of it.  (version 6.9.7)

[bitkahuna 0]

ej8899 nice. my only issue is clicking on a notebook or note in list often takes many seconds to display the note list or note, but not always. I've uninstalled and reinstalled entirely and it didn't help. I think I tried reindexing before and that didn't help either.

[gazumped 11,639]

1 hour ago, bitkahuna said:

ej8899 nice. my only issue is clicking on a notebook or note in list often takes many seconds to display the note list or note, but not always. I've uninstalled and reinstalled entirely and it didn't help. I think I tried reindexing before and that didn't help either.

Hi.  Have you tried using Task Manager to monitor what's going on when you click on a note?  I'd suggest you do a full houseclean on your hard drive - get rid of unwanted files, defrag the disk and run any virus/ malware scans you favor.  Not saying these delays aren't Evernote,  but if you get rule out anything else that might be contributing to slow performance,  you can then concentrate on fixing the problem.

[lagavulin1 0]

On 2/20/2018 at 9:29 PM, mkanakos said:

You would be surprised how much reindexing helps. I would say that is should be an annual task; especially if you have alot of note deletes or are making wholesale changes to tags and tag hierarchy. 

Is there a help topic on Re indexing please ?  I'm "not responding" too often.

Thank You

[antoinebugleboy 2]

5 minutes ago, lagavulin1 said:

Is there a help topic on Re indexing please ?  I'm "not responding" too often.

Thank You

For what it's worth, I tried re-indexing, too, and it didn't resolve the issue: This did:

 

[gazumped 11,639]

1 hour ago, antoinebugleboy said:

For what it's worth, I tried re-indexing, too, and it didn't resolve the issue: This did:

 

There's some ongoing discussion on the indicated thread as to whether switching CFG off is a good idea - or a very bad one.  I've just done it,  regardless - been suffering from some serious slowness recently,  and (a year or so since this was first posted) I'm pretty much ready to try anything...  Thanks all,  for the tip,  anyways.

[CalS 5,277]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

There's some ongoing discussion on the indicated thread as to whether switching CFG off is a good idea - or a very bad one.  I've just done it,  regardless - been suffering from some serious slowness recently,  and (a year or so since this was first posted) I'm pretty much ready to try anything...  Thanks all,  for the tip,  anyways.

Turn off as much of the native MS stuff as you can, anyway, that which doesn't add much value to you.  Search indexing and telemetry are two that can consume some cycles, or anything that wants to "phone home".  My view anyway.

[gazumped 11,639]

40 minutes ago, CalS said:

Turn off as much of the native MS stuff as you can, anyway, that which doesn't add much value to you.  Search indexing and telemetry are two that can consume some cycles, or anything that wants to "phone home".  My view anyway.

Totally agree.  Was mildly shocked recently to see how many times Windows management applications popped up in my Task Manager to hog CPU or disk activity for a short(ish) while and then go away again.  For some reason Dell Inspiron laptops like my main device aren't compatible with some recent updates,  and mine attempted,  and then failed,  to update about 60 times before I found out how to switch updates off.  (I spent some considerable time trying to find out how to fix the problem first too!)

First cautious impression of the CFG thing is - looking good.  Evernote hasn't been away with the fairies at any time yet,  but it's early days.  I only restarted a few hours ago.

[CalS 5,277]

25 minutes ago, gazumped said:

First cautious impression of the CFG thing is - looking good.  Evernote hasn't been away with the fairies at any time yet,  but it's early days.  I only restarted a few hours ago.

Excellent.  I'm assuming you are using Windows Defender, hence the CFG?  Or is this CFG issues with another anti virus?

[s2sailor 2,161]

6 hours ago, gazumped said:

been suffering from some serious slowness recently,  and (a year or so since this was first posted) I'm pretty much ready to try anything... 

@gazumped have you jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet?  IIRC you were still using HDDs.  Even if the change to SSD doesn't fix the Evernote slow down, you won't regret the change.  Best PC upgrade I've ever made.

[gazumped 11,639]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

have you jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet?

I partly joined the club - my laptop has a hybrid startup disk,  but bulk storage is definitely the spinning kind.  Have been debating a desktop vs a laptop recently - in my 'other' life I go in for editing big RAW files in Lightroom and the laptop has a maxed out 8GB memory,  plenty of (spinning) disk space - plus another 30GB of Readyboost memory.  I really need something with a bit more grunt to it - hence the debate.  Whichever footprint I opt for it will have SSD storage though!

[CalS 5,277]

52 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Whichever footprint I opt for it will have SSD storage though!

A most excellent move.

[s2sailor 2,161]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

in my 'other' life I go in for editing big RAW files in Lightroom and the laptop has a maxed out 8GB memory,

I do a lot of Lightroom raw file editing as well and my Macbook i5 CPU w/8 GB memory and SSD does ok.  There is a slight pause before loading the image to full resolution but it is acceptable but I'm only dealing with 25MB file sizes.  If I ever upgrade to one of the newer cameras with 50MB file sizes, then it will be laptop upgrade time for me.

[antoinebugleboy 2]

12 hours ago, Peakdecibel said:

Just noticing I'm not the only one who stares at the evernote screen watching the little circle spinning and being able to do nothing. I am way to invested in time and information stored in evernote for it to not work. I really don't want to have to do all this firewall stuff if possible. I've been dealing with this way over a year and very frustrating. Evernote technicians please please fix your program.

Try this. It resolved all slowdown issues for me:

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/110116-en-extremely-slow-after-win-10-fall-creators-update-solved/

[ej8899 175]

12 hours ago, Peakdecibel said:

Just noticing I'm not the only one who stares at the evernote screen watching the little circle spinning and being able to do nothing. I am way to invested in time and information stored in evernote for it to not work. I really don't want to have to do all this firewall stuff if possible. I've been dealing with this way over a year and very frustrating. Evernote technicians please please fix your program.

Do you have any details about your setup and Evernote usage?   I'm just short of 49,000 notes - some just a bit of text, others with PDF's (multiple in some cases), images, a variety of web site clips, and on - really, a fair bit of 'everything' I can throw at it -- I've got no speed problems at all on any of my systems.  My full database is about 18gb (one laptop runs 'full sync')   Two of the machines I'm on regularly have sync on demand enabled - one ends up at 10gb the other at 2gb.

[gazumped 11,639]

Just sharing the love around - check out 

...for similar content

[gazumped 11,639]

On 3/28/2019 at 5:53 PM, fjgirante said:

Yes. True. I have the same issue. I simply cannot use Web version... simply doesn't work, and the desktop version is horrible.

I'm a long time user. I was a premium...

Now, I almost stop using it.

Shame on you!  

You're responding to a post that was made more than a year ago.  There have been several new Windows versions since.  Which are you using,  and why exactly is the desktop version so 'horrible'?

[CalS 5,277]

On 3/28/2019 at 10:53 AM, fjgirante said:

Yes. True. I have the same issue. I simply cannot use Web version... simply doesn't work, and the desktop version is horrible.

I'm a long time user. I was a premium...

Now, I almost stop using it.

Shame on you!  

I find that the version called Current under Settings is pretty snappy,  You could give it a go.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Some new experience from „Evernote slow on a Windows machine“:

My EN was significantly slowing in the last days. This included ScanSnapManager and OCR, which is not part of Evernote. Other applications like Office 2016 were doing fine. Hmmmm .... 👎

When I looked up my resources, I found that on my 512GB Samsung SSD only 30GB were left unused. Reason for this were several Windows rollback files, most likely resulting from the automatic Windows updates that were installed during the last weeks. I have then used the Windows Tools for cleaning up my disk, both normal and admin / system files level. Hint: Only do this when Windows is running and you do not need the fallback. Create a new reset point right after cleaning out.

Done ... appr. 100GB free space on the SSD ... EN and ScanSnap still slow. Hmmmm ... 👎

So I decided to restart the PC next (which I had done on a frequent basis before cleaning out the disk, this alone won’t help).

Done ... Evernote is flying again, scanning /OCR happens in a fraction of the time before. 👍

From the forum I think that EN (as any program) gains a lot when installed on a SSD. There it seems to react with slowing earlier than other applications when disk space gets restricted. 30GB looks like a mountain of free space to us that had hard disks measured in MB when we started with computers. But it already creates stress on modern systems.

The free space check, cleaning up the disk plus moving enough GB of files to other storages and restarting the computer should be done before claiming low performance.

[gazumped 11,639]

6 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

30GB looks like a mountain of free space to us that had hard disks measured in MB when we started with computers

You had hard disks?  I started out with one of these...  

[PinkElephant 8,046]

5.25“ - at least you could unintentionally sit on them without reading „bendgate“ the next day.

My first one had one of these, and a breathtaking 20MB HDD. That was high end, and I had to explain why I needed that much space no one could fill. 

😎

[jefito 5,589]

BTW, it used to be the case that SSDs that were close to being filled to capacity would slow down. Generally speaking, that's not the case any more (see e.g., https://superuser.com/questions/1344650/how-much-slower-do-ssds-get-as-they-fill-up-or-age). So clearing up space and then rebooting doesn't mean that having a nearly full SSD is the cause of the slowdown, because it could equally have been the reboot that fixed tings. Next time, try the reboot first to see whether that's the fix; if it doesn't help, then try clearing space off the SSD. That should pinpoint the problem a little more accurately.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Since I am old school, I usually shut down my Windows machine once every day, when I stop using it. This is a complete restart. Having a SSD as system drive, ramping up is so fast it is nothing to work around any longer.

From here I take the razor of Mr.Ockham, and make the assumption, that freeing space on my SSD made my EN jump again. I planted the SSD in 2014 into my HP desktop bought in 2012, core i7, 16GB of RAM, 2TB HDD, Win 10 etc. So maybe it is still one of those that need some unused cells to perform.

I just observed that liberating the space used up by Windows through several updates / restore points only took effect when I rebooted the desktop. Whatever it was, it needed the complete rebuilding of the OS operation by the boot process. 

Because so many other users are claiming a slow EN operation, I just wanted to put a possible solution into the basket. If it helps anybody to restore performance, fine for me. And it was not EN itself that froze things down. So reinstalling won’t help.

[jefito 5,589]

59 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Since I am old school, I usually shut down my Windows machine once every day, when I stop using it. This is a complete restart. Having a SSD as system drive, ramping up is so fast it is nothing to work around any longer.

From here I take the razor of Mr.Ockham, and make the assumption, that freeing space on my SSD made my EN jump again. I planted the SSD in 2014 into my HP desktop bought in 2012, core i7, 16GB of RAM, 2TB HDD, Win 10 etc. So maybe it is still one of those that need some unused cells to perform.

Well, OK then -- you didn't mention your daily reboot so sure, that makes a difference in the way .I'd look at the scenario  Aside from that, you do have an older SSD, and it sounds likely that the old warnings about SSD drives slowing down when nearly full does apply in your case (this article is from 2013: https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/). I'm not sure where the line between older and newer drives (i.e., where the warnings don't apply) is, though. In any case, these are all things to take note of if Evernote is slow when running on SSD, for sure.

[s2sailor 2,161]

Another data point, note sure if relevant or not but I have a several year old SSD in my even older work laptop that has been complaining about low space for a few weeks now, like real low, I need to delete files before continuing low.  I haven't set aside the time to do a proper clean up, but through all of this Evernote performance has been unchanged for me, pretty zippy.

[MatS14 19]

On 2/13/2018 at 11:33 AM, TK0047 said:

It has been slower than usual for me lately. The 6.8 update was horrible, I was getting the UNRESPONSIVE and the freezing numerous times a day. I am back to 6.7 and it seems a little slower than normal.

12,147 notes.

Maybe It is because of how many notes you keep on it. I don't have very many and mine runs pretty well.

12,147 notes is a lot.

[ej8899 175]

52,838 notes as of today for me (database is over 20gb)... Everything from PDF's, photos, other images, scans, basic text notes, etc.   I have no performance problems on any of my laptops (that a reboot doesn't solve - and usually the performance of the entire computer is an issue - not limited to EN).  

[MatS14 19]

Hmm, well, sometimes people like @TK0047 can have some other apps that take up storage on their computer, so that could lag Evernote.

[TK0047 422]

On 4/4/2019 at 1:37 PM, MatS14 said:

Maybe It is because of how many notes you keep on it. I don't have very many and mine runs pretty well.

12,147 notes is a lot.

Now I am up to 20K notes and depending on the computer speed varies significantly. I installed on a desktop the other week since my laptop was not working, and it was really fast on that computer. I wouldn't complain about that speed for sure and that was a decent computer as far as processor and RAM goes.

But the key to Evernote is to "remember everything" right so that means if you use it like your brain's extension you will eventually get to high number of notes, thus, it should be a fairly quick system no matter the size of the database or the number of notes in my opinion.

[MatS14 19]

ok

[daveatcafe@gmail.com 0]

slow slow slow.  on both of my computers.   and i have cleaned the computer.  uninstalled re-installed evernote.  i am perplexed i had to upgrade my subscription of InfoSelect that i used for 20 years that can handle any amount of data even whole books with hundreds of pages per file.  my evernote can't handle 15 pages of text!!!!!???? what to do??  it use to be fast.  

please help!!!!

[gazumped 11,639]

3 minutes ago, daveatcafe@gmail.com said:

slow slow slow.  on both of my computers.   and i have cleaned the computer.  uninstalled re-installed evernote.  i am perplexed i had to upgrade my subscription of InfoSelect that i used for 20 years that can handle any amount of data even whole books with hundreds of pages per file.  my evernote can't handle 15 pages of text!!!!!???? what to do??  it use to be fast.  

please help!!!!

Hi.  Let's see. OS? Device? Number of Notes?  Size of Database?  Index rebuilt?  Database rebuilt?

[PinkElephant 8,046]

From my experience: Evernote is not the culprit...

Windows updates made it slow down in my case, and filled my SSD with sedimented data left over after the update was through.

What helped: Clean up the start up disk (in most cases “c:“ ) Using the explorer, right click on „c:“, properties, clean up as admin including the system files, then empty the trash, and restart windows.

[JohnLongney 83]

@PinkElephant

what you refer to as sedimented data is what Windows 10 retains for a while in case of necessity to downgrade. 

If your  computer is choked by these  relatively few GB you have a serious Windows system problem, which is just not enough spare disk space.

Cleaning out thse system leftovers in Win 10 has never made any of my PC's faster, it just freed space. System debris removed through system control never ever ends in the waste bin. No need to restart Windows either. 

Badly compiled software can make itself felt in two ways, one is choking RAM and the other is inefficient use of processor capabilities. 

No, it is not Microsoft's failure that Evernote with its sizeable database lingers on as 32bit application. 

The only other software I know of using an sqlite database is Adobe Lightroom Classic which some years ago went 64bit, apart from other speed improvements such as automatic database checks and tidying up. 

Evernote is essentially a piece of software cramped by its original concept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Maybe ...

My EN got snailed down when Windows left so much update residue on my system disk that only 30GB were left. Among this were several system fallback points, probably created between Update runs. I could free nearly 100GB by getting rid of this stuff (no need to fallback, things were running, but slooooow). And I know pretty well what all this is good for, and whether I need it or not.

Cleaning up helped, but only after a complete restart the system and Apps were back to normal.

Evernote performed after this little operation as before, which is fast throughout any practical use like search, retrieval, scanning, tagging etc. Maybe the software concept is a little dated - room for improvement, but for me without a real negative impact.

P.S. I would not call an i7-Desktop with 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, 2TB HDD and a 21TB NAS as data server „restricted“. But the Windows updates this year made my day ...

[s2sailor 2,161]

I'm a little uncertain of this Windows effect as well.  My work system recently start throwing low storage warnings.  I only had about 1GB available and Evernote performance had not noticeably changed for me.  That said, I haven't had any performance issues since I installed an SSD several years ago (I guess I'm one of the lucky ones), so maybe if you are suffering from this problem clearing storage maybe helps ... don't know, just pointing out that it wasn't an issue for me.

[CalS 5,277]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

I'm a little uncertain of this Windows effect as well.  My work system recently start throwing low storage warnings.  I only had about 1GB available and Evernote performance had not noticeably changed for me.  That said, I haven't had any performance issues since I installed an SSD several years ago (I guess I'm one of the lucky ones), so maybe if you are suffering from this problem clearing storage maybe helps ... don't know, just pointing out that it wasn't an issue for me.

Ditto, SSD solved any speed issues I had and being one of the lucky ones.  Removing Windows backup files only gave me more disk space, no performance 

You can improve overall machine performance by turning off as many of the Microsoft background processes as possible , particularly any of the indexing and telemetry "stuff".  Using task manager can be eye opening as to what is actually consuming CPU and disk.

[jefito 5,589]

34 minutes ago, CalS said:

You can improve overall machine performance by turning off as many of the Microsoft background processes as possible

Or any unnecessary background processes as possible. Recently I found a Western Digital service running in the background comsuing 90+% CPU with a 1.5GB working set. Killed performance on my machine, until I was able to get hold of it and disable the service. Never seen that in an MS application/service, at least not for a long time, unless you could Visual Studio builds that can launch many compiles at a time and will take up as much CPU as you can give it; usually it's fairly polite, but once in awhile it takes over everything. But not like that WD service...

[JohnLongney 83]

@PinkElephant

are you really well versed with the Windows OS? To kill a memory hog (I have known Evernote to behave like that) you do not need to reboot. Killing the task in task manager should do. Network attached systems do not speed up Windows, also have no impact on Windows updates/upgrades. Your Win PC configuration seems sound for most tasks, but an office kind of application such as Evernote should display an existing 20 odd page document page  smoothly even on a lesser grade machine. 

Regardless of configuration, Evernote on Windows can use RAM in excess, with little load on CPU. Evernote as software is very lightweight on diskspace but the sqlite database, though enormously popular, is a major drawback as it increases in size. My own Evernote notes are down to  6,000 notes with few pdf and image files embedded and yet the database is just short of 3 GB. 

The Adobe Lightroom Classic equivalent works well because all data is stored locally and other than settings made to image plus reference to storage place of image plus thumb view of image basically nothing more  is contained in the actual  database. For a Lightroom catalogue (database) to reach 3 GB it needs minimum an extra 100,000 pics not just a meagre 6,000. 

I think the one person at Evernote who has finally understood where things have gone wrong with Evernote is Mr. Small, the new CEO. However, he will need able and dedicated staff and no doubt, Evernote lost valuable time in the past 3 - 4 years.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

About being familiar with WIndows, who can judge this on his own behalf correctly ?

My first computer ran on a 8088 processor and on MS-DOS from a 5,25“ 💾 , then I worked my way trough 3.11, 95, 98, XP, skipped Vista, took 7, skipped 8 & 8.1, and am now running Win10 Home on a native desktop, plus Win 10 Pro in a VM on my Mac. So I think that I am usually not to far off when I need to guess what is going on inside of the box.

But sometimes it just boils down to try and error.

So I do not say „do this and that, and the sun will shine again“. It sort of surprised me that after the full brakes were applied on my PC by the clogging of the SSD, the reanimation effect only took place after restarting the OS. I think there was more in the background than just a lack of disk space. But I did not analyze, I just wanted to get performance restored and return to productively use my PC again.

My personal experience with Win10 was surprisingly good until last autumn. Since then, the Windows updates were all more or less problematic or buggy. I don’t know why, but somehow they did not get it right pretty often with the first, sometimes even not with the second try.

And yes, Evernote could need an overhaul for sure. For how it is set up, it is doing bravely well. Still you can feel the limitations everywhere. But this is another story ...

[gazumped 11,639]

11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

My personal experience with Win10 was surprisingly good until last autumn.

I can match the general experience - my original IBM PC didn't have a hard drive,  and a TSR (terminate and stay resident) app - 'PE Personal Editor' - was the only way to change from the command screen to a notepad and save commentary.  I've been happy with Windows since... but in recent months my two laptops are no longer adequate to receive updates,  the whole process has become a nightmare - and I'm writing this on a now Linux-OS'd laptop which is running faster and more stably than it has for years.

I can't (yet) give up Windows totally because Evernote Web still has training wheels compared to the installed Windows app,  and I'm a heavy user of Lightroom (image editing) which does not have a Linux alternative.  I'm now getting into Darktable (see what they did there?) which is a Linux 'equivalent' which seems to parallel LR in everything up to and including an almost impenetrable early learning curve!  It's looking hopeful,  and if only Evernote would move on either linux or the web client I could make the switch...

Tip:  if you're a Windows user,  try Linux Mint.  It's a close UI 'clone'.  There are probably others out there,  but this is the one I found.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Hello, I am on my way to Apple-only. I have realized that I do an ever increasing part of my day to day on my iPad Pro.

So I finally decided to get a MacBook Pro a few weeks ago. I am still learning about the OS, bells and handles etc. What I can say, and what for me was the final tipping point: The integration over devices and programs is a dream, everything simply matches. And Apple support makes up for a lot of the price difference - just last week I had a phone chat with support, solving my problem on a 4 year old iphone 6S+, no Apple care or anything. Free call, free diagnosis, top !

On my PC, I had a local installation of Lightroom 6. I am a burst fotografer , taking a lot of pictures when traveling, on family and charity events, and much less in between. So I decided against the adobe Cloud abo, it just does not make itself paid.

To replace LR on the Mac, I have tried AfterShot 3, but was not convinced. When I raised my questions, customer support gave the answer (or better, did not give it, so game over). I have now installed Graphic Converter 10, that for a one-time-purchase does what LR did as well. What I like: Fotos are sorted in ordinary folders, and for each foto, a XMB-file with the modifications is written. So I am not locked into the program.

It is huge, but offers so many options that you have to find your way into it. So far, I like what I got. One can try it for free as long as you wish with all functions - it just has a growing delay when starting up before you can work. I made my purchase, so no delay any longer. The workflow is not so obvious as in LR. But the Batch processing tools are a class in themselves.

One example: You start with a browser, to view the pics. Folders are set up by date, for example. Now it shows JPEG and RAW together. But there is an option down in one of the menus, that sorts the content of a folder into subfolders, based on file type. Applied - one folder for JPEG, one for RAWs inside of the dated folder. Then you go to the JPEGs and weed them out, ranking and moving or straight deleting. And then there is another option in the menus - delete all RAWs that have no corresponding JPEG any longer under the common date-folder above. Very clever - but you have to stitch it together yourself.