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(Archived) Fire your engineering dept...


hm_stanley

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This upgrade is such epic fail, that it baffles the mind. The engineering dept. should be fired. Who thought it would be genius to create a half-baked, completely neutered application that essentially destroyed one of the few bright free-ware apps that actually did something without bombarding you to 1) register 2) pay or 3) served ads. It was functional, did what it did well, and frankly effective... Did any of these questions get raised in those engineering scrum meetings? was the customer present during those scrum meetings? methinks that the 4th grade 5th period sunnyvale art class stopped by, did some mock-ups and Evernote ran with the brillance that can only come from a 4th graders mind...

good luck with adoption... i for one have deleted and moved on.. no need to retro-upgrade, jez, what a waste of time.

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This upgrade is such epic fail, that it baffles the mind. The engineering dept. should be fired. Who thought it would be genius to create a half-baked, completely neutered application that essentially destroyed one of the few bright free-ware apps that actually did something without bombarding you to 1) register 2) pay or 3) served ads. It was functional, did what it did well, and frankly effective... Did any of these questions get raised in those engineering scrum meetings? was the customer present during those scrum meetings? methinks that the 4th grade 5th period sunnyvale art class stopped by, did some mock-ups and Evernote ran with the brillance that can only come from a 4th graders mind...

good luck with adoption... i for one have deleted and moved on.. no need to retro-upgrade, jez, what a waste of time.

Hi. Welcome to the forums.

The original version is available for download on the Evernote site if you want it (http://evernote.com/skitch/), and Evernote has sent the team back to the drawing board. So, you have a company that listens to its customers, provides a temporary solution to their problems (keeping the earlier version available), and takes customer feedback into consideration for the next update. But, you want to fire the team, and you are dumping the product?

Well, that is certainly your prerogative, but personally, I'm pretty keen on companies that engage in a dialogue with their customers, accept feedback, and try to respond with improvements that meet the needs of users.

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Well, that is certainly your prerogative, but personally, I'm pretty keen on companies that engage in a dialogue with their customers, accept feedback, and try to respond with improvements that meet the needs of users.

I know the Skitch release has apparently been an "epic fail". (I rather hate that phrase but guess it's applicable.) I can't speak to it since I don't use it on Mac. But I'm regularly lambasted for standing up for EN. I have my issues with EN but I usually don't air them b/c they get publicly flogged enough as it is. I'm here to help others use EN. Plus, I use EN in an unsupported scenario. (Truecrypted container.) Anyhoo, when users publicly "flounce", I always think it's funny. Don't get me wrong. EN is not for everyone. So if it doesn't meet your needs, one should find an app that does & move on. I understand that & I'm sure EN understands that. But all this "I was going to go premium until..." or "I'm going to cancel my premium account unless you..." stuff is funny to me. And this recent clip from "The Good Wife" exemplifies my thoughts... It's a rather long clip, but the part that is pertinent to my post starts at 3:32.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LH8EDpNKY

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you people have no sense of humor OR PERSPECTIVE!!.. do you think for a second that their application mistakes should result in a firing? no. I merely was trolling and as a result, it appears to have worked.

As an aside, I'm sure they will resolve their problems and I'm sure that the new 2.0 app will at some pt reflect the current set of functionality seen on the 1.0.12 app. Until then, it's fail and frankly a shame that someone internally, generally NOT the engineering folks, make decisions based on a vision that mirrors in some ways that "4th grader from the sunnyvale art class."

Clearly, no one talked to us..

A simple pre-beta of 2.0 would have illicit such "horrific" feedback, that quite possibly, Evernote would have changed direction and either 1) not released 2.0 or 2) released it under the banner of "beta" and tried to minimize potential negative feedback. You don't have very many "do-overs" in application development, you just don't have that much good will. How much of their good will has eroded with this release? Who knows, but there are a bunch of people on this and many other application boards who will now "pause" before adopting future evernote apps, just as a result of this silly release.

Could this have cost Evernote potentially millions of dollars? - and before you say, "no... it's a picture editing tool.. how could they lose millions on a simple editing tool.." well, good will applies to brand, and now it's bruised FOREVER in comments on dozens of community boards.

Bottom line, I think this release was foolish and frankly not representative of a neat technology company such as them.. I had expected more from that team.

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I merely was trolling and as a result, it appears to have worked.

Actually, no, you're not very good at trolling.

Could this have cost Evernote potentially millions of dollars? - and before you say, "no... it's a picture editing tool.. how could they lose millions on a simple editing tool.." well, good will applies to brand, and now it's bruised FOREVER in comments on dozens of community boards.

Seriously doubtful it cost them millions of dollars.

Bottom line, I think this release was foolish and frankly not representative of a neat technology company such as them.. I had expected more from that team.

As I said, I don't use Skitch on Mac. But like I said, it does sound like an "epic fail". (I used that term b/c it seemed fitting with your OP.)

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you people have no sense of humor OR PERSPECTIVE!!.. do you think for a second that their application mistakes should result in a firing? no. I merely was trolling and as a result, it appears to have worked.

Although, like BurgerNFries, I dislike the phrase "epic fail", I think it applies to your attempt to be funny.

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having used the 1.0 version for a while, it was easily one of the best utilities for a Mac, I was quite disappointed with the 2.0 version. Now it's probable that I don't adapt to change as easily as others, regardless I try to keep all my software current. For me, I found the 2.0 version unusable and switched to an earlier version which was 1.0.7 whereas I was already on 1.0.12.

Looking in this thread I see that EN has since made 1.0.12 available and so that is what I use. I await a re-release of 2.0 that is as easy to use as the 1.0 product was and while I consider EN integration a step backwards, I find EN and the fact that my Firefox says the plugin is not compatible and doesn't therefore work to be a problem, I will continue to attempt to upgrade as newer releases become available.

kudos to EN for recognizing that changes need to be made. Long-standing companies that fail to adapt create opportunities for others to take their place.

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I have to agree with some of the complaints here about Skitch 2.0. It took me awhile to figure out how to use it, and I guess I'm still trying to get a hang of it. I do find the new version to be less usable and a step backwards. Although new users will learn how to use it the "2.0 way", those of us who are 1.0 users find it clunky.

Frankly, I think Evernote should have posted some "how to" videos for us 1.0 users. I liked the fact that 2.0 allows me to edit arrows, but it took me a while to figure out that it sync automatically with my Evernote account..and to be honest, I haven't figured out yet which notebook it syncs to!

Some other annoyances that I have are the following:

- Creating a small rectangle/square makes it snap to a grid. I don't want it to snap to grid when moving it.

- I haven't figured out how to change the font to a different kind like before.

- I haven't found out how to remove the white border color when adding text. I

- Where is paint bucket tool for filling the color of a rectangle or shading it? I used that tool all the time before in 1.0

Hopefully these issues will be fixed in newer versions.

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