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(Archived) new evernote


sallyab

Idea

Why did you change the Evernote design? I hate - HATE - the black. Who decided it should be black? A 20 year-old probably, a designer who ahs never used it, who has tatoos. And 2 minutes ago I updated and you've put a trash/delete option in - Thank goodness, but I can't believe that wasn't there before. Why redesign somehting that works perfectly well? I ahte cahnge for the sake of change. Why all these notepad covers? Why not just grid or list? It was perfect before. Why the complication? I really HATE it and will look for another option, though I don't think there is one. I LOVED my Evernote and am so sad that it has been messed up. I want light and bright for my ideas and inspirations not dark and dull. Sadly yours, Sally

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You are sort of the opposite of me. I've got my text notes in Evernote and everything else (PDFs, web clippings, etc.) in Dropbox. My problem is storage space. I used to have a 25 GB Evernote database, but then my Macbook Air ran out of space, so something had to get cut, and it ended up being Evernote. One thing that made this shift to text only possible in Evernote was Automator -- I extracted all of the text from my PDFs (a digital library of books and articles in PDF form) and put that into Evernote. Why? Evernote is the only app I know of on iOS that can search through thousands of notes. Everything else fails, and/or has very, very limited search capabilities. For a researcher, Evernote is truly revolutionary with its capabilities on mobile.

Still, I am very uncomfortable having my notes in just one app, especially when working offline for long periods. Just in case, I have everything in nvAlt (nvAlt > Dropbox > Notesy). I export my Evernote database every week or so and update my nvAlt database. It is a pain, but I have had to use it on occasion. I also have another copy of some notes in VoodooPad. Yes, I like redundancy :) The master copy of the text files, though, is Evernote.

I know and I'm very disappointed to lose EN's awesome search capability :( but I don't want to entrust all my notes and collected reference materials to a system whose developers keep forcing it into the opposite direction of what I need. For a while I did what you did and kept everything in both systems, but as time went by and EN stayed on the same path I felt I was just postponing the inevitable. Having everything in plain text at least has the advantage that, if nvALT, PlainText or Notesy disappear, we can still access our notes with some other text editor.

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Actually, I think it is now to the point where the Evernote people don't even know what all "features" they have now. After all, Evernote is truely amazing!

That is why extensive testing by experienced employee testers, then experienced and varied users, is necessary, before changes are moved into production (going GA). And this means correcting those problems identified that were introduced by the change, before going forward.

Flying by the seat of the pants into "production" of a mission critical environment is no longer a reasonable idea.

I was at a major bank, and we had to give that up maybe 15 years ago. Mirrored sites are now required.

The "Personal Computer" is no longer a toy. Change control is now needed.

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"ever111, as you were told you were resistant to change, you must ahve had a non-forum conversation. Would you share how you got to communicate with the EN team."

It was in another thread - like maybe the Windows 4.6 beta 2 by a staff member.

(This was already answered by somebody else previously, but in case you wanted to hear it from me) ;-)

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By "trust," though, I was talking about trusting the developers to do what was best for the app, even if certain things don't fit my particular use case.

Unfortunately I lost that trust when I saw the Mac and iOS versions being developed in one direction and the Windows and Android versions in another. Not only do I struggle to understand why the same software is apparently being developed on different platforms for completely different types of users, but tailoring Mac and iOS towards casual users flies in the face of statistics showing that Apple is gaining share in the corporate market. Either EN has extensive data showing that its users are trending in the opposite direction of other Apple users or they don't care. Personally I think the latter is more likely because it just doesn't make sense to me.

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@JMichael: What's Evernote Sketch? Or are you referring to Skitch?

Skitch was a brilliant idea, and very powerful. Which presumably is why Evernote bought the company and the product.

Skitch 2 is an unmitigated disaster - similar problems to Evernote 5. They have removed so much stuff that it is no longer the real Skitch. And it doesn't do what it used to be able to do. And people hate it - especially me.

So I have "backgraded" my Skitch too, on both my Macs and my iPad.

So now I have three apps on my iPad which I have to leave out of the upgrading system - there is no way that I know of to prevent them from trying to update: Zite, Skitch, and Evernote.

And Skitch and Evernote on my Macs.

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Quotes from the Evernote Designers:

"We impact on millions of peoples lives we can't make changes willy nilly . . ."

"Simpler but do more, without removing anything . . ."

Both say exactly what you would like/expect to hear. How is it the outcome/reality is nearly the opposite?

Exactly! They say the right thing!

But actions STILL speak louder than words!

EN Ver 5 (both Mac and iPad) is the opposite of these statements by Evernote designers.

What is so incredible is that they just previously made the same mistake with Evernote Skitch v2.

Evernote doesn't seem to have learned anything from the Skitch mistake. :(

[EDIT: correct Skitch typo]

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I'd recommend everyone watch the Designer Chat videos..

In particular a couple of minutes from these two guys (click the photo to play the relevant clip) -

jeff.png We impact on millions of peoples lives we can't make changes willy nilly . . .

head.pngSimpler but do more, without removing anything . . .

Both say exactly what you would like/expect to hear. How is it the outcome/reality is nearly the opposite?

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Still, I am very uncomfortable having my notes in just one app, especially when working offline for long periods. Just in case, I have everything in nvAlt (nvAlt > Dropbox > Notesy). I export my Evernote database every week or so and update my nvAlt database. It is a pain, but I have had to use it on occasion. I also have another copy of some notes in VoodooPad. Yes, I like redundancy :) The master copy of the text files, though, is Evernote.

. . .

I like the Mac app, but I am afraid it doesn't suit my particular workflow very well, so I use Windows via Parallels

GM, you have stated in other threads that you "trust" Evernote, but your actions speak volumes.

The fact that you don't feel like you can rely upon Evernote to keep all your notes (with one simple backup like Time Machine) comes through loud and clear.

Also, even though you keep saying how "great" EN Mac is, the fact that you find it necessary to run EN Win seems to indicate that EN Mac just isn't that "great".

If there is anything that should worry the Evernote designers (above and beyond the large number of users who object to the EN Mac v5), it is that a long time, very loyal, user like GM finds it necessary to use EN Win to get his job done. Keep in mind that with GM's "simplistic" EN organizational approach (no Tags, one NB) his demands on Evernote are really relatively small (with the possible exception of having a large number of Notes, which at some point we will all have) as compared to most others who have a number of both Notebooks and Tags.

Well, I don't even "trust" myself to keep things backed up, so I have backups of my backups, and my paranoia about my data isn't necessarily an Evernote thing -- I recommend everyone use Time Machine for all of their data. It's just a good idea to take advantage of it: it's inexpensive (the external drive), easy to use (just plug it in), and covers all of your data (not just Evernote).

By "trust," though, I was talking about trusting the developers to do what was best for the app, even if certain things don't fit my particular use case.

I wouldn't call my use case "simplistic," though. I prefer minimalistic :) I would like to think that I am the easiest case of all: I don't need notebooks, I don't need tags, and I don't need rich text. I just use plain text notes. However, it turns out that I am kind of an edge case after all. LOL. The irony is kind of funny if you think about it. The view (Vertical List View), the sorts (easy switching among them as well), and navigation (navigation buttons in iOS, note link creation in iOS, and editable saved searches) that are tailored to meet the needs of someone like me are unavailable on the devices I use the most!

I'll eventually convince the developers to come around to my way of thinking and add some of the features I want to see, but the lack of these things doesn't mean that the app is poorly designed. It just means it doesn't fit my particular use case as well as it could.

@ Mike

- I guess I've been using Evernote on Windows since fall 2008, though I think I started with the iPod in the summer of 2008. I never really stopped, but switched to mainly using Mac from spring 2011.

I know and I'm very disappointed to lose EN's awesome search capability :( but I don't want to entrust all my notes and collected reference materials to a system whose developers keep forcing it into the opposite direction of what I need. For a while I did what you did and kept everything in both systems, but as time went by and EN stayed on the same path I felt I was just postponing the inevitable. Having everything in plain text at least has the advantage that, if nvALT, PlainText or Notesy disappear, we can still access our notes with some other text editor.

I think Evernote service / platform is doing well, but at least for my use case, out of all the interfaces available, the Windows one fits the best. I am sure other people would prefer the Mac one for their use cases. It's just a matter of preference, I think.

As a general rule, I like to keep my options open. If you only work in plain text, moving things out of Evernote (or any app) is very easy to do (HTML > .txt), and you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to access the content on any device, at any time, well into the future. The smart thing that Evernote does is to use XHTML as the coding basis, and because of this, we can have everything indexed by Spotlight on the Mac.

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@JMichael As you know I have made this point to GM previously..... (I don't think he's going to crack)

@Grumpy I know you have recently switched to the EN Windows client. For how long did you previously use the MAC EN as your preferred client? (years?)

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Still, I am very uncomfortable having my notes in just one app, especially when working offline for long periods. Just in case, I have everything in nvAlt (nvAlt > Dropbox > Notesy). I export my Evernote database every week or so and update my nvAlt database. It is a pain, but I have had to use it on occasion. I also have another copy of some notes in VoodooPad. Yes, I like redundancy :) The master copy of the text files, though, is Evernote.

. . .

I like the Mac app, but I am afraid it doesn't suit my particular workflow very well, so I use Windows via Parallels

GM, you have stated in other threads that you "trust" Evernote, but your actions speak volumes.

The fact that you don't feel like you can rely upon Evernote to keep all your notes (with one simple backup like Time Machine) comes through loud and clear.

Also, even though you keep saying how "great" EN Mac is, the fact that you find it necessary to run EN Win seems to indicate that EN Mac just isn't that "great".

If there is anything that should worry the Evernote designers (above and beyond the large number of users who object to the EN Mac v5), it is that a long time, very loyal, user like GM finds it necessary to use EN Win to get his job done. Keep in mind that with GM's "simplistic" EN organizational approach (no Tags, one NB) his demands on Evernote are really relatively small (with the possible exception of having a large number of Notes, which at some point we will all have) as compared to most others who have a number of both Notebooks and Tags.

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thanks Ninotschka and GrumpyMonkey - I'm not very confident with Markdown and AppleScript/Automator so I'm still hoping EN will eventually bring functionality back to 5 [or whatever version] before Apple kills 3.3 -- it is an appalling position to be in where you are encouraged to become on reliant on technology only then to have much of it removed...

it is amusing to think I used to rave to people what a great service EN is...

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It depends on how you use Evernote. Personally, I've split my notes into text and web clippings. I transferred the text notes to nvALT, synced to Dropbox as plain text files so they're accessible and editable on my iPhone and iPad, and either made PDFs from the web clippings or saved them in Pocket. My portfolio (web articles) is saved as HTML in Notebooks for Mac and iOS. Right now I'm only keeping my ScanSnap scans (bills, documents etc) in Evernote because I have duplicates filed on my Mac, so if I end up abandoning EN I still have the PDFs. EN just makes organising and finding them easier.

You are sort of the opposite of me. I've got my text notes in Evernote and everything else (PDFs, web clippings, etc.) in Dropbox. My problem is storage space. I used to have a 25 GB Evernote database, but then my Macbook Air ran out of space, so something had to get cut, and it ended up being Evernote. One thing that made this shift to text only possible in Evernote was Automator -- I extracted all of the text from my PDFs (a digital library of books and articles in PDF form) and put that into Evernote. Why? Evernote is the only app I know of on iOS that can search through thousands of notes. Everything else fails, and/or has very, very limited search capabilities. For a researcher, Evernote is truly revolutionary with its capabilities on mobile.

Still, I am very uncomfortable having my notes in just one app, especially when working offline for long periods. Just in case, I have everything in nvAlt (nvAlt > Dropbox > Notesy). I export my Evernote database every week or so and update my nvAlt database. It is a pain, but I have had to use it on occasion. I also have another copy of some notes in VoodooPad. Yes, I like redundancy :) The master copy of the text files, though, is Evernote.

I'm still keeping an eye on EN because technically it's so much more powerful than these other apps, but after the recent updates on Mac and iOS I've lost confidence that an app that had issues, but that I was hoping would in time be perfected, will not instead be "developed" into something that's unusable for me. I've converted from Windows to Mac because it made my workflow easier and I'm not going to abandon a platform that otherwise works for me because of one single app, so I decided to move my stuff out of EN before I have so much that it will become impossible to move. I don't mind change if change means improvement, but I do mind formatting and sync bugs, basic features being removed or made more complicated and slow crash prone software. Especially if the same software seems to run better and is more power user friendly on other platforms.

I like the Mac app, but I am afraid it doesn't suit my particular workflow very well, so I use Windows via Parallels. The cool thing is that the Evernote Windows app opens in a Window just like every other Mac app, and it even sits right there in your dock. It's a pretty nice system, and so far it almost perfectly meets my needs. Here is a screenshot.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/e0533319-72d3-443d-a506-299cdc4b791e/69092ec3e95fad10495698bf3329fdbd

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Does anyone know of a similar service that would import EN notes? I have heard of Yojimbo [?spelling?] but never investigated it because did what I wanted... and 3.3 still does but I know that will get broken by an OS update and then there will be no place to go

It depends on how you use Evernote. Personally, I've split my notes into text and web clippings. I transferred the text notes to nvALT, synced to Dropbox as plain text files so they're accessible and editable on my iPhone and iPad, and either made PDFs from the web clippings or saved them in Pocket. My portfolio (web articles) is saved as HTML in Notebooks for Mac and iOS. Right now I'm only keeping my ScanSnap scans (bills, documents etc) in Evernote because I have duplicates filed on my Mac, so if I end up abandoning EN I still have the PDFs. EN just makes organising and finding them easier.

I'm still keeping an eye on EN because technically it's so much more powerful than these other apps, but after the recent updates on Mac and iOS I've lost confidence that an app that had issues, but that I was hoping would in time be perfected, will not instead be "developed" into something that's unusable for me. I've converted from Windows to Mac because it made my workflow easier and I'm not going to abandon a platform that otherwise works for me because of one single app, so I decided to move my stuff out of EN before I have so much that it will become impossible to move. I don't mind change if change means improvement, but I do mind formatting and sync bugs, basic features being removed or made more complicated and slow crash prone software. Especially if the same software seems to run better and is more power user friendly on other platforms.

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Maybe it is 'change' but not 'progress'? A similar but different example was with trying to make a booking on the UK YHA website, which had me tearing my hair out in frustration. I then discovered that lots of people had trouble and that this was a new design and the previous version of it ahd been better in many ways - all obviously functional and user-friendly points, some of which I hadn't missed because I ddn't know they existed before. I ahve a lot of experiences where I'm basically told that I'm wrong / a fool / non-typical / unreasonable. I think that if the user has a problem with something that should be useable easily by someone with average intelligence but no experience or knowledge, then that person should be listened to. It seems that this is not the case with EN (I haven't had the time to look at the other thread posted here yet...)

Glad I'm not alone!

ever111, as you were told you were resistant to change, you must ahve had a non-forum conversation. Would you share how you got to communicate with the EN team?

The forums regularly see posts by employees. Here is the one referring to ever111 as resistant to change. dlu often posts quite detailed and reasoned responses to users, even if we don't always agree :)

http://discussion.ev..._60#entry175201

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I'm looking forward to Gabe Campodonico, Evernote Chief Designer, explaining why he thinks they haven't removed features (as clearly stated 20 mins into his recent developer video).

What I would like to see is a commitment to return all missing features; not necessarily as they were originally but there somewhere in an enhanced or partially hidden form (like search note counts).

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Maybe it is 'change' but not 'progress'? A similar but different example was with trying to make a booking on the UK YHA website, which had me tearing my hair out in frustration. I then discovered that lots of people had trouble and that this was a new design and the previous version of it ahd been better in many ways - all obviously functional and user-friendly points, some of which I hadn't missed because I ddn't know they existed before. I ahve a lot of experiences where I'm basically told that I'm wrong / a fool / non-typical / unreasonable. I think that if the user has a problem with something that should be useable easily by someone with average intelligence but no experience or knowledge, then that person should be listened to. It seems that this is not the case with EN (I haven't had the time to look at the other thread posted here yet...)

Glad I'm not alone!

ever111, as you were told you were resistant to change, you must ahve had a non-forum conversation. Would you share how you got to communicate with the EN team?

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It's true that us humans don't like change, even for the better. And I can recall a number of instances where software has been changed, and I have hated it at first, but then grown to accept it and appreciate why it was altered.

But this is simply NOT one of those situations, as on a simple, scientific, empirical assessment, EN 5.0 is bad, terrible even. Removing basic functions and features is not "change" in the accepted meaning of the word in this context. No more that me persuading my credit card company to issue a chargeback on all my EN payments for the past two years could be considered as simply "change".

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Yes they've ruined it and they seem content on ignoring the complaints - I guess old style 'premium' paying users aren't the market they and their investors are after anymore.

Does anyone know of a similar service that would import EN notes? I have heard of Yojimbo [?spelling?] but never investigated it because did what I wanted... and 3.3 still does but I know that will get broken by an OS update and then there will be no place to go

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Totally with you on this sallyab. There are posts all over the forum about this. God know why the EN team have messed-up such a great program. And even the "update" is full of bugs and folks are having endless issues.

Not only have they removed "features"; but even basic, basic functionality has now been stripped-away. Why, why why?

I'm sticking with 3.3.0; but I fear for the day when I will need to upgrade to a new OSX version, and I will be forced into the EN 2.0 nightmare.

All I can suggest is that we all keep posting to these forums to draw there attention to it.

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