(Archived) When Can We Expect a 64-bit Version of Evernote

[jxpx777 0]

I am trying to get all of my apps to 64-bit so that I can start booting OS X into full 64-bit. Just want to know what Evernote will be compiled as a 64-bit application.

[jefito 5,589]

It's not clear to me why the same logic would necessarily apply to Mac as Windows. Different OSes. Not that I've seen much discussion about any 64-bit Windows client in recent memory, if at all. I found one post on a Google search. For what it's worth, I write and run 32-bit Windows applications, and they work fine under Win/64. They're GIS-related, and can have a lot of data associated with them (I've been working with data sets containing 10's of millions of 3D points, plus associated metadata). It's also not clear to me (or to some of the posters here) what benefit it would have to Evernote in particular. Hence my question.

Nevertheless, this is a user forum, and you're welcome to post any relevant links or other information that might make the case for Evernote's dev folks. Evernote staff do read all posts.

[ZZZ 135]

Forum post of the decade.

 

Flattery will not stop me from wanting 128-bit. 

 

[jefito 5,589]

The decade being the one between 2001 and 2010??

[Jackolicious 808]

Forum post of the decade.

[ZZZ 135]

Jackolicious, any idea when we'll see 128-bit?  In 2009 64-bit would have been exciting, but now it's so yesterday.

[Jackolicious 808]

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/40658-evernote-for-mac-530-beta-1/

[Jackolicious 808]

I would try our latest beta....

[sergiomiranda 0]

Great to hear that Jack!
Since you mentioned it, I've seen some activity on the Chromium project that tells me that Chrome should be 64bit on Mac soon too.

[Jackolicious 808]

Apple is always keen on getting their developers to support the latest and greatest. And yes, in general, yes, 64-bit is a good idea. However:

- we still support 10.6 so ARC is not available to us

- we won't get any performance enhancement by going 64-bit

 

I won't do a technical deep dive, but again, you are right and we are excited to be going 64-bit

[glawrie 23]

One more bit of background information.  This time direct from Apple... - here is the headline and first sentence of the article.

Should You Recompile Your Software as a 64-Bit Executable?

As a general rule, in OS X v10.7 and later, the answer is probably yes.

 

The article gives a variety of reasons, 

• To take advantage of Automatic Reference Counting (only avail to 64bit apps)
• To avoid performance and memory footprint penalty of requiring OS X to load the 32bit framework stack 
• To allow your compiler to take advantage of registers available on 64bit but not 32 bit Intel chips
• Easier access to OS plug-ins

Hope this helps explain why Apple at least is keen that developers ship 64bit versions of their code... 

[Jackolicious 808]

This is on our immediate radar and will be resolved soon. I can't commit to a version, but know this is actively under development. 

 

Note 1: The transition to 64-bit will not visibly improve performance.

Note 2: There are lots of other large applications that run in 32-bit mode. Chrome. Skype. etc etc

[glawrie 23]

I am not an expert in these things, and my interest in posting is to find out whether there is a reason that Evernote is the only significant app running on my system that is not 64 bit (even 'Reminders' is - and I don't suppose that's done to resolve of memory address limitations).  More generally, as OS X increasingly uses clever behind the scenes technology within the OS itself to get things done, it is useful to know if Evernote client (something that I use a lot) is able to benefit from these improvements.  Apparently there are some advantages to running 64bit in OS X regardless of all this:

 

64-bit system apps provide an overall speed boost due to limitations in the original design of Intel's 32-bit chips; the move to the new 64-bit x64 processor model, originally developed by AMD, solves these issues. Moving to 64-bit apps on other processor families, such as PowerPC, does not yield the same boost, but rather only incurs additional overhead [http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/02/inside_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bits]

 

I suspect that the Windows 32 / 64 bit discussion is cast in a different space - due to specific issues within the Windows system - and this might explain your perspective on this.  This from same 2009 article (though of course I'm sure things have moved on over the last five years, what with Windows 8 and so on):

 

Windows XP/Vista/7 users also benefit from running 64-bit apps, but Windows can only run 64-bit apps using the 64-bit kernel provided with the 64-bit "edition." This prevents mainstream generic PC users from realizing the benefits of the move to 64-bits unless they are equipped to make the full jump, which requires lining up 64-bit kernel drivers for all their hardware. This sticky bit has kept 64-bit adoption on Windows very low despite the significant advantages related to making the move.

[glawrie 23]

I haven't looked, but I imagine this point is extensively covered in the discussions associated with the 64bit version of Evernote for Windows.  I'm sure a quick google would furnish reasons why 64bit apps are developed.  A rummage through the Apple Developer documentation would explain how / why it is useful for Apple computers insofar (and if) this is different to the reasons given for Windows.

[jefito 5,589]

Does anyone know if Evernote has made any progress on this?

Is there a tangible reason why Evernote would need to provide a 64-bit version that you know of?

[glawrie 23]

Does anyone know if Evernote has made any progress on this?

[elldove 0]

See http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/why_do_you_want_a_64-bit_itunes.html for why users tend to misunderstand what 64-bit means for applications. He's one of the developers of Photoshop, an application that could actually benefit from 64-bit (and even then only marginally when working with images requiring under 4gb of ram).

Evernote, on the other hand, has no need for anything resembling 4gb of ram. if it did there would be much bigger concerns than it being 64-bit. I don't know if Evernote has implemented Grand Central Dispatch APIs yet, but that would be much more effective than 64-bit at increasing performance on search.

I would much much prefer real features, improved UI, a more robust API, etc etc than 64-bit for 64-bit sake.

[jbenson2 2,147]

+1 for 64-bit before any new features.

I bet the vast majority of Evernote users would vote for exactly the opposite.

But I'm sure the Evernote team can work on both.

[wolfjo 1]

+1 for 64-bit before any new features.

However, you should be able to boot the machine into the 64-bit kernel and still run Evernote. I think its only the drivers that interact with the kernel that have to be 64-bit.

[engberg 89]

I don't know what's involved in a 64-bit compiled version, although I imagine we'll do this at some point.

The limit on saved searches was raised to 100 a while back.

The total volume of PDFs isn't a significant performance issue ... I think the problem you're referring to is that if you try to search for something that matches a really big PDF first, the search input gets really jerky as it tries to draw that PDF with all of its highlighting. This would happen even if you only had two notes in your account, and is more of a UI/input management issue than a scalability problem. I.e. the heavy processing requirements of the PDF rendering shouldn't choke the ability to type text into the search field.

We try to work through individual performance issues like this as they come up, but feel that we have a pretty good foundation for scalability on the Mac client through our use of Mac's CoreData framework for storage, etc.

[jbenson2 2,147]

According to Evernote, within your account, you may have:

100,000 Notes total

100 Notebooks

10,000 Tags

32 Saved Searches

There is a discussion on Evernote speed at this location. Large PDF's seem to hurt performance. I'd like to see more detailed tutorials on maximizing our local databases.

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=10341&start=0&hilit=speed

I have a similar strong concern about any impact on speed. I've used Evernote for 1 year and my local database has hit the 0.5 gigabyte size with 4,000 notes.

I hope Evernote keeps the needs of the majority of users in mind. Especially when Evernote is hit by demands for more and more exotic capabilities on a daily basis. Here are just a few I have seen in the past couple months (several for the iPhone):

* Full off-line access to hundreds of photos on a Flickr account

* Storage of gigabytes of unread e-books

* Built-in Photoshop editing tools

* Voice-note recordings far exceeding the 10 minute limit

* Built-in Kindle style PDF reader

* Video notes

[lucianofuentes 1]

This also interests me, though my question isn't as specific.

I'm beginning to wonder if my use of Evernote will begin to experience diminishing performance returns. I have 8200+ notes and I worry I might have to start being selective about what I put in there.

Should I continue dumping stuff in there with a belief that hardware/OS improvements will be faster than the growth of my Evernote database? In particular, I'd love to start throwing PDFs in there, but I read on here that PDFs impose a performance hit on the desktop apps.

Any opinions/advice would be appreciated.

[apoto 0]

Great Question. I would love to know that as well.