Just awful

[PPeterP 8]

I'm shocked that a company that has developed such great products has managed to completely mess us Penultimate. Others have described the many failures of this new design. Please mark me down as another unhappy customer.

I have a important meeting today with a client. I'll be taking those notes on paper!

[JDACE 15]

I'm right there with you on this.  

 

I never write in pretty much any forum but I am seriously annoyed.  Granted I use penultimate for free but you guys definitely figured out a great way to dissuade me from upgrading to a paid account on Evernote.  I can't imagine anyone of consequence will actually read this but I just had to say something.  My business is real estate and I used penultimate for every meeting.  Whether it was with a client, seminar or teaching session I used penultimate all the time.  So my question is...

 

Why fix something that isn't broken?  When I opened my penultimate app today I was greeted with an upgrade.  Now, normally I like upgrades but what the heck guys what were you guys thinking.  I finally had things functioning right and then you go and change the entire thing.  Here are the issues I'm having with the upgrade.  By the way the fact that I can list so many of them sort of says to me that to much was changed to quickly.

1. First and foremost you provided no Instruction on how to use your upgrade.  People do read and I would've read something instead of stumbling about trying to figure it out.  If you did provide it somewhere on the app an easy way to get to it would be nice.
2. All my journals/notebooks were combined into one Notebook. Why wouldn't you simply make all the old notebooks separate notebooks in the new upgrade.
3. I had to go onto Evernote online to separate notebooks back into different notebooks.
4. On the old app several key functions were easily accessible on the main screen but no more.  Now I actually have to take more time to open the menu to select everything from ink color, eraser to the back function or what ever you call that.  I saw the note say that you're creating a cleaner surface.  Guess what I'll sacrifice a cleaner surface for ease of use any day of the week.
5. Expanding the window feature...Very, Very Frustrating!!!  Before I could expand and write while the screen moved easily to the right.  Again you changed a simple and smooth function and made it more complex for some reason.  When I finally got it to expand I figured it may work similarly to the way it did before...nope, wrong again.  I had to tap on a play icon to get it to move.  While the box move I started writing the text but it doesn't write anywhere near as clearly as it did on your old app version.  In fact the text in any sized pen point is almost unreadable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but without instructions how can I tell.  
6. Actually trying to expand the window is very choppy!  The action of spreading fingers aprt to expand in my opinion was much smoother on the old version.
7. The Expanded window won't register my writing!!!  I just tried expanding the window and now it won't even register what I'm writing.
8. Using the eraser on the expanded mode is pointless!  You made it so I can only use the eraser directly on the expanded mode section and not on the smaller writing area above.  The problem with this is that what I need to erase has past by already in the small expanded area.  Granted the old version you had to zoom in and out to erase but at least you could do this with ease.
9. Choppy, Choppy, and more Choppy!  Scrolling up and down is...dare I say it, choppy.
10. Your App is preventing me from organizing my Notebooks in the order I want them.  At least before the last notebook I used was right at the beginning so I could easily get to it.  Now I have to scroll to the bottom to get my most important notebook.
11. Writing Sucks!!!  Writing in your new version is horrible.  Just to make sure I tried writing both in and out of the expanded version.  The text is sloppy and unreadable.  Now don't even tell me it's me because I have a tons of old notes that I wrote that are crisp and clear.
12. The New Version Freezes.  It just froze on me two times in just over ten minutes.

 

I could go on a little bit more but I need to get back to work. The old version wasn't perfect but at least it was smooth and simple.  Technology should make my your day more efficient but you've proven this idea wrong.  This update is not user friendly...in my humble opinion.  By the way an easy to get to help screen with instructions would be nice. 

 

Thank you for your work on the previous app version of Penultimate.  I enjoyed using it thoroughly and found it highly useful.  I will now be going back to using tablet paper and keep my eye out for a good, quality writing app.  I may end up switching away from apple to go to some other type of tablet.