Evernotee: Whats Up?

Posted by dan7000
Oct 25, 2009 at 07:48 PM

Good question, Daly.

Here’s my (totally speculative guess) answer to what’s up with EN. First, though a caveat: I tend to be a pollyana about software that I like - I often miss the warning signs in my hope that developers are just about to fulfill my dreams with a new version. For example, I was still cheering for ADM even after the developers stopped responding to posts or releasing updates.

That said, here is my hopeful response to your query about EN:

1. I frequent the forums, too, and I still see the developers responding daily to tens, if not hundreds, of posts.
2. EN brags about having 1.5 million registered users. How many other info management products can claim those numbers? Plus, they’ve convinced some % of us to cough up $45 / year for the premium version. That is a sustainable revenue model - unlike one-time software sales. All this is to say that I am hopeful that EN it too successful to drop off the face of the earth.
3. In the past 2 months, I think they’ve released about 1 Windows beta update a week (just off the top of my head, I haven’t counted) - and at the same time they’ve released new Android and Pre versions and updates to the iPhone and Blackberry.

All of this makes me hope that while EN developers may be stretched too thin—too many projects going on and not enough time to really nail any of them—they are nowhere close to giving up, and will keep delivering improvements.

As to your specific comments about the direction of 3.5, I must reluctantly agree. Honestly, I think maybe they should scrap it and start over again—it’s that bad. For my use, 3.5 gives almost no benefit that is not present in 3.1 except for in-note search. And it doesn’t give any of the major features users have clamored for (inter-note links, subnotebooks, a decent text editor). And, worst of all, 3.5 has major performance problems that are likely rooted deep in the database architecture and are thus unlikely to be solved. As I believe you have noted, if you are experiencing slow searches with 1,000 notes, how can you be comfortable thinking about adding another 10,000 notes to this product in the next few years? 3.1 was fast. With my 2,500 notes, 3.5 is distressingly slow. This alone makes me think they are getting some really bad advice from an inexperienced software architect who has made a really bad call. Plus, 3.5 is a lot uglier than 31.

They should go back to 3.1 and start from scratch just adding the features people are asking for, without worrying about rewriting the entire chrome and database.