Sorry, Evernote has not improved.
The old days of Evernote
Evernote was my first note taking app, and after 9-year subscription, I was determined to settle on Apple Notes for at least 3 years. Even though I tried to come back to Evernote, I was always back to Apple Notes.
No doubt Evernote has the longest experience of building features dedicated to note taking, in response to the changes in more than a decade like productivity enhancement and the introduction of AI.
The downfall of the service lies in the deterioration of app performance especially after they rewrote the software so badly that it was once unusable.
The company has been acquired by Bending Spoons, which still adopts the electron app while trying to make changes gradually, claims every month on social media that they did have more than hundred of improvements.
The fact is, the app is still slow compared to many other apps although it is no longer unusable. When scrolling through the note content, it takes a second to load. No good. The app can suddenly log you out.
How about if you contact the customer service? Many said there are no replies. How about if you share this experience on the website like Reddit or Evernote discussion forum? They said, “I have no problems of this”, “Evernote has improved”, “Stop ranting”…
Now they introduce ads on the mobile version! Or you paid as low as £2.49/week to remove ads and unlock other features.
Introducing: ads on Evernote
While I do respect Bending Spoons’ ways of doing, Evernote can be improved by starting with reliable app performance like what most other apps are doing, but not saying something like “working hard to reduce the waiting time from 2 seconds to 1 second and benefiting up to 90% of users from 45%”. Please stop the marketing tricks and turn to address individual customers’ issues through customer services. If you design productivity apps to improve productivity, please demonstrate that you are effectively fixing important issues one by one, but not that “you have been doing a thousand of things”, which is definitely a wrong kind of productivity and management.
Apple Notes and other productivity apps may not be as best or comprehensive as Evernote, but they at least have a basic, acceptable app performance, which is the foundation of every app. I am still tempted by better apps, but always woken to realise that smooth app performance and my needs do matter. I can always use more than 1 app when Apple Notes does not have some features I want, because no apps are perfect. I am now using Apple Notes mainly, together with Pages, iA Writer, Reminders and Calendar.
