When Ian Small took over the helm of Evernote almost exactly two years ago, he promised the many millions of users of the multi-platform note-taking program that he would listen to them in the future. The company wants to concentrate on the long-awaited further development of the program instead of selling paper notebooks, backpacks and socks with the well-known elephant logo. The next Evernote should be a quantum leap, filled with everything that the loyal fans could wish for.

A few weeks ago came the iOS version , which caused little enthusiasm, finally released the new Evernote for macOS and Windows. Confidently, they skipped a few version numbers and followed the 7.x version with the version 10.

Users threaten to churn There has been an uproar since then in the Evernote user forum and on other relevant websites. Longstanding, paying power users, even those from the closest circle of sympathizers, threaten to emigrate, for the second time after the sudden price increase and the restriction of the free offer of 2016.

It is not uncommon for long-time users of an application to have problems with changes in the design and operation of a new version. Just think of the sometimes ongoing criticism of Microsoft’s switch to the ribbon menu ribbons with Office 2007.

In the case of Evernote, however, it is not just about the changes to the user interface and operation that the switch to a new substructure brought with it. It is based on the Electron framework and is intended to standardize the user experience and operation on all platforms and simplify program maintenance. The entire surface has become noticeably sluggish, many shortcuts no longer work. Instead of a free selection of native fonts, only four usable fonts plus two decorative fonts are available. Some actions now require several mouse clicks; there is neither an options menu with setting options nor context menus, notebooks can no longer be color-coded and much more.

deleted without replacement Much worse is that a number of functions have completely disappeared, not only in the free version, but also for paid users. Functions on which at least those who use Evernote not only for simple shopping lists or recipes, but also partially organize their entire professional or private life with the program have built their workflow.

In Evernote 10, for example, no longer monitor hard drive folders whose contents (e.g. scanned receipts) are automatically transferred to notes. The option to save notebooks locally and not sync them with cloud storage (hosted by Google by the way) has disappeared, as has the option to search in shared notebooks and export them in HTML format.

Unripe bananas It seems that for some reason the company has been forced to put the new Evernote version in half-finished beta to publish. The manufacturer promises to submit any missing functions soon.

Perhaps, based on the volume of the protests, they wanted to see which functions are most important to users. This also fits in with a remark made by Phil Libin, the previous CEO of Evernote, 2013 during an interview with the Los Angeles Times and which his interview partner at the time, Chris O’Brien, later recalled: “Many users only use 5% of the functions of Evernote; stupidly it is each other 5%. If it were the same, we could just throw the other 30% out. “.

C’t editor Stefan Wischner has been 30 years specialist journalist and is enthusiastic about all kinds of productivity and application software.

It is significant that Evernote support has answered many user complaints with the suggestion, but an old one Install the “Legacy” version (for Windows this is the 6th 25) and possibly parallel to Evernote 10 to use. The company also makes this recommendation on its own website, along with the appropriate download link.

OneNote-Deja vu Somehow this development is very similar to what happened around Microsoft’s competitor OneNote: The desktop version, formerly part of Microsoft Office up to 2016 version, 2013 was initially supplemented by a tablet-friendly and simplified UWP version, with the goal of completely replacing the “Legacy” OneNote. After many user complaints about the significantly reduced functionality of the new OneNote, Microsoft postponed the announced final end for the Office version. If you want, you can still download OneNote 2016 (!) And use it alternatively or in parallel – without active support and further development.

The main difference to Evernote: There is no direct financing model behind OneNote. The program is free (both the UWP version and OneNote 2014 if you only save notes in the cloud) and only requires a also free Microsoft account.

OneNote wants to bind users to the Microsoft ecosystem and, above all, to open up the interesting education market in the USA. Evernote, on the other hand, is directly dependent on its users and their subscription payments (and as it has been said: so far, mainly on its investors).

In the reaction to user displeasure, both are again very similar. Both conscientiously assure that they are working hard to close the “feature gap” and to quickly submit the missing functions of the previous versions. Microsoft has been promising this for years and is only very slowly and inadequately fulfilling this promise. Evernote should take this much more seriously and be much faster in its own interest.

(swi)