On the other hand, evernote had painted itself in the corner with the plethora of native apps without a common codebase: new features (even the crappy “enterprise” ones) had stopped coming.
Now Evernote is releasing new features every couple of months and while it still not feature complete when compared with the old iOS or Mac native apps at least it has chance to compete.
I switched to DEVONthink earlier this year but keep my Evernote account just to see how things are going. I want them to succeed, the key is wether the churn of existing users can be offset by new users.
I don't want new features. I do want cross platform, native apps (Linux, MacOS and Android for me). I've yet to find a good solution that "just works".
I just came to this thread and searched for Evernote specifically to upvote or add this. Evernote evolved from a perfect extension of my private memory available rapidly and anywhere I needed it into a bloated collaboration suite. I would be surprised if any customer asked for it. I canceled the service but will gladly pay twice as much for an Evernote Classic that gets back to basics and does those well.
Well the "collaboration suite" features are now slowly being phased out or at least dont receive that much attention. Their new calendar integration and task management features are small steps but I think they are intriguing at least.
I think the downsides associated with having a common codebase are grossly underestimated. It inevitably leads to compromises for which a native UX would have been superior. Speed, layouts, native idioms, and continuity come to mind. Sure it’s a lot to ask for a truly native Android app to keep parity with a truly native Mac desktop app, but compared with a React Native codebase, the experience is sublime and the fussy platform shims aren’t needed.
> I think the downsides associated with having a common codebase are grossly underestimated.
I don't.
Event loops, for example, work completely differently on macOS, iOS, Android, Windows and the Web. You will abstract across them eventually and you will get that abstraction wrong unless you are a programming god--at which point you might as well just use a cross-platform system to start.
The cross-platform guys have big companies with lots of money and programmers solving problems that you haven't even dreamed of. If you're releasing on multiple platforms, you will not win.
I guess you need to decide what indicator are you trying to optimize: user experience vs cost effectiveness. Evernote's CEO decided for the latter and I believe he's right betting the company on the Electron based clients. This is also understandably infuriating existing users as they lose the biggest feature that was the native feeling of EN. Other features are being slowly added along with some new ones that are arguably useful, but snappiness will not come back.
My point of view is if you can't deliver new features you become the incumbent and new player will replicate those features with lower cost or better execution. Also, the ball is moving: newer apps are heavy on features like backlinking that could not be delivered with the glacial release cycles of the "good old Evernote".
I understand that EN is still the best on being the ultimate digital repository, but as a "digital brain" the market has slightly moved towards the PKM space (see Obsidian, Notion, and so on).
Now Evernote is releasing new features every couple of months and while it still not feature complete when compared with the old iOS or Mac native apps at least it has chance to compete.
I switched to DEVONthink earlier this year but keep my Evernote account just to see how things are going. I want them to succeed, the key is wether the churn of existing users can be offset by new users.