Evernote for iPhone

I mentioned on Twitter that the app I was most disappointed not to find in the initial App Store selection was a good, simple notes app with web-backed storage or synching to the desktop of some sort. A slew of people asked me what was wrong with Evernote. I’d say pretty much everything.

On the left, the editing UI for a new note. That's me typing "This UI is horrible". On the right, that's what you see after saving the note and then opening it to read. Yes, you can two-finger zoom to actually read it, but you can't actually edit the note again. You can't even edit the title or the tags. Useless.

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Comments

Joshua Kaufman says:

*cough* Yojimbo for iPhone please
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

t3knomanser says:

That's kinda embarrassing. Even if we forget about the fact that you can't edit a note, the fact that the text editing area has the first line partially obscured is unforgivable.

Mind you, I wasn't to impressed with Evernote. It isn't low-friction enough for a note taking app. There's too much to think about while organizing your notes.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

jxdxbx says:

Evernote for iPhone has been a HUGE disappointment. I have already stopped using Evernote entirely. (Of course, the desktop app has no export feature.)

It also provides no offline access to your notes. The Evernote forum indicates that they do not intend to add this capability in any useful way (instead, they're going to set up some kind of email gateway). The whole point of a native app is that you shouldn't need to be online to use it!
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

wibbly says:

Yes ... Yojimbo please. Are you listening, Bare Bones?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

hakomi_oz says:

"Slew" deserves a long holiday.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Daltoris says:

Wow. That's.... how did that get out?

I hadn't even noticed because I use Evernote strictly for archiving PDF receipts and the photo-to-OCR capability. Apologies for being one of many (wrong) twitterers suggesting it anyway!
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

evernever says:

Well, in your case in it's current state it's prob not best for you, but for what I use evernote on the desktop the iphone app is good too. I rarely type notes by hand, but rather do a screenshot, or use isight to capture stuff, and if I type something, I don't think I've ever edited a note in the desktop client, so for me it's quite usable, not perfect, but o.k.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

evernever says:

@jxdxbx You know you upload up to 500 MB on a free account each month, and even more on a premium, do you want all of that synced to your phone? Native apps does in no way imply in my opinion that the data has to be available without a network connection, especially when it comes to great amounts of content. After all, would you expect the last.fm app to run without a network connection?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

jcontonio says:

Audio notes also crash the app consistently for me. I don't need all these feature, or a Yojimbo. I just need Apple's damn Notes app to sync with Mail.app notes. And an app for the todos. I just don't get why this isn't there yet.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

bmonzing says:

Thank!!You—I am tired of people praising this app in the app store. I came across these exact issues. The Evernote iPhone app is unusable as a note taking tool. No local notes, either. The web app is just slightly more usable.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

stephen_bolen says:

Yeah, pretty much useless.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

punkassjim says:

Blows my freakin' MIND that MobileMe doesn't sync with Notes.app

And, on a somewhat related note, have you tried looking in the Apple Mail To-Do directory of your MobileMe email account? Looks just as craptastic as it did in .Mac.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Riccardo Mori says:

This app should be called Nevernote. ("Quoth the Raven -- Nevernote!")

Cheers,
Rick
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

jxdxbx says:

@evernever

I should be able to pick at least a subset of notes to locally sync.

Everyone uses these things differently. I just keep a couple of what are basically text files that I'd like to follow me around. For everything else, just the built in camera and del.icio.us are fine.

To me, a local app means local access to as much data as practicable, for speed and battery life issues, as well as for offline access.

If I need to be online, I may as well just use a web app.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

scronide says:

It annoys me quite a bit that it's not just the third-party software that are poorly thrown together jumped-up webpages but even the Apple apps like Weather are completely unusable offline.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

johnsadowskiii says:

Humorous!
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

jxdxbx says:

@sconide

I think there's a difference between apps that need to go online to fetch data all the time, and apps that should just sync up a local cache. Cached weather would be useless.

NNW does this just fine. So does the NY Times app.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

topherpolack says:

If you want notes on your iPhone, try this:
Save Drafts in iPhone's email. Select Cancel, then Save the draft. This will sync to your Mac and, MobileMe.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Emmott says:

Yeah, I leave Evernote to the interesting task of "camera phone snap of a whiteboard -> Evernote -> OCR and searchable". No other usage. How about a Google Notebook iPhone app? That's be sweet.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Kevan Emmott says:

damn personal/family flickr accounts... That ^^^ was me.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

schmelding says:

What frosts me is that the native Notes app doesn't sync with Mail.app. Grrr.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

scronide says:

@jxdxbx: Not so useless to me if I sync in the morning and want to check the weather for the week that afternoon. I find that happens more than I'd expect. The data it'd have to store for each city is miniscule.

Apps like Evernote and NYTimes are useless to me as an iPod touch owner with wireless access limited to home; whereas apps like NetNewsWire were enough to make me switch provider.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

jimwhimpey says:

It is insane that the notes app doesn't sync with MobileMe and Mail. I'm also dying for YoJimbo on the iPhone, I hope it's in development and syncs over MobileMe. Anyone have an inside knowledge? So I can stop looking for a solution and just wait for YoJimbo.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Karl-Franz says:

Of course, you could simply use the iPhone mail to compose and send the note to Evernote and not have to deal with the crappy editor built into the app. Still, you wouldn't be able to read it easily or modify it. But, at least in a pinch, you could search and retrieve your data if you have a wifi connection.

They could also add an option so you can choose which notebooks to keep on the iPhone for offline access.

Yes, there is room for improvement, but that seems to be the case with many of the first round of apps in the iPhone store. I have faith they will get updated once they get some feedback and have more time to work out the kinks.

P.S. I read that some people are using Jott to dictate audio notes and then send them to Evernote once they are converted to text.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

nonprofit_tech says:

I didn't even release you ca write notes and Evernote. I use it for indexed file storage of PDFs, websites, or note clippings. Obviously, I've tagged and categorized; but I've never tried to just write a note. In all honesty, I'd be more likely to Jott and have Jott send to Evernote; since I've already set my account to do so.

It's tagline is Capture, Sync, Find. I don't think it's real purpose is to create notes, as opposed to capture notes or info that was already created in other formats.

That said, I disagree with the guy who states the desktop app is rather bad. I think they've done a good job on the desktop app so far. The UI isn't award winning; but its easy enough to use, clean, and comprehensible—for the most part. Drag & drop works well. I often just drop entire folders of research on it.

I think they added the ability to create a note, but it was probably an after thought, which is why you're suffering.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

rorycberger says:

I hate to pile on, but once you've written your note, good luck getting it to synch. 3 tiny text files have sat in my "pending" folder for days.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

flowb33 says:

I think Karl Franze and nonprofit_tech pretty much sum up the strengths of evernote. Use other apps or services as the inputs and it actually makes a nice omni-present personal database system.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

beerzie boy says:

Ouch. Into the rubbish and back to the drawing board.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

felipesunol says:

I was wondering exactly the same thing a couple of hours ago... I thought it was a given for an App like this, seems I was wrong, what a piece of crap....
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

syff says:

I can't believe this app has been approved by Apple. Was that done like way before they saw the finalised app?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

catcubed says:

Ugh. sorry I was one of the people who tweet suggested this app. I too was just using the photo notes mostly and had yet to read one of my text notes. That is lame.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

marcowitte says:

If you search for a good notes app which also can much more, give things a try.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Yong Hwee says:

Alright, that's quite useless. Will probably look at Things or OmniFocus.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

bump says:

Things and Omnifocus are totally different types of apps. Things for iPhone is pretty much useless in it's current state too.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

PoorLilRichBoy says:

I use Omnifocus and I am relatively happy. It can feel slow at times and requires Webdav or me.com to sync up, but it is fully featured. Since I use it on my Mac for all information capture it works for me.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

umijin says:

C'mon Gruber. This is a free app, and these developers will certainly work hard to improve it, just like they have the Mac client for EN. In fact they just released an update to the iPhone client.

You have a point about the notes function (I find it unusable), but I think the iPhone client is more intended as a bridge to the web content. I use the EN iPhone client to look over some information I posted to my EN library previously.

How about you save your ire for the MLB app, which at $5 (subscription??) does a poorer job displaying stats than the free SportsTap?

And don't blame EN for being featured on the appstore - that's Apple's fault. Apple can't even display the newest apps in the NEW section - just the apps it likes (or that paid for advertising).
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

brhefele says:

The Evernote client on the Mac has its own troubles... But nothing as troubling as this! Overall I like their service (and the Mac client) enough that if I had an iPhone I would be livid about this UI... Their service (to me) is all about having access to my notebook wherever I may be, so to have an app available that would be promising but not really up to par.... disappointing. Does their web client work better than this (or perhaps more importantly,at all) on mobile Safari?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

rombocket says:

Their web-client, which is iPhone-optimized, works significantly better than the App proper. It's still got some issues, but the thing is usable.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Aegir says:

I'm amazed by the lack of note apps, Notes app doesn't sync and is patronising (I mean, Marker Felt? I'm not a child!) so I hoped there'd be a few more. There's lots of to-do apps, but nothing you can use to write a few paragraphs with.

Does this mean I'm going to have to learn objective C and write my own?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

plibin says:

Thanks for the constructive feedback.

We released an update today (1.0.1) that fixes many of these issues. It's available from this iTunes link and should auto-upgrade as well if you already have 1.0 installed. Note editing directly on the iPhone is coming soon (as soon as we get comfortable enough with the iPhone text editor to let it perform potentially destructive operations on your account). For now, you can edit notes on the Mac, Windows or Web clients and the changes will show up on the iPhone app. Capturing, viewing and searching image, voice and text notes all work pretty well.

Full details on the new upgrade are here.

Thanks for helping us figure out this new platform. I'm glad that many people liked the iPhone app and am sorry that it didn't live up to everyone's expectations. Feedback and suggestions for improvement are always welcome!

---
Phil Libin
CEO, Evernote
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Calamita says:

Thanks Phil. This is good news. I haven't tried Evernote yet as I don't have an iPhone (can't bring myself to wait 4 hours in line in NYC), but I'll download it when I do. It's good to know you arealready updating the iPhone client.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

oilfighter says:

I think an offline mode is sorely needed on the iPhone.

Just to give an example, I use the notes app to store my WEP key. Hmmm... if I can't get online, how am I going to retrieve that WEP key?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

juanromeroabelleira says:

I have Evernote on Mac and iPhone and love it. Evernote came a long way and is continuously improving. There's no doubt in my mind, that they will adress said issues in a timely fashion.
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )

alexluft [deleted] says:

OFFLINE ACCESS....

Please
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )

resistmedia says:

Hey feel free to join the Mobile UI Flickr group I created and add this your iPhone screen grabs! It's to serve as a repository of mobile ui screenshots for designers and developers.

www.flickr.com/groups/mobileui

I haven't been able to hit the ground running with Evernote on my iPhone yet, I think I'll have to try it on my iMac first.
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )

erin_si says:

When I first read about this app on Lifehacker, I thought I had had an epiphany - tagable notes of text, audio, images with OCR that synced with my iphone, amazing. Then I went to look at a map I had added on my iphone. Hopefully Phil Libin will come back and read this again - PLEASE, OFFLINE ACCESS REALLY IS ESSENTIAL. Just a tick box somewhere to "store this note on my mobile device for offline access" is not to much to ask is it?
Posted 15 months ago. ( permalink )

isaacman says:

Wow - I found the flame crew about Evernote. Seems like everyone else is headed to the revival meeting with a picnic basket.

I thought the idea was great, but the complexity of the Mac version sidebar and the way the iPhone version crashes on photos makes it no fun to use.

Thinking about going back to Backpack - even at $7 per month. They say you get what you pay for? Maybe if I had to pay for more free signups I wouldn't sign up for so many things.
Posted 15 months ago. ( permalink )

Scott Thigpen says:

I was really hoping good things for the NEW evernote, but it's everFail

it never syncs and just gives me "fail" everytime
Posted 4 months ago. ( permalink )

Scott Thigpen says:

oh and I've had great success with Things
Posted 4 months ago. ( permalink )

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Evernote for iPhone

Comments

Joshua Kaufman says:

t3knomanser says:

jxdxbx says:

wibbly says:

hakomi_oz says:

Daltoris says:

evernever says:

evernever says:

jcontonio says:

bmonzing says:

stephen_bolen says:

punkassjim says:

Riccardo Mori says:

jxdxbx says:

scronide says:

johnsadowskiii says:

jxdxbx says:

topherpolack says:

Emmott says:

Kevan Emmott says:

schmelding says:

scronide says:

jimwhimpey says:

Karl-Franz says:

nonprofit_tech says:

rorycberger says:

flowb33 says:

beerzie boy says:

felipesunol says:

syff says:

catcubed says:

marcowitte says:

Yong Hwee says:

bump says:

PoorLilRichBoy says:

umijin says:

brhefele says:

rombocket says:

Aegir says:

plibin says:

Calamita says:

oilfighter says:

juanromeroabelleira says:

alexluft [deleted] says:

resistmedia says:

erin_si says:

isaacman says:

Scott Thigpen says:

Scott Thigpen says:

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