But then instead of building on that success the product got worse. Oh well.
Evernote seems to have some sort of "reality distortion field" which is somewhat like Apple's, but somewhat mis-calibrated. (Apple's own "reality distortion field" originated with Steve Jobs, and has been losing its calibration ever since he departed this world.) They have a tendency to start with things which feel "magic" then have them fade into "meh." I've tried Evernote a few times, but it just never stuck. It's in that category of, "It seems like it could be really cool, but for some reason, it isn't."
It can definitely solve problems that exist. I've been using it near religiously for the past 6-7 years as the home of my GTD system, as well as a general store for archived reference information, and the design of their product fits my needs perfectly. That said, the flexibility in use that's one of its main strengths is also one of its greatest challenges, since it can be very difficult to pick it up and get the most out of it.
I've heard that point of view a lot, but it's definitely not me. In fact, if I had to pick one word to describe it, it'd probably be "liberating". I don't have to hold anything in my brain anymore, so when I'm relaxing, I can relax 100%. Don't have to worry about forgetting anything, because I know it's all in there. And when I'm ready to 'get something done', as it were, some things to do are right there. I love it. That said, it did take a while to get set up and used to.
When I had a support engineering job it was pretty magical. Super easy to store notes and kept a lot of my life and browsing curated and organized. I took pictures of whiteboards and stored them. But like many others here the app became bloated because of the volume of notes I had. Add to that the premium features that didn't seem like they were worth the expense and I just stopped using it over time. I just write stuff in markdown now, or lastpass if I need a secure note.
Evernote seems to have some sort of "reality distortion field" which is somewhat like Apple's, but somewhat mis-calibrated. (Apple's own "reality distortion field" originated with Steve Jobs, and has been losing its calibration ever since he departed this world.) They have a tendency to start with things which feel "magic" then have them fade into "meh." I've tried Evernote a few times, but it just never stuck. It's in that category of, "It seems like it could be really cool, but for some reason, it isn't."