Evernote: Close but…

I find myself using Evernote more and more. As I do, I find myself having two very different reactions to it.

On the one hand, I find it to be a truly amazing app.

The ability to take written notes (and now edit them so long at they are in plain text), take voice notes of up to five minutes, take snapshot notes using the camera or from the photo album is amazing. The search feature is awesome, and the way in which Evernote makes use of the iPhone’s location-feature is nothing short of ingenious. (Search notes taken from the spot you are currently in… neat!).  Finally, the fact that both Macs, my old TabletPC, my iPhone and my iPod Touch, all share the same data is fantastic.  All of this goes to make Evernote an amazing “can’t live without it” iPhone app.

On the other hand, there is a huge limitation to Evernote’s functionality.

The fact that Evernote still doesn’t support saving notes on the device itself is frustrating, at best.  Other apps do it, but not Evernote, and this is a huge limitation since I cannot always be guaranteed to have a connection to their servers.

It is the end of September and I am not the only one getting more than a bit impatient.   Over on Evernote’s forums the natives are getting restless about the native app.

Here are a few choice posts–

Post 1: 
…I have conducted a minor survey. I found 10 iPhone or iPod touch owners who had not tried Evernote. After they had read the release info I attempted to answer any questions they had. I then asked them if they would be likely to make Evernote their main notetaking system. Seven said "No," two said "Yes," and one said she wasn’t sure. When I asked the nay-sayers why not, the primary content of their replies was related to the inability access notes on the mobile offline.

Incidentally, as I put more and more info into my Evernote notebook another bad feature of the "no offline storage" model is emerging.  The more info you have, the longer it takes to get your Evernote data back into your mobile.  Clearly, there is no point of searching your data until it is all there.  Having seen how long this process takes with a mere 80 or so notes, I shudder to think what it is going to be like when I finish moving all 650 notes from my Palm T/X.  Of course, If my data would be waiting on my mobile when I opened Evernote, it would be a whole new world.

Post 2:
The more info you have the longer it takes to get your Evernote data back into your mobile. Clearly, there is no point of searching your data until it is all there.

Post 3:
Exactly why I don’t bother using Evernote with iPhone. Sadly, I’ve purchased and use native apps that have features similar to Evernote (Audio Notes, Dial2Do, iPhone built-in camera), and then enter the info when I get home. A cumbersome process, but one I’ll stick with until:

a) Evernote implements offline viewing
b) A competitor provides an alternative solution

Post 4:
offline viewing is essential for a mobile device … ESPECIALLY when evernote’s servers are ‘unavailable’ for maintenance and what not, like they where two Saturdays ago! That makes it impossible to ‘depend’ on the application, I was driving to a destination whose address was in evernote and I couldn’t retrieve it so had to start making phone calls until I could reach someone to give me information that I already had!  How disappointing is that?

Fortunately one of Evernote’s “people“ FINALLY responded. They said-

”For the next iPhone release, we plan to allow you to cache your favorite notes on the iPhone so that you can access them without a network.“

For everyones needs, THAT cannot happen soon enough.