It also has the trendy slider-to-show-revisions feature, which records a time-lapse of the document. It works really well for the rigor of taking notes. With Simplenote’s markdown integration, I can cognitively separate my writing from my editing, much like a web designer’s workflow of coding and previewing. I don’t miss the rich WYSIWYG editor of other apps, either. In a way, it becomes a mini development environment, like Sublime Text. In its simplicity, it works great cross-platform. They showed me the kitchen sink, and so when I was introduced to the stripped-down Simplenote, I recognized the value immediately.Īt first glance, its interface looks almost too simple, but after using it for awhile, I didn’t miss anything from the other services. My experiences with Evernote and Google Drive (which I still use for storage) were a valuable lesson.

It would be interesting for Dropbox to build on their own suite of office software, since they’re the best cloud service. The app is not without its bugs, but I could imagine Google Drive one day taking over the enterprise market from Microsoft Office. You can see the other person’s blinking cursor in real-time and watch as they manipulate text before your eyes. There’s nothing quite as productive as two people simultaneiously working on the same document while on the phone with each other, two brains as one. Google Drive documents also have the magical feature of letting multiple users edit simultaneously. After leaving the syncing issues of Evernote, Google Drive was a good, safe rebound for me. With Google’s design revolution, the app has become very easy to use. Since it came out, the original Google Docs (as it was originally called) has been steadily improving. It was always trying to be the final destination in my process. My notes didn’t feel portable, and exporting them was a pain. There was also a sense of lock-in that was being performed on me, and I felt like Evernote was always the ultimate keeper of everything. On a couple of occasions, I even lost some data. Perhaps I’m spoiled by the reliability and responsiveness of Dropbox, or I’m too aggressive in my usage, but Evernote’s sync issues became unacceptable. I would get conflict errors, forcing me to go back to the device where I originally recorded the note. Evernote fit quite nicely into my workflow.Įventually, the problems started arising and the love affair ended.Įvernote’s brand resonates with me and I really wanted to make it work, but the more I used it, the more I noticed just how much it got in the way. In a design process, whiteboard sessions could be easily photographed and added to a summary, moodboards could be easily curated. I saved all my web clippings and bookmarks to it. I first went all-in when researching and planning my trip to SXSW. I used Evernote for the most part of 2013. For example, you can backup your starred Gmails to Evernote, or dynamically create a journal in Evernote using your Google Calendar. There was joy in discovering ways to use it, and it integrated very well with other services like my email and IFTT. It had seemingly endless use cases. Dealing with Evernoteĭespite getting hacked in 2012, Evernote has maintained as a strong service with $250 million in funding and 80 million users. It’s just not suited to the way I work, and it’s not good at the simplest modern tasks like recording URLs or sharing. It forces you to manage individual notes quickly, or else the notes all blend together over time and then you’re dependent on the notebook as an object. The beauty of a physical notebook is its ephemeral nature. If I had to sketch something, I’d use looseleaf. While nothing beats the speed of a physical pen and paper when taking notes, I’d rather just be able to use whatever device is nearby. Using my physical notebook wasn’t really a problem until I began forgetting it. Not for simple to-do lists (for which I use TeuxDeux), I mean the task of listening and recording, the synthesis of information into words.Īs I switch between devices more frequently, and as I include my iPad into the mix, I’ve been looking to take my note-taking habits completely digital, so that I could write and edit text from anywhere, anytime. Naturally, I’ve become very particular when it comes to the note-taking process.

Simplenote vs evernote