Sticking with Evernote, because:
In agreement here. Though I have had misgivings about several departures from the company, I continue to use EN (albeit not as thoroughly as I used to) and was heartened to hear on Connected that by Myke and Frederico were using it again.
As is the nature of things, every app has a use and a season, and maybe Evernote is about to have another Spring.
With the next iOS and MacOS, Apple Notes will be much better and have the ability to link inside of notes to other notes.
I have used Evernote as a sort of Archive for things, I might need in the future. I have a longstanding project of exporting all my notes, some 2500, consisting mostly of PDFs and Word documents.
I was considering DEVONthink as my Evernote replacement, but now I’m more thinking about Apple Notes
I don’t recommend using AN as you describe. I use DT for archiving articles and other files. DT can convert files to different formats, has built-in OCR, and it is easy to bulk manage and export/import files out of and into DT. To bulk export one’s notes and attachments with AN, one has to request a download via iCloud, which can take several days for your notes with the attachments to become available for download.
I use AN for Notes and attached files that are relevant to a given note. I do not use AN for massive file storage. I don’t believe it is designed for that purpose.
Just my two cents….
Yeah you’re right. What’s the best online resource (preferably video tutorial) to set up DEVONthink as an Archive the way you have and the way I want? I already have MacSparky’s guide of DEVONthink
I’ve tried to make DT work in this way for me but my needs don’t take advantage of it’s capabilities and it just never seemed to ‘stick’ for me - I ended up still having various other places to squirrel away documents and files and having notes somewhere else didn’t seem to feel right.
That led me to flirt with Evernote again, but with recent news it didn’t look like a good long term bet so I ended up looking at Notebooks as a true ‘everything bucket’. I’m so glad I did, it seems like the perfect fit for me. I love that it sits seamlessly on top of finder and allows me to create notes inside the app within the folder strucucture. So I can view files and notes along side each other within the app and also while browsing finder. Using PARA in this way seems really intuitive and a solid implementation of a second brain for my unsophisticated needs.
The IOS app also seems a lot more easy to use than DTTG which I always struggled with. The only thing I need to solve is OCR for PDF’s on the way in, which I think I will set up via Hazel.
I also have MacSparky’s guide; it is excellent. I’ve not seen anything better.
Why didn’t it stick with you as an Archive exactly? And what didn’t you like about the DTTG app?
Does it detail how one sets up DEVINthink as an Archive?
I think it was a combination of things such as;
What this led to was me quickly saving files in other folders on my Mac so that I could get to them with less friction later, which grew into a full blown PARA system outside of DT - so in the end I could never trust where the file would be and so I could not trust the system.
With DTTG it was two things;
The process of syncing the databases - I would always forget and then not be on Wifi etc…
The note taking experience - it’s just not for me. I find it too clunky and ugly. I’m not a markdown guy so maybe it’s better for people who are but it’s a world away from an Apple note. Also the split screen and slide over experience wasn’t great for note taking. It may have improved as I honstly stopped trying about a year ago.
Last time i checked, still no AppleScript so not linkable per
I stayed away from the application-from day one except for evaluating it (as i do research in cognitive productivity)
Interesting blog post from Evernote about improvements and future plans.
And video analysing the blog post
That’s good news. The initial/catch-up load of CRDTs are a significant tradeoff (but worth it and a bet on where the puck is going as far as processing and network speeds.)
The Muse podcast had a good crunchy discussion on those tradeoffs recently.
Hopefully they’ve learned from this and will test future sync updates on more gnarly test databases and files.
I wrote about how Evernote was optimizing its back end six years ago. That this project is still underway should not be viewed as encouraging by Evernote users.
It seems your original post was about a cloud infrastructure migration, this last announcement from Evernote is about deploying real-time collaborative sync (aka CDRT). I think it’s a different initiative.
But one thing is clear, there is no way this is Bending Spoons’ hand exclusively. This had to be already advanced during Ian Small’s tenure as CEO and the new owners have seen to it being finished. Which is not bad execution per se, what with the takeover and layoffs.
I left Evernote in the early days of version 10. But it looks to me that its major obstacle may be that it is now just one of several companies offering software that allows you to “Remember everything and tackle any project with your notes, tasks, and schedule all in one place”.
For about the same money Microsoft and Google offer their version of the same thing plus email, cloud storage, and many more options.
Given the bad press it has received the last few years I wonder how much of Evernote’s former glory it will be able to regain?
It still has by far the best web clipper - if that matters to you, there is no competition.
I totally agree. 
The problem is that with Microsoft (which I grudgingly also pay for) and Google that they offer a suite of apps where things can be done individually and it is not a “capture everything in one spot and search it later” style service. No other app has managed the “email to” as well as Evernote, though I wish hey would as that’s a huge part of most peoples workflow and it lives in an email client island. Also - Agree with rkaplan, Web Clipper is solid.
