In Sweden vi have an expression that goes something like:
The droplet that caused the beaker to overflow.
or
The last nail in the coffin.
I believe that english equivivalent would be
The straw that broke the camels back.
Last week the droplet made the beaker overflow, downing the camel so we need to put the last nail in the coffin happened. Evernote, strike three, you’re out.
I have been complaining a long time of an evernote being buggy and unstable. But last week I also lost data. I created a note for an episode (Ep 65 – April 6 – Journaling). I was putting my youngest daughter to bed and was sitting and writing in Evernote on my iPad. I probably spent 20-30minutes or so and was pretty happy with the result.
The day after I was going to prepare yesterdays episode (Ep 66 – April 7 – The Flying Spaghetti Monster) but then I couldn’t find my journaling script. This of course at first made be doubt where I had written it and on what device. But after some thinking I was sure. I had done it on my iPad and now the note is not there.
Of course I googled the issue and found some steps to do to try to find it. This being installing the latest version of Evernote (which I had – nothing to upgrade on the iPad) and also checking the trash folder. Both on the iPad and on the web client of Evernote. When this didn’t help I decided to raise a support case.
Almost emediatley I got an autoresponder back saying more or less that I should check the evernote communities. And else where and if that still didn’t work – I could respond to the ticket and send through an activity log. I got the log and send the file through. And then waiting for a few days. Then another templated mail – with more or less the same instructions. But I endured. They should give me support. I’ve paid for it. I’ve paid for it during many years.
After a bit back an forwards and a few days more passing. They send the case onwards to their technical group for investigation. And silence. Almost a week has passed and still no resolution. Yes, it has been easter, so a somewhat prolonged delay in response should be expected. But at this point I doubt I will ever get a response.
The reason for this is that I looked into the activity log they had me produced. It’s a flat file so it is easy to read. By going back and finding the time for it – I can see when I worked on the note. Multiple entries for note updates. But I can also see that it never got a note UID and there was also an error saving the note due to the database being locked. It is with other words gone forever.
I’m not devastated because of the lost date. I could fairly easily rewrite the script. It is the slowness of dealing with a severe issue as dataloss. My trust is now so low that I can’t use it feeling safe that my data will be around the next time I need it. If it failes to save the data – it should atleast tell me and give me the chance to copy it so I can past it into someother application.
Trust is so important. For any tool or system to be succesfull they need to have their users trust them. I do not have the trust that Evernote will be there for me going forward. Then I need to go elsewhere and find other tools that can help me solve my note taking problems.
I have an app that I do think will take Evernotes place for me. But I will get back to that later, maybe in a couple of days. Keep an eye out for it.
Now I need to go burry that coffin. See you tomorrow. Ciao!