switching from evernote to DEVONthink Pro

Doesn’t DT OCR? Just feed it to the scanners. Or use Folder Action Script on one of your dropbox folder, take a picture, put it on the folder and it automatically syncs to your computer’s DT and OCR.

Maybe I’m mistaken because I don’t know if DT OCR only PDF or images too. I only have PDF.

This is a problem i see every DT user face. The overwhelming complexity. Unless you really delve into DT you won’t see why lawyers, academics, and many knowledge worker choose DT over EN to manage their knowledge.

It’s not only storing and accessing information. It’s the way you can access overwhelming amount of snippets. After a while in EN, my information got lost.

In the end, it depends on your needs. EN search is good, and frankly, EN is good enough for the majority of the people.

But i need auto wikilinks, alias, smart folders, (duplicates, type of file, replicants detection) advanced search, auto classify, see also, separate database (to keep the data and AI clean) and etc

As an example, I did a search on EN just now for my to-read list, and i can’t find it. EN spits out 93 results, and i don’t have time to sort through the notes to find that one note. Sure, EN has bookmarks, tags, and notebook, and that’s my point. It’s a pain to process all my incoming docs. With DT, it’s a lot easier.

Conclusion, DT is certainly a niche product and an expensive one at that. It’s not for everyone. I tried DT in the pass and like you, I was wondering why do i need DT if i have Evernote. It’s not until i have thousands of of notes that I see the value in DT.

And i didn’t come back to DT at first, I just try harder to organise my EN, that didn’t work out. (i bought books like Evernote Essential and others) So i tried Yojimbo, Together, Eagle Filer, and etc. None worked.

Locked in means that I can’t get the data out in EXACTLY the same format I put it in. That and the very public nature of Evernote is a deal breaker for me.

Oogie (by the way, is this the same Oogie as from the GTD membership site? If so, I enjoyed reading your posts when I was a member there), could you elaborate on what you mean when you say you can’t get your data out in the exact same format as how you put it in? In the tests I did, that’s not my experience. If I put a PDF in, I get a PDF out. If I put a RTF in, I get a RTF out, and so on.

Could you also elaborate on ‘the very public nature’ of Evernote being an issue? Yes, it’s on the cloud, but lots of stuff is on the cloud these days. I’m using 2-step account authentication, so I feel reasonably confident that my data there is secure, but I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on the ‘public’ issue.

Thanks.

ryan, good stuff.

Re OCR, to my knowledge, no, DTPO has no capability to search images or PDFs of my handwritten notes to detect text in them and return them in a search result. If I’m wrong about that, would love to hear from someone about that. I can certainly use my ScanSnap and AbbyReader to take written text like on a statement or printed document and scan that and turn it into searchable text.

Re your second point, there is zero question that I do not understand nor use the full depth and complexities of what DTPO offers. I have used aliases, replicants, smart folders, see related, auto classify and other functionality, and at this point I don’t see any meaningful difference in my ability to find stuff in DTPO versus EN. And in some respects, for ME (this isn’t a comment about the products as a whole) it’s easier to find stuff in EN. I like how tags (for example) are implemented in EN much better than in DTPO and my ability to construct saved complex searches utilizing virtually whatever criteria I want along with tags makes it such that I’ve yet to struggle to find anything I’m looking for. Obviously you’ve had a different experience. I also have a ‘to-read’ list and the way I’ve got my database structured, takes me about 2 seconds to find it. My experience is that with either application, it takes a bit of forethought on the front end to organize things in such a fashion that they’re easily located down the road. I don’t see that being meaningfully different in either DTPO or EN, but your mileage may vary.

re the auto-classify function, I honestly like it better in EN than in DTPO. In DTPO, I need to dump a web clipping into my inbox, for example, THEN I utilize auto classify to help it find its proper home. I’m now touching it twice, so to speak. In EN, when I utilize the web clipper, it uses auto classify logic right then to suggest the proper notebook (and it’s right well over half the time, and that percentage is growing the more data I put into it) and will also suggest the appropriate tags. I click ‘save’ and I’m done. It’s a more efficient process for me than how DTPO does it, and I utilize web clippings in both apps a LOT.

Re searching, I also found that DTPO doesn’t seem to search some PDFs. I’m no expert on PDF construction, but my understanding is they can be constructed in a way that facilitates text searching or doesn’t. I’ve yet to find a PDF that EN doesn’t search accurately.

The separate database functionality in DTPO is nice and it’s something I played with, but I ended up finding it unnecessary for my needs.

No clue what auto wiki links are, so maybe I’m missing the boat there. I know both DTPO and EN can create note links that one can use either in external apps or within the app to create a wiki-style document and reference strategy, but not sure what the ‘auto’ part is.

I very much appreciate your thoughts. I’m definitely keeping DTPO around and I’m keeping the data already in there, well, in there. But for now, all new additions are going into EN, and I’m slowly working through exporting data out of DTPO into EN.

Evernote doesn’t either. Evernote does OCR on-the-fly. It is not detecting text in raster data.

Here’s the deal (note: I am allowed to have as many opinions as anyone else :exclamation: )…
Evernote is popular because it’s heavily marketed to investors and funded, with promises of huge returns to investors because it tries to be “everything to everyone”. That’s why they have their “Trunk”.

We are self-sufficient in our funding, and realize that we are not going to be the right fit for everyone. While DEVONthink is not unfriendly to an average User, it’s also not trying to be a mere recipe keeper, etc. (My mother, for instance, is absolutely NOT in DEVONthink’s target market.)

We are working to make DEVONthink smarter, even more stable and reliable, a bit more intuitive in its UI, and even more flexible in the capabilities it offers Users. We aren’t after Evernote’s market (we don’t sit around talking about it and who knows if they talk about wanting ours). We are busy working on what our Users want, as well as where we want data management to go.

If you like Evernote, use it. If you like DEVONthink, use it.

PS: Note that we’ve made a lot of effort to let people work with both if they want. That’s not us “after their Users”, it’s us trying to take care of ours. I don’t see them making things easier to get into DEVONthink. Just sayin.

bluefrog, thanks for the post.

Re the first point about searching, that may be true from a technical perspective but it’s incorrect functionally. I don’t care HOW they do it, the point is that if I take a picture of my handwritten notes and put it into EN, I can search for a text string in that picture that is handwritten and Evernote will find it. That’s an important piece of functionality for me given how I utilize notes, and I take a chunk of them.

Re why Evernote is popular, yes, you are absolutely entitled to your opinions, as we all are. Mine is that you are very wrong about that. And if you and other folks within the DT design community honestly believe that, it goes a long way to explaining some of the design and product development decisions that have (or haven’t) taken place in the last decade.

With respect to how DTPO develops and markets their product, no disagreement there. What I will say is that Devon Technologies has allowed this product to grow long in the tooth from a number of perspectives. One of the most important technological trends of the last 6-7 years is the smart phone and tablet and the ability to both generate data and access it from multiple sources. For some, this may be no issue whatsoever. For those where this is important, DTPO’s inability to do this in a sound, robust way is a serious shortcoming.

And we’ve talked about how the UI hasn’t really changed in 10 years (something that kind of blows my mind). No need to belabor that point.

I will probably continue to use both to some degree, but whereas that usage split was 95% DTPO and 5% EN a year ago, that is shifting in a big way. Perhaps at some point in the future if Devon Technologies decides to introduce some of these technologies like an updated UI and mobile access and enhanced interoperability with a multitude of apps, that usage split will shift back. That’s something I’m absolutely open to.

Just a note on this… It’s a bit misleading. It’s not Evernote working for interoperatbility with other apps. Far from it. It’s Evernote marketing interoperability with Evernote. They are trying to funnel more and more of your data into their application - and onto their servers (in the hopes that you’ll purchase a Premium account (or you’ll eventually be forced to) This is one of the biggest problems I have with their modus operandi). Microsoft did (and does) the same thing. They don’t want to cooperate with others. They want others to be “Microsoft certified compatible”. Evernote wants other apps and devices to be “Evernote compatible”.

DEVONthink is FAR more operable with other apps, even supplying scripts and functions to help communication between other apps, some of which are considered direct competitors. This is a very different company philosophy, and one I am quite happy to be a part of.

Cheers!

bluefrog…well, yes, they would like people to put as much of their data into Evernote as possible. There’s nothing nefarious about that, it’s sound business. And how are they doing that, by tricking their users? No, by making it pretty easy for a LOT of apps to play well with their application. A good chunk of the ios apps I own communicate directly with Evernote. You write as if that’s a bad thing. I think it’s awesome.

Re your claim that DevonThink is far more interoperable, maybe if we’re talking a two way street, getting data in and out, but even there I’m not sure the claim is true. But in terms of getting data into Evernote? My experience as a user of both is that it is MUCH easier to get data into Evernote from a wider variety of source applications than into DTPO.

I dunno, you write as if the DT approach is some noble thing and the EN approach is crass and evil. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you are trying to communicate and if that’s the case, I apologize. If I’m understanding correctly, I think that’s just silly.

Your comment in your prior post also belies a belief set that does nothing to attract me further to DTPO. Calling EN a “mere recipe keeper” is insulting to both those using it and a quality application. But it’s consistent with this meme that DTPO is for the “power user” and EN is a nice but somewhat silly little place to keep relatively unimportant data.

I think both apps are quality apps and I’ll maintain my license to DTPO and will likely purchase the next paid upgrade. But some of the comments of late in this thread might make me rethink that.

As a customer who’s also sold DT to other folks because of its interoperability, I really, really appreciate this. I feel much better using DT knowing that I can also use another program for some specific task that could be done better in that program.

Even beyond the explicit support via scripts and other means to help interoperability, this really helps support rich extensibility. I can do scripted workflows in DT that I can’t do in other programs, because they limit their APIs lest some competitor be helped by them.

@rmathes, I’m curious, not trolling, why would you keep using DT and even renew upgrades?

From your post, there’s no difference in both getting in and out of Evernote VS DT.

EN is faster, more pleasant to the eyes, and fit your workflow. (OCR of image etc.)

Just curious why would u want to pay for something that doesn’t add value to you anymore, and if you think there’s value i would love to know what.

ryan…it’s a very legitimate question.

Part of it is hope. Like for the last 5-6 years, I keep hoping that DTPO will come out with a major upgrade along with a mobile app that actually works. My preference is I’d rather just stay with DTPO, I’ve got a decent chunk of time and money invested in this solution set, but yes, at the moment it’s not meeting my needs. Doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.

Part of it is thinking at some point I’ll come back and explore some of the more advanced features that perhaps I haven’t sufficiently leveraged, and then at that point I’ll go “whoa, if I had known THAT…”.

But it’s also completely possible that I’m done with this app. If bluefrog’s thinking as posted above is indicative of DevonTech’s thinking as a whole on this issue, and if they think Evernote is becoming massive popular simply because of external funding and slick marketing, then that tells me that at a fundamental level they don’t understand what so many in the marketplace really want from an information repository, and the odds of me getting what I really want from DTPO are probably between slim and none.

It’s absolutely one thing to say “yes, we understand what a lot of folks want, and we’ve made a conscious decision to go another direction and target our app to a much smaller niche market”. It’s their product and they’re obviously free to do with it as they wish. It’s quite another to have the mindset that the only reason people are migrating is funding and marketing, implying if not basically flat out saying that people are being tricked into wanting something they either don’t really want or shouldn’t want. Either way, it’s becoming clear that DT is not placing a priority on multi-device data access and input, UI refreshes, etc…, so perhaps it is indeed time to say goodbye to this old friend.

Thanks for answering my question. I’m sure bluefrog does not mean to offend you but merely proud of DT and what it can do. Your post will probably made him and the management think twice about EN and maybe even testing out the competitors.

DT’s management think that Evernote is not approaching DT’s territory, but i think they are. It might be a few more years down the road but I’m sure they will have more and more features for those who don’t mind having data in the cloud.

On the other hand, from what I read, the folks at DT are hard working and passionate bunch. I’m sure I will continue to use DT as my specialised information management app far in the future,

Ryan, great post.

I absolutely believe the folks at DT are knowledgeable and hard working and care deeply about their customers and their product set.

What I would welcome, what I’d hope they do, is to connect with their customer base and actively seek to understand what that base really wants from an information management solution.

I’m not some guy who has never used any Devon products and is some Evernote fanboy trolling this site. I’ve been a customer here since 2004, I own DTPO and DevonAgent and have for years. I’ve purchased each paid upgrade that has become available, and I have recommended these products to dozens of people, many who have purchased them.

I own a small business. If a longtime customer and advocate for our business came to me to tell me he was moving away from us and to a competitor, my response would not be to defend my business, but to honestly seek to understand why that customer felt moving away from us was the right move for them. If they felt like that, there are likely dozens of other customers who also felt that way but weren’t giving me the courtesy of telling me about it. I may not be able to turn that one customer around, but I’d want to use their feedback to take a good look at my business and services to see if any proactive changes on my part were indicated.

I’m a busy guy but If anyone from DT would like to contact me directly to have that discussion, out of respect for their products and the value I’ve received from them over the years, that’s a discussion I’d be happy to have.

At the least, if I were them I’d strongly consider putting a survey together in something like surveymonkey and instead of assuming I know what this market wants, I’d ask my customers to tell me. They may hear some things they might not want to hear, but it will give them the opportunity to potentially redirect development efforts in such a way as to maximize their market while maintaining the integrity of their vision for their product suite.

I wish them well.

Thank you.

I, for one, am not worried about the future of DEVONthink and the other DEVONtechnologies applications and utilities that work with each other, including DEVONagent Pro. In saying that, I’m not taking the position that we are satisfied with the current status of these applications and are not actively planning new generations. On the contrary, our “skunk works” is very busy. Since 2002 DEVONthink has evolved continuously in features, capabilities, scalability and extensibility. It is now in its second generation. The third generation is under development. It will at the same time simplify many automation/extensibility features that currently require custom scripting, simplify the UI and provide a new generation of synchronization across multiple Macs and iOS devices. And more. :slight_smile:

I would consider an “either DEVONthink or Evernote” approach valid only for a simple set of data management and information analysis needs. In my case, the size of my document collections and my needs for powerful searches and the utility of See Also to help me work with concepts (patterns of contextual relationships among tens of thousands of documents) make DEVONthink the choice for primary management of my information collections. Evernote wasn’t designed to meet those needs, and simply cannot meet them. Many forum discussions relate to Evernote users who reached the limits of that environment and then moved to DEVONthink 2.x to go beyond those limits. And there are many DEVONthink users who also use Evernote in complementary ways.

Nice. I look forward to seeing the 3rd generation of this application suite. Perhaps that will permit me to migrate back to DTPO. Today, Evernote is a much better fit for my needs and the more I migrate to it, the happier I am with it. But that doesn’t mean that in the future that calculus will shift.

One of the key things is that a dealbreaker for me is I have to be able to access my data on multiple devices, including my iPhone. And the more seamlessly I can get data into DPTO from a multitude of sources (akin to what I can do today with Evernote), the better.

I very much look forward to seeing where this development track goes.

@rmathes, just remembered something that might be relevant to you. Regarding the public nature of your data and the attitude of the CEO of Evernote.

It’s one of the reason i switch to DT too.

You said that the attitude of DT’s management is discouraging you from upgrading in the future. I say you should be aware of Evernote’s management too. Especially the CEO.

For example, for years Evernote did not have two factor authentication. Many have complained loudly on the forum over the years. Phil Libin brushed it off repeatedly. Before EN got hacked, Libin even boast that they have something better than 2 factor “coming”. They got hacked and nothing “better” than 2 factor came. In fact, it’s just your typical 2 factor now. Libin lied.

Example 2:
EN users complained very loudly, again on the public forum of evernote, which you can search for yourself, that they’re losing audio notes. Again, the CEO and the management ignored the problem for years.

Why am I so sure they ignored the problem? Why am I so sure that they’re arrogant and does not listen to the customers? Because it took one very famous blogger to complain very loudly on his blog and for the post to become viral for the CEO to finally took notice.

You can see the article here.
http://jasonkincaid.net/2014/01/evernote-the-bug-ridden-elephant/

And the CEO reacted by posting a blog post. Promising improvements.

In conclusion, the management of EN is probably a lot worse than DT’s. EN has millions of dollars and they can afford to fix bugs, increase security etc. But they chose to ignore it.

EN is also a security risk, they don’t really care about security until something big happened. Your data is very public, and PRISM, NSA, CIA and etc makes it worse. I did not recall EN protest, and write about PRISM.

ryan, thanks for the post. There are absolutely some valid issues there.

My first response is to take exception with one of the last things you said, about how the management of EN is probably a lot worse than DT’s. I want to be clear that I’m NOT criticizing DT management, my comments on this thread are directed at the product. DT is a private, self-funded software company that has been around a long time. They’re doing a lot of things right to pull that off. A lot of their peers from 10 years ago are nowhere to be found now.

Re the other stuff, I’d read the Kincaid piece and Libin’s subsequent response. I’m comfortable with the security in place now. They probably should’ve had implemented 2-factor authentication sooner, and that’s true of a lot of sites. Still is. Re the audio thing, yep, they should’ve addressed that sooner, too. I’m not overly concerned about it, I actually generate very few notes with Evernote itself. I use external scanners or audio recording apps or cameras to generate content that then feeds into EN. Never had a problem with data integrity yet. Hopefully don’t.

Thanks for the pointer to that article. As a fairly light user of Evernote, it’s not something I would have come across, otherwise.

I’m clearly the paranoid type. I don’t really trust anything in the Cloud. iCloud, Box, Dropbox, Mega, Copy - I have them all. Anything I email/tag/bump to Evernote, I try as much as possible to duplicate, for instance by sending the same thing to Instapaper…

I’m clearly old-skool - call me a dinosaur, but I prefer to keep as much as possible with me. Sure I use the Cloud, but not for anything other than ‘nice to have/nice to read’, as opposed to ‘have to have/have to read’…

Having said that - I’m pretty sure(??) I’m not the only one who applies a modicum of common sense in having someone else look after my data? Yes it’s the way the world is moving, but there sure as heck is plenty of space to quite comfortably function according to one’s own approach, without needing to go all in…

So, whereas reading the above has certainly been interesting - I would echo a call for some sort of user survey if only to remind the developers that there are some/plenty(??) of DTPO users - who might welcome tighter integration between DTPO and iOS/Other - but not at the cost of ‘losing control’ of that data…

Having said that - if DTPO were to allow for greater synchronisity (that’s not even a word!) across platforms, possibly through the cloud [how else?] - then I would presumably have the option not to use that feature.

So in fairness - why should my workflow approach that is not dependent on cross-platform accessibility stymie those who would benefit from those features? Well – in short, I don’t think it should…

So by all means, move in that direction if it’s something that the developers see as making sense, from a product perspective – but please don’t lose focus of what it is that you are providing currently: a very robust and stable document-database manager. Losing stability and reliability for the sake of cross-platform accessibility would not be a very welcome spin-off… And if something is to be taken from that blog post on Evernote, and the CEO’s response - that’s precisely what is happening to them. And it remains the very reason why it will be a long time still before I ever commit whole-heartedly to a system that keeps my data ‘there’, as opposed to ‘here’.

Lol. You know what I kept on thinking about when I was typing up the above? If Fight Club were to have been made in 2014, Tyler Durden wouldn’t have been blowing up Credit Card storage facilities - he would’ve been blowing up cloud-storage facilities… :laughing:

Thanks for the tip o’ the hat, rmathes.

I do not want to start a flame here, but as an actual human being, with thoughts and opinions and frustrations of my own, not a robotic DEVONthink shill, I personally make no bones about my dislike of Evernote. The aforementioned blog post is indicative of philosophies and attitudes that I oppose. But what really cemented this again…This is a new MacBook so I had loaded the Evernote client for support but hadn’t installed the Safari Clipper extension. @rmathes was talking about how great Evernote is at getting data into Evernote, so I installed the Clipper. I click the button to clip a page and … I am presented with a login dialog?!? :imp: I go ahead and authenticate, despite my grinding teeth. Then I clip a simple page. And where does the clip go? TO EVERNOTE’S SERVERS!! :imp: :imp: Finally, back in the Desktop app, IT PULLS THE CLIP FROM EVERNOTE’S SERVERS!!! :imp: :imp: :imp:

This is the exact behavior I HATE from Evernote. Who told them to send MY DATA to THEIR SERVERS?!??! This is NOT an opt-in process. It is an arm-twisting hijack of my data. And the Desktop app - this a local clip and it should pass the data to my local app unless I tell IT OTHERWISE!! ARGHH!!! :imp: :mrgreen:

(Note: If you want to use the Cloud and push your data to someone’s servers, that’s fine. You should have the option to do it, not be forced into it. I do not want ANYONE BUT ME deciding where my data should be stored (obviously unless there’s a technical issue that has to be considered - not the case here). It doesn’t matter how “convenient” Evernote may seem to some, I cannot get past this behavior.)

/end rant

bluefrog…it seems to me your frustrations with what Evernote does with your data comes from a profound misunderstanding of how the app is structured. That’s not an evernote problem, that’s a bluefrog problem. Evernote makes it very clear, your data goes to your account in the cloud and is accessible via the web, or if you choose, an app local to your machine, or to an app on your mobile device. Complaining that it does precisely that makes as much sense as someone clipping to DTPO and getting peeved that DTPO does NOT upload to the cloud. That’s not what DTPO does.

If you want data to only be locally resident on your machine and held nowhere else, then Evernote is fundamentally the wrong solution as that is not what it does, and there’s no mystery about that.

As a customer service rep for DT, here’s my suggestion for you, do with it what you will. Badmouthing another product does not become you, nor DT. If a longtime user and previously loyal customer asks honestly formed and respectful questions and indicates that their process needs are causing them to move away from your product and to another’s, both you and DT would be far better served to devote your time and energies to understanding WHY the customer feels that way and discovering what if anything could be done to change that situation as opposed to casting aspersions (some in ridiculous and belittling fashion like the “recipe” thing) on the competitor’s app.

Just my perspective.