Private citizen Jim, we get the point. Hammered in loud and clear.
rmathes, I share BLUEFROG’s perspective to a considerable degree.
Perhaps there’s no problem with mundane data such as lunch plans for next Friday, or a clipping from a news site being maintained primarily in the cloud, on a server maintained by someone else, and with little information available to me about the security and longevity of that data on the remote server.
For years, I was a governmental regulator, privy to and often originating sensitive files. I would have acted illegally if that information were stored on a third-party server such as Evernote. I often created documents that, had they been accessed improperly, would have been worth millions of dollars to the wrong party and that could have been injurious to enforcement actions. Those documents resided, at least temporarily, on my computer. Printed copies were maintained within the agency, with security restrictions. Digital copies were maintained on an agency server, with security restrictions such that, even had someone obtained my password to a document, they would also have had to obtain access to the server, which would make the information far more secure than on a publicly available host such as Evernote. Importantly, in the event of a security breach we could take action to slam the doors shut.
Before that time I was on occasion privy to classified information related to national security. None of that information was ever placed in the cloud, and never will be.
Nowadays I’m not regulating anyone. But I’m sometimes asked for advice about cases, and I take care to maintain security.
I don’t worry about NSA access to my data. I’ve led seminars that included personnel from NSA, CIA, Secret Service and DOD. I’m not a target, because I don’t do anything that would make me a target.
But I might well be a target to others. I have bank accounts, investments and credit cards. I trust quite a few third parties with that information, including my banks, investment bankers, credit card transactions, Apple, Amazon and the IRS. Other than three cases of misuse of my credit cards over the years, all of which were reversed and none of which involved Internet transactions, I’ve not had any problems so far. Fingers crossed, and I frequently monitor my accounts.
I have a DEVONthink database that contains lots of information about my financial accounts, including login information. I’m not going to put that out in the cloud, although I might consider doing so with a second level of encryption added, e.g., via the Sync procedure.
I don’t trust encryption and security as provided by Dropbox, Evernote, etc. for sensitive information. There have been known security breaches, and demonstration of an exploit in which a file was sent to Dropbox that, like a Trojan horse, sent out agents to gather data from other files stored on the servers. Unless I send data to a cloud server that I wouldn’t mind sharing with the world, I would require a second order of encryption added.
It comes down to this: I can control the data I put into my DEVONthink databases. I can’t control data as fully, if I put it out in the cloud. Yes, I do put some data in the cloud, but were it to come to a choice of Evernote or DEVONthink (aside from the fact that Evernote is much less powerful), there’s no contest. DEVONthink wins.
Call me old-fashioned, but I remain suspicious of Evernote on the grounds that I was once a licence-holder of what one could call ‘Evernote Original’. It was an interesting, novel, and stable Windows information-manager which was then suddenly abandoned when the Evernote development team received funding to pursue its current course.
Bill…a few points.
First, I’d assert that one of your customer support reps can answer questions and provide their opinion without belittling another quality application. But you guys run your business the way that makes sense to you. That would not be appropriate from someone who works for me.
Re your points about security, as you inferred, those issues are less about Evernote specifically and more about cloud based solutions in general. I used to have a security clearance when I worked for a defense contractor in a previous life. I would never put something that sensitive into a cloud based solution, and rules would prohibit it. Re banking info, I agree it’s too sensitive to put into the cloud. I wouldn’t even put it in DTPO. I have that info in 1Password, which provides a degree of encryption I’m comfortable with. Maybe DTPO has comparably strong encryption at the folder or note level, I don’t know, I never put anything into DTPO that required it.
Regarding Evernote being “much less powerful”, I don’t think one can accurately make that statement categorically. It depends very much on the end user’s needs and desires. For you, DTPO is absolutely “more powerful” than Evernote because you don’t value the things that Evernote does very well, you don’t mind the things that DTPO does poorly or not at all, and you do value what are DTPO’s core strengths. That’s absolutely valid. It sounds very much that for you and your needs, there’s zero question DTPO is both “more powerful” and the appropriate tool for the job. For me, the reverse is true. DTPO is powerful in areas I don’t need nor utilize and weak to non-existent in things I value more with each passing month. For my needs, Evernote is a much more powerful application than DTPO.
And the whole idea that some of you seem to have that Evernote is suitable for storing recipes and not much more is just laughable.
In my opinion, both are great apps that serve similar but distinctive markets and needs. It’s great that we all have such choice. And alluding to your prior post, I look forward to seeing the next generation of DTPO. Perhaps it will provide more of what I need from an information repository in this new digital age.
I think I can safely consider myself as a reasonably independent observer in this debate, and probably it’s a mistake to chime in, but here I go. Just to make sure: I have no particular agenda here. Over the past year, I have been following the DT Forum discussions quite a bit, and I have been very impressed with the constructive, friendly, and helpful tone that generally prevails here. I find the DT staff very professional and attentive.
Things occasionally seem to go a little funny, essentially when these “world-view” type discussions arise. The basic idea behind this “Evernote vs DT” thread is good: A fair discussion of pros and cons for these two programs, sticking to the technical facts. However, as we can see, this discussion (like some similar threads in the past) has deteriorated. And it seems that some people now try to blame Bluefrog’s last, relatively strong-worded, post for this. I think this is absolutely unfair.
The way I perceive it, the “pro-Evernote” crowd comes across as fairly aggressive from the get-go. There is always this “ultimatum-style” tone: “DTPO has fallen behind, …, if this is not changing soon, I will definitely switch to Evernote”, there is always talk about the “terrible” interface of DTPO, and the “total uselessness” of DTGO. Yet, I never read anything substantial about what is really bad about the UI. What would we change? And why does DTGO work quite well for me, with nearly 6 GB of mobile-sync databases, and no syncing issues for more than a year? Maybe it’s your specific usage needs, and not general wisdom?
If Evernote at this point works better for you, I suggest that you switch to using it, without bringing it up a zillion times here. Maybe send the DT staff a single mail explaining the rationale. I’m sure they will find that helpful.
Finally, some specifics that I have been wondering about. I haven’t used Evernote for about 3 years. In its state back then, it was nowhere near comparable to DT, but I understand that it must have improved a lot. Nevertheless, I sense a certain “the grass is greener on the other side” attitude in this discussion. Shortcomings of DT are amply discussed here (and that’s OK, that’s the point of this forum", whereas, by and large, only seemingly good sides of Evernote are contrasted. Some specifics make me wonder. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, and people can enlighten me:
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One of the (in my view) legitimate concerns about the Evernote is “how do I get me data out of there?”. People assure us that this is no problem. Then I noted discussions on the web about OCR in Evernote. From what I understand, the OCR procedure does not create a standard pdf as ABBY or Acrobat, where we see the original image, and there is text in the background for search purposes, but in the same file. Instead, the text info is stored separately. Upon export, that part is not delivered. One can specifically demand to get that file (question: only individually, or in a DB dump?), but it will generally not look like the original. On the web, someone noted “well, Evernote doesn’t want to be the free OCR service for the world”. In other words, they use this technique on purpose to keep the “search within pdf” confined to their own system. On export, this would be a nightmare. That alone can constitute a deal breaker for many. And it shows what part of their agenda is.
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Another “killer” feature often mentioned is recognition of text (even handwritten) in images. I am not aware of any end-user software that can do the handwritten part. So Evernote’s advantage could be that they can employ powerful server-side technology to do this. Wondering about this capability, I did a websearch and found a study that showed that reliability of this method is utterly poor (unfortunately, I didn’t keep the link). Has anyone experience with this?
Even though I don’t know enough about the latest incarnation of Evernote, I get the feeling that once we look honestly into shortcomings there as well (see the 2 potential issues above), the picture gets much murkier.
Honestly, I think it really comes down to the “everything is in the cloud” vs “largely local”. If you really want to use a wide range of devices and sync them without having to think about it, you might prefer Evernote. But then, you might get caught with a multi-GB sync over a crappy hotel wifi, or worse, my 500 GB per month iPad cell plan, and no way around it - even if you happen to have your laptop right next to your iDevice. At this point in time, I prefer, purely for myself and my usage scenario, the “private sync” option of DT. And I can only hope that this option will always be available in the future.
To summarize, I propose that we end this thread. No further good will come of it. Ideally, we would start a purely technical “comparison list”, where we honestly compare the two ecosystems based on their features.
gg378…solid post. I agree this thread has probably run its productive course. I came onto it with some questions, and those have been answered, so after this post I’m going to bow out.
Re things like the user interface and what some folks (like me) would like to see changed, I’d be happy to talk about that but it sounds like DT already has a design for the next gen of this product suite in place, so unless they actively wanted to hear from some of their customers on this topic, discussing it is probably pointless.
Re Evernote’s integration of PDF searchability into single or multiple document layers, I’m not particularly concerned with that. Your mileage may vary. If I need to export a PDF out of Evernote, I can do that, and if I then want to put it back into DTPO or some other app that searches PDFs, presumably DTPO will then take it through its process to make it searchable. That said, I never once exported out of DTPO in 10 years of using it. Would be surprised if I needed to do so out of Evernote. It’s just the way I use these kinds of apps. Doesn’t mean it won’t be an issue for someone else.
Re searching of handwritten notes, I can’t speak for anyone’s experience but my own. This functionality has always worked very well for me. Before I decided to put all my paper-based meeting notes into Evernote I did a series of tests on this, and unless my handwriting was particularly crappy that day (which happens all too frequently, sad to say), every word was searchable. Worked beautifully.
I think the distinction between wanting to work and store data locally on one machine versus wanting to use multiple devices to access cloud-based data is right on point. DTPO is clearly aimed at the former category, Evernote at the latter. Both approaches absolutely have merit, one’s not better than the other, just depends on the respective user’s needs and process flows.
Both apps are, in my opinion, very well constructed and supported (i’ve had nothing but good experiences with customer support from both companies), and both are very good at what they do. As I said above, I’ll likely maintain my DTPO license and I look forward to continuing to use DevonAgent, and I look forward to playing with the next generation of DTPO. I’ve gotten tremendous value from it over the years and I hope it continues to be actively developed, supported and purchased for many, many more years to come.
With that, I’m out.
Each user has to make their own decision.For me Devonthink Pro Office is my most used application on my mac. As I get older I am trying to simplify everything and it all goes into Devonthink, and I have several databases that I have nurtured over the years.I even write in devonthink now.
I have used Evernote and have used it together with Devonthink however I realised that it was just adding duplication and complexity to my life.To me productivity means simplicity and using one solution is better for me.I only have four apps on my iPhone home screen (Omnifocus, Mail, Fantastical and Goodreader)
I just don’t need to access my database outside of my office.If there is a PDF I may need to use I export it to dropbox and use good reader. But frankly I rarely need this.
I am not sure what Devontech has planned for the future but I do think a better iOS app is important.It doesn’t matter to me but I am not typical and from a strategic planning aspect I am sure this is important. As for the mac app, I am happy with it but again strategically a better user interface will help attract new users.
well said apt123
Everyone has their preference, working style, and workflow. So it’s no surprise there’s both DT and EN fans.
I’m not worried about sync too, and don’t have DT To Go. Maybe i’ll get it someday, for now there’s no need. I can easily sync between devices without EN or DT.
Chiming into a long debate:
I’ve been with DT pretty much since the beginning of Devontech, and I’ve given Evernote a pretty good shake, with over 1000 notes. My conclusion: on the desktop DT is clearly superior for my usage, by a looong margin. Evernote’s system of organising notes is notionally like DT’s, but somehow it just manages to get in the way. And it’s a little ironic that the best way to get data out of Evernote is via DT.
Evernote is that shiny budget set of tools in the hardware store that give no delight in use, and which regularly strips a few screw heads because of poor tolerances. DT is the set of old tools, Made in Germany, that never fails.
On the other hand, much of the time I’m on the road/in the air/away from my laptop. On iOS, Evernote makes DT look like DOS. So I find myself using Evernote as an inbox, transferring data to DT, and going without my reference databases away from the computer. Which is infinitely frustrating. I’d like to mate DT (OSX version) and Evernote (iOS versions), and have their pup.
Someday, hopefully before I’m in an aged hostel, DT will produce DTTG 2 and resolve all this. And if it resolves it in style, then for Mac users I think this thread will be irrelevant. DT is more muscular, more flexible, more secure and more future-proof.
On the other hand, I have to live long enough to see DTTG 2.