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by joch 2843 days ago
I have been using Evernote for over 10 years now. The core note taking experience has never been close to good, but two things have made me stick by it through the years (powered through the nagging for business subscription)

1. Web clipper, which I use as a bookmark replacement, as well as for keeping copies of articles. Great for searching and knowing that I will always have a copy if a site suddenly disappears.

2. PDF ocr / search. I store a lot of receipts, contracts, invoices, manuals and other docs in Evernote, most of which are in PDF. I find the search-in-pdf feature indispensable.

I would love to move to something simpler like Bear (http://www.bear-writer.com), which has a superior writing experience. However, the two points above always make me come back to Evernote.

Edit: Also forgot to include the ability to take unstructured notes and sketches using the Apple Pencil on an iPad, while a bit cumbersome in Evernote, at least works.
1 comments
the6threplicant 2843 days ago
My biggest gripe with the clipper when used on pdf's is the lack of any metadata searching in the pdf for a title suggestion.

I hate that I have to type in the title of the pdf as the title is usually "PDF - www.example.com".

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Kadin 2843 days ago
Yeah, it seems like it would be pretty easy to grab a meaningful title. Hell even the filename would be better in most cases.

OTOH, it's the best web clipper -- even with the stupid PDF name thing -- of any of the notetaking apps. So I can see why they don't put a lot of developer time into it... they're already beating the competition.

If OneNote had a decent web clipper that was on par with Evernote's, I'd probably switch: EN has done some shifty stuff, killing features and then selling them back to users as premium-tier stuff when they get pressed for money, and I can imagine that's going to happen again soon.

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joch 2843 days ago
I agree, but I'm ok with adding a title manually.

Speaking of missing features, what I do miss though is the automatic title naming based on current calendar events. It was a perfect way of tracking meeting notes, but that feature has been removed.

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