If you're using a beta version of the new Evernote for Mac (black/white app icon): Open the Evernote beta app and select All Notes to check for any unsynced notes (marked with a gray sync icon in the corner of the note list). Once you have verified that all of your notes are synced (no gray sync icons visible), uninstall the beta app. Download and install the regular Evernote app from evernote.com/download.

Update (2008-05): The beta version was updated to 1.1, bringing support for PDF documents and some other minor goodies. I’ve updated this post accordingly. It also reflects the updated scores of Together 2.1.

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In March, I was able to snag myself a TechCrunch invitation to try the upcoming Mac version of Evernote. When I first discovered it in 2004 (for Windows), I soon became an advocate of Evernote for its organizational capabilities. Evernote wasn’t perfect, but it was already a leader in the market and since then, it’s kept progressing at a steady pace. Now that it’s starting to breathe on OS X, it’s time for a new testing round.

Today, I took a few hours to run Evernote against my web information collection test benchmark. I’m now ready to share with you how Evernote, in its actual pre-release form, competes with the pack.

As this is pre-release software, please understand that Evernote will probably fare even better than now when it’ll reach Release Day. Until then, here’s what I found.

Before jumping in the results, I feel the need to remind you two things:

1. My tests strictly evaluate what I believe is important for web information collection purposes. If you’re into organizing all your files, you’ll definitely have to forget Evernote for now. Evernote handles PDFs and mp3, but not much else.
2. My tests aren’t tailored to your own needs, nor to mine. Read my comparative review if you want to understand why and how. Basically, a higher score might mean an application has more potential of supporting your needs, but it really depends on the exact nature of your needs so you’d better look specifically for what’s important to you.

Now, to the results:

Evernote Mac App Beta Blocker

• Overall, with a global average score of 2.7, Evernote is already a solid competitor to all the other 8 applications I’ve tested. And since my benchmark isn’t yet adapted to some of Evernote’s innovations, it should in fact score even higher than that. To recap the global scores, we have:
  • 3.1: Evernote (2.7 plus 0.4 for what my benchmark doesn’t count)
    
  • 2.8: Journler, Together
    
  • 2.5: Scrivener, Soho Notes
  • 2.4: EagleFiler
  • 2.3: DevonThink Personal
  • 2.0: Yojimbo
  • 1.8: Circus Ponies NoteBook.
• Evernote’s collection capabilities are of a different type of breed. It can’t capture anything as a web archive, but it achieves two things no other application could:
  • First, it never fails to capture the link of the page from which comes the item collected;
  • Second, it features the best consistency of collection features you could find now, with an unbelievable score of 16 out of 20:
    • 16: Evernote
    • 9: EagleFiler, Together
    • 6: DevonThink, Scrivener, Soho Notes, Yojimbo
    • 3: Journler
    • 0: NoteBook
• Like EagleFiler and Yojimbo, it could use a bit more bells and whistles to help us navigate our items the way it pleases us. Although it scores exactly like Yojimbo under this benchmark, I need to tell you its features should make it score at least twice better, because it brings some new ways of navigating that are truly useful but are not yet evaluated by my benchmark in its actual form. In any case, Evernote could use some improvements to its user experience. In its welcome thumbnail view, I’d like better quality thumbnails, and to be able to hit the space bar to bring a Quickview (like the standard Leopard behavior we’re now so used to), and to be able to interact with the thumbnails by right-clicking them, and finally, to be able to view and edit their tags just there, below each thumbnail. Also, the thumbnail view highlights a lack of Evernote: no true collection of items as web archives – since it’s really a visual feature, it would be great to have our items look exactly like they looked on the web. I sincerely hope the release version will bring important improvements here.
• Evernote features the best integration of tagging in its interface. That’s already quite an accomplishment! If it would bring a few things from its Windows counterpart, most importantly the ability to dynamically filter the tag list while we intersect tags, it would come exceptionally close to being perfect.
• Although it’s not completely reflected in my current benchmark, Evernote features the best and most useful overall search capabilities of any other application, thanks to its great general capabilities and, most specifically, to its ability to search through pictures for text, even hand-written text! I know some people could argue for Journler’s or DevonThink’s specific search capabilities, but here I’m speaking of the overall search features.
• Finally, Evernote features the best sharing capabilities of any other application. All your items are automatically saved and synchronized on a secure web site, on which you have the option to publish items for the public. You can even add to your collections from any computer on which you find interesting internet content. Moreover, the web site is really quick and responsive, and feels a lot like the desktop application itself.

Evernote Mac App Beta Windows 10

All in all, Evernote for Mac brings incredible competition into the domain of web information collection applications. I see myself using Evernote over anything else for this purpose soon, although I will probably continue using some of its competitors for other specific needs. Writing in Scrivener is something Evernote won’t compete with, for example. Moreover, since the application itself will be free, Evernote will bring quite a new challenge to some of its general-purpose competitors. Evernote will change the face of the market as we know it today. I hope it will be both for the best interest of itself and its competitors; if it is, then we’ll also benefit greatly from that as a result.

Best Evernote Apps

Tags: DEVONthink, EagleFiler, Evernote, Information Collection, Journler, Mac, Scrivener, SOHONotes, Together, Yojimbo