Posts from July 2015

By the looks of things, with the recent updates to their desktop applications, Evernote have discovered the joys of pop-ups for advertising purposes. I'm finding it just as annoying as it was back in the days when people thought it was the smart way to make you buy things on the web.

Now, to be fair, the pop-up you see above is the one on my iMac and that at least has the good taste to only pop up within the application itself (although the Evernote icon in the dock at the bottom of the screen kept jumping around like it really wanted attention when this happened). The Windows one, however, is much worse.

I've actually not had a chance to capture a copy yet as it normally has the habit of getting in the way while I'm actually trying to do something; but the Windows version has the bad taste to actually pop up over my desktop. Yes, that's right, over my bloody desktop!

In both cases it's advertising Evernote's paid-for tiers in a way that it never has before. It's seriously annoying.

Now, before anyone pipes up that it's a company that needs money to keep things going... I know. I don't mind that. I don't mind the odd nag here and there. More to the point I actually don't mind paying for software and services. I actually do pay for software and services. There's a handful of different tools and the like that I make good use of every month which I pay for because they're worth paying for.

Evernote is one that I've been considering paying for too. The problem is, what they offer in the paid versions isn't really anything I need. Everything I use Evernote for can be done in the free version; I have no need to pay for it.

There is, of course, a good argument to be made in favour of the idea that if you benefit from a service you should pay for it anyway so that it doesn't go away. Having watched the likes of Catch and Springpad disappear I think that's a very compelling argument and one that has had me, in recent months, thinking I should buy some paid-for Evernote tier.

The problem I face now though is this: this move by Evernote to go with a pop-up nagware model, especially one that's willing to pop up nagging windows on my desktop, gives me the feeling that the company is struggling and getting desperate. While this should have me thinking that now is a really good time to pay for something I appreciate it's actually having the opposite effect. It's having me wonder if, in fact, I should be looking for an alternative that isn't giving this impression.

Yes, even one that I'd need to pay for.

Last night, before heading for bed, I noticed that there was an update available for OS X on the iMac, and also for iTunes. Despite the late hour I decided to do the update anyway. OS X updated pretty smoothly (albeit with some rather unhelpful progress bars that appear to give estimated times that have no relation to reality), as did iTunes.

I was then told that there was an update for my iPod as well (all part of this new thing where Apple have invented Spotify, obviously). I let that start doing its thing and that's where things got odd. First it started the update and the iPod appeared to insist that it wasn't plugged into the iMac, even though it was. Then I gave it a second go (after unplugging it and plugging it in again) and it all seemed to go through just fine, only...

...while the iPod was pretty sure it was now running iOS 8.4, iTunes on the iMac had other ideas:

The following morning iTunes kept insisting that it needed to do the update so, even though the iPod was obviously up to date, I let it do it anyway. After it'd gone through the update process again it still insisted that the iPod was running 8.3 rather than 8.4. Until, that is, I unplgged it and plugged it back in again.

So now it all seems fine. I just had to do a variation on "have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Once again I find myself running into things on a Mac that are very common elsewhere, on other operating systems, and which Mac owners would often have you believe weren't an issue.