Evernote in beta for Mac (and web)

Posted by Chris Thompson
Mar 8, 2008 at 07:10 PM

I don’t see a lot of desktop software going cross-platform. Some form of web/phone integration, yes, but beyond that, I doubt it. I can’t think of a major app that’s gone Mac -> Windows in recent years (Tinderbox and Notetaker have both been promising this for a long time, but there’s only so long one can hold his breath). There’s been mild movement Windows -> Mac (Mindmanager, now Evernote, a few others) for a variety of reasons: more momentum, more people who buy software, increasing geek/programmer mindshare, etc. In fact, there’s surely a market for a good single pane outliner on Windows now that Notemap has ceased active development, but no one seems to be picking up the torch. That’s fine with me really… I’d rather see Omni devote more resources to new features in OmniOutliner 4 rather than engage in a massive rewrite just to pick up a few customers in an OS market that’s proven deadly to so many good products. There might also be a market for a good web-only single-pane outliner, but so far webapps have been pretty weak.

Everyone except Office is using generic file formats anyway these days, so it’s not difficult to move info between programs when you switch platforms or put things on the web.

—Chris

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>The Mac world might be competitive, but
>not necessarily the cross-platform one, as yet. Yet convergence is a rather
>unstoppable trend; being able to connect to everything from everywhere, i.e. to
>whatever info from whatever platform. Everrnote is moving that way by providing a
>main Windows (and now Mac) product, a Pocket PC version and a web interface. The
>Evernote ‘vision’, as presented at the website, includes being able to input images
>sent via e-mail or other systems from cell phones, for example. I.e., easy input and
>retrieval later on through its integrated OCR, time logging, filters etc.