I started this post over two years ago and I’m just getting around to posting!

They say there are 7 stages of grief.

• Shock and denial
• Pain and guilt
• Anger and bargaining
• Depression
• The upward turn
• Reconstruction and working through
• Acceptance and hope

And leaving a beloved app has a grief all its own. I don’t know that all 7 stages apply to app loss but Anger/Bargaining, Depression, The Upward Turn, Reconstruction/Working Through, and Acceptance/Hope are all there. Maybe the first 2 (Shock/Denial & Pain/Guilt) are there as well but I didn’t know they were happening and I started with Anger.

I have been going through the stages of grief as I leave Evernote.

A while back (maybe 18 months or more), Evernote announced they were going to change some things. I was excited. I watched all the videos and looked forward to the new stuff. I signed up to be a beta tester! I’m all about better productivity and efficiency through technology. They were going to make the notes prettier! Who doesn’t like that?

Then the frustration started. Important functions (SHARE on a Mac) disappeared. Things were slower. The tags menu changed. I honestly don’t remember all my frustrations but they caused me to stop using Evernote as much as I had in the past.

But I stayed committed to Evernote. I had 1000s of notes. All the stuff from the shop. All my Breckinridge stuff. My essential Card Index contained A LOT of my recent research. I watched videos from trusted Evernote users who were more on the pulse of what was happening and listened to what they were doing. I waited. (Which is unusual for me).

I started to notice that I avoided working on my research projects because I didn’t want to mess with using Evernote. And returning to the office after over a year at home, I needed to rely on my processes… my systems… that worked for me. And Evernote just wasn’t. My job uses MS Office 365 and I started looking at transferring all my work notes to OneNote.

I searched the internet for solutions. I need one solution that does everything. Evernote was that for me for about a decade. I paid $7.99 for a Premium account so I could sync to more than 2 devices, to scan large amounts of data each day/week/month, etc.

At work, I embraced the Microsoft apps provided to me. So odd for me. I’m such a Mac person! I started using OneNote like I used Evernote. Combined with OneDrive, To Do and Outlook, my work efficiency increased. Plus it was keeping my work at work.

But what about home? I have my Breckinridge research, my recipe files, and other random life stuff that is stored in the green elephant. My paint colors list has saved me on more than one occasion in the last year with all the pandemic home projects. And then my 2000+ index cards in my Card File. All tagged and cross-referenced! What am I supposed to do with all that stuff? I don’t want to move to my work system because they don’t belong with work stuff.

Technology is ever changing and that is one of the things I love about it. But when you outgrow a tech platform, it is time to move on. If my work stuff was on Microsoft because that’s what I use at work, then my home stuff needs to be on Apple because that’s what I use at home.

Enter Apple Notes!

I was skeptical at first. Could Apple Notes really do all the things Evernote did? Could it really help me find exactly what I was looking for exactly when I needed it? I researched. I watched videos from other Evernote users who were making a switch. Did I want to continue to pay for something or could I make the built-in app on my devices work for me for free?

At the exact moment I’m looking for a new tool, Apple goes and gives Notes a major overhaul. Tags are introduced. The OS version of the app is enhanced with many of the great tools that iOS version has. Maybe… just maybe that will work!