Briefly: our big update

95 thoughts on “Briefly: our big update”

1. I just have to say, I love the new version and I think you did a kick-ass job of adding much-needed features but retaining simplicity. I don't understand all the complaints about the new icon, though… I wasn't a big fan of the old one at all, and I think the new icon perfectly represents the simplicity of the app itself and has a cool yin-yang look that works as a great metaphor for a service that interconnects all one's devices so effortlessly.Simperium, Hicksdesign: keep up the good work!

2. @Yakov:Great idea! Funny you should mention BASIC – Simplenote itself is a bit of a throwback to the text editors some of us used on 8-bit computers and early Macs back in the day.

3. One last feedback item on tagging and then I'll shut up :)With many GTD'ers already typing "@context" words in the title line of their notes, a great *option* would be to have SN parse this first line for words starting with @ or other tokens, and automatically register these as tags. This would also provide other third-party apps to more easily deal with tags, keeping Simplenote portable.More in general, I think a good way to mitigate the growing strain between simplicity and feature-creep would be to offer a "power user" options panel, so each user can choose whether to leverage these new capabilities.

4. Any chance for passward protection? I hate giving up my iphone and having ppl browse through my notes….

5. Since the upgrade I have lost notes that I have entered. Disappeared content. I have a premium account. I want my money back. I want my content back.This is unacceptable. The worst kind of bug. I cannot trust this app ever again. Developers you MUST explain what has gone wrong and what the premium account is for.

6. Peter, I think one of the perks to premium membership is SN keeps a backup of your notes. So, I think you're in good shape… good luck. For everyone else, I think Notational Velocity + Dropbox is a good solution since DB keeps backups. Also, Time Machine. Of course there's no Time Machine for iPhone.

7. I subscribed to comments on this post via email after commenting above. However, no links from these subscription emails ever work….including the one to unsubscribe. Any ideas on getting off the sub?

8. I wanted to keep loving Simplenote, I really did. But my experience is that this update has made the service unreliable and buggy. I'm a premium subscriber, using SN across iPhone, iPad, and desktop. Simplenote keeps randomly deleting notes; Notational Velocity w/ Dropbox, thank god, puts them back. It's a comedy of errors. Yes, I know my premium sub gets me backups, but is it appropriate for users to have to restore their lost notes from those backups constantly? I'm disappointed and unwilling to use the service for anything more important than a grocery list until it's fixed. And count me with the others who don't care for the new Pepsified icon. Loved the old one. Loved the old app. Alas.

9. Thanks everyone for your ongoing feedback.@Peter: We've contacted you. Your account looks fine, so all should be OK.@Gennever: I'm sorry you don't like the update. If you're experiencing unreliability, we'd love to hear the details at support@simplenoteapp.com so we can try to help you.

10. Thanks for the reply. I know this has been a major rollout for your crew there, and I'm going to try to keep the faith because Simplenote has been such a great tool for me in the past. My email to support is on the way.

11. I just had a random crash on the main screen. Also, not that this will ever happen, but autoscroll would be great. I actually use SN as a fakebook for parties and it would be great not to have to move my hands from the piano.

12. WOW! I was a little on-edge after a day or two of stumbling through the latest SimpleNote iPad app upgrade. The icon and more importantly the dramatic new user interface really threw me for a loop. I can't figure out how to get out of search mode in portrait orientation. It's so bizarre.With that said, the new web app is absolutely amazing!!! The versions feature is stunning, and makes me wish NotationalVelocity supported it. Seriously. I've only accidentally overwritten a note once or twice, but the results were devastating to my work-day… but now being able to access old revisions in realtime simply makes my life (and job) easier. Plus the UI is stunning!BRAVO!!!

13. Can you please explain your data security policy? How are the notes protected? I see you run on https and use the Google App Engine. However, it would be great to know who – if anyone – has access to our data and how you ensure it's safety.

14. While logged into iTunes (on an iPod touch), I noticed an update was available. So I installed it. Stupid me!!! Now it asks me to log into or create an account. I hadn't done this before, was just using the product to store a few notes locally. Please don't tell me that the upgrade wiped out all my data……..

15. Unfortunately, all the neat new stuff is overshadowed by the update carelessly erasing all previously saved notes. What on earth could you possibly have been thinking?

16. They probably didn't test it on setups that weren't tied to an online account. I think that those are the ppl having the most problems.

17. Any plans of including picture support to compete against apps like momolog? I think Simplenote has the best note app UI and I really want to switch from Evernote and Momo to this.

18. Any chance of having share/publish on the web client? I would subscribe to Premium only to have them there as well!

19. Is anyone else having an issue on IE7? I know it's a little behind the times, but I work for a big bloated corporate behemoth, so I don't anticipate an upgrade anytime soon. We just upgraded from IE6. We have this cool new OS called XP too!

20. I'm a great fan – use and recommend SimpleNote all the time – and in general love the changes in your major update, but have a couple of questions:– I see how to add new tags on the iPhone or online, and how on the iPhone to choose among existing tags to add to an existing note. I don't see how you choose among existing tags on your online implementation of SimpleNote. The only thing that's obvious to me is how to add new tags online.–How does one erase existing tags (one of mine is just a misspelling)?–Is there are way for the Notational Velocity tags to map the SimpleNote tags?Thanks!

21. All my notes disappeared on the update, and with no warning. This is not a user-friendly feature.

22. @Craig: Although our focus is to be an online service, we're considering ways to allow older, offline-only users to continue working the way they used to. There are more of these people than we realized.If you're among this group of offline-only users, please wait patiently until we issue an update that addresses your concerns.@Loshla: Yes, this is planned.@Joe: There are some known issues with older versions of IE. You can try using the old web interface at https://simple-note.appspot.com/index.html@andyudis: We'll be working to improve tag support over time. You can remove tags on your iPhone by swipe-deleting them. Notational Velocity tags do not yet sync with Simplenote, but we'll be working with Zach soon to add that.

23. Where are my notes!? I cannot believe that a simple upgrade wipes out all user data with zero warning. This is an unbelievable botch–the biggest I've ever seen in any software "upgrade"… How do we get our notes back!?edited by Simplenote: Please contact us at support@simplenoteapp.com and we can help you out. A small number of existing, offline-only users were affected.

24. Please please please tell me that my offline notes weren't botched by this upgrade."If you're among this group of offline-only users, please wait patiently until we issue an update that addresses your concerns."You must be honest with us now, are we really going to get our notes back or are they gone for good?

25. I just need an app which will allow me to take notes on my iTouch – just basic text, no formatting – and be able to save it on the PC. I can already transfer notes from the PC to the iTouch, with other third-party software.Also, there's no need to save it on the web anywhere, only on the iTouch and Windows PC.Does SimpleNote do that?

26. @JF: Please contact us at support@simplenoteapp.com and we can help you out.@DCWhatthe: Yes, lots of people are using it in this way. You're not obliged to use the web app. After you sign up, you can browse some Windows clients here.

27. here's another bug… my tags are gone, kind of. They are still there on the individual notes but on the "simplenote" main page there are no tags to be found. BTW brand new user.

28. @jc: There are some known issues with tag syncing that we're working to address. Sorry for the inconvenience.

29. Ok, I tried ResophNotes. As soon as a tag was added, the non-tagged notes were no longer visible in SimpleNotes, even when opening All Notes. They are still visible from ResophNotes. No problem with that, since they were all test notes.Which of the Windows clients has synch capabilities with SimpleNotes? Extreme Editor doesn't seem to synch. SimpleNoteSync looks intriguing and potentially flexible, but the warnings by the author are scary.

30. It's clearly a good idea to just wait for the next version. ResophNotes is not syncing at all, now. After adding some tags and notes in SimpleNotes on the iTouch, and deleting a few files, ResophNotes is showing only the SimpleNote documentation, and nothing else.The syncing itself thinks that it's working, it's clearly logged in and says 'synchronizing' for a second. But it doesn't pull in any of the newly created files from the iTouch.

31. "Any plans of including picture support to compete against apps like momolog? I think Simplenote has the best note app UI and I really want to switch from Evernote and Momo to this."Wow, please ignore this. The reason I use simplenote is because it DOESN'T have pictures. Momolog is a joke. Keep up the good work simplenote.

32. Simply love the update.I remember long time back i made a comparison list between a list of apps (Simplenote/evernote/Iphone native note/Gnote etc) for note taking and found what was lacking with all of them. Some were not in sync with web version, some were not available offline, some were not proper organised like tags/folder, some were utterly confusing.All could do few functions well but could not convince me to fully love them singularly.Now with this update, i can say that 99% of my expectations are met and in so many places have gone far ahead of themReally thank you guys for the update. Keep rocking.

33. Love the update. Agnostic on the icon.One problem: I have applied tags to my notes via iPhone but my tags are not showing up on my iPad (notes continue to sync fine but tags do not).Also I may be in the minority on this but I would love to see a Simplenote desktop client. I have tried Notational Velocity and Just Notes but neither is as nice as Simplenotes on my iPhone/iPad. Just saying.

34. @MikeC – I've experienced this the other way around. I found that clicking in the empty Tag field on the iPhone would show the tags that were assigned to that note. They would then be visible on the note, and on the tag list.I'd like to add another vote for a Simplenote desktop app, for the same reasons….

35. I would really like the option to turn tags off.

36. I just shared a note with the Ipad versionI have now a shared icon to the left of the note's title but the share button is now grayed ???solution : copy paste to a new note to get back the sharing optionAlso : pressing the sharing email note button sometimes the sharing link is not transmitted but only the notes's text

37. I am not a premium subscriber, but I love your app. Well, I DID love it until it upgraded and now I am being forced to create an account to retrieve my notes. I don't want to create an account. How do I extract my data? If I am forced to create an account to retrieve my data, you've lost me as a user. I don't really recall if I paid anything for it or not, so I guess if I got it for free, then you don't really care what I think. However, please make an account a non-necessity for use of Simplenote and do it quickly. I depend upon Simplenote daily and right now I am "dead in the water".

38. @Jean-Luc: Thanks, we're aware of this issue!@GC: Please contact us at support@simplenoteapp.com so we can help you. There are some other users who share your opinion, and we've been able to help them successfully.

39. All my notes have disappeared. The one tag I had created still shows up. Where are my notes?!?

40. Regarding my missing notes (and also in response to complaints by other users about missing notes), they reappeared when I removed the tags. Anyone who is finding notes missing or invisible, should try that.With the current version, it apparently is still worth it to use the application, if you avoid using any tags. Perhaps the next version will have the tag problems fixed.

41. Nice idea, @DCWhatthe, but hasn't resurrected my lost notes 😦

42. So after you removed all of the tags on your iTouch or iPod, nothing happened? Ok. I've only been working with this for a couple of weeks, until adding tags seemed to have caused the disappearance. When I removed the tags, everything was suddenly visible again.

43. I removed the tags and nothing new appeared. Mike @ Simplenote advised me to restore my iPhone to a previous backup, which worked although of course it annihilated any recent text messages, calendar entries etc. – but it did restore the old Simplenote, at which point I discovered that it was already synced online but to a different account – which still had all my notes in it. So what had actually happened was that when the Simplenote servers were confused and wouldn't recognise my login, I ended up creating a duplicate (empty) account. Simply logging out of the empty account and back into my old account brought everything back. Well, the notes, anyway. The calendar'll take more work.I've suggested that they allow two-way syncing and an alert so you'd have to OK having all your notes wiped out…

44. @Jamie: Happy it worked out in the end! You're right, there are some improvements we can make to ensure things go more smoothly for people who encounter problems. We'll work on that.

45. I just had a random crash on the main screen.Also, not that this will ever happen, but autoscroll would be great. I actually use SN as a fakebook for parties and it would be great not to have to move my hands from the piano.

Comments are closed.