Author name: Rejus Almole

For a while, Evernote was on top of the world. The Californian note-taking app surfed the 2000s tech productivity boom to become the leader in its field. But then it fell from grace, becoming sluggish, buggy, and expensive. Users abandoned the platform, heading in droves to other note-taking apps.

And it looks like more change is afoot. On January 3, the sale of Evernote to the Italian company Bending Spoons was finally confirmed.

On one hand, this could be concerning for remaining users. Evernote will no longer be an independent company, meaning there could be huge changes to its current direction. But on the other hand… good?

I was an Evernote user for close to a decade before I switched last year. Things had simply gotten too bad with the bloated, slow, and cumbersome software, so I turned to Bear, a streamlined and beautiful bit of app.

With a new owner, Evernote now has an opportunity for a clean start. Bending Spoons already has a suite of consumer apps that are modern, powerful, and intuitive, and we have to believe the Italian company will use its expertise to shape a new Evernote.

The question is what should it do? How can Bending Spoons bring Evernote to its former glory? Well, we have some ideas.

Speed up Evernote apps

This was one of the main reasons why I moved away from Evernote. While I used and loved some of the app’s features (such as web clipping and document scanning), the main reason I used Evernote was for, well, notes.

While the speed of writing and searching on desktop was acceptable, the same wasn’t true on mobile devices — especially if they were a few years old.

If Bending Spoons wants to bring the shine back to Evernote, making its range of apps as lightning fast as possible would be a good start.

Remove the bloat…

In the mid-2010s, as Evernote was in the midst of accepting huge amounts of VC funds, the company diversified its offerings in order to open up more revenue streams. What that buzzwordy sentence means in human speak is Evernote jammed a whole load of features into the app and tried to be active on as many stores as possible.

Much of this was poorly planned and tested, leading to the software being infamously described as a “bug-ridden elephant” by Jason Kincaid.

While there have been upgrades to Evernote since that have improved overall performance, it still feels that the app is trying to do too much. Of course, having multimedia capabilities and integration into multiple apps is great for some people, but Evernote’s core mission should be note-taking. Instead, it feels focused on things like chat, calendar, and tasks, despite these areas of its software performing far worse than competitors.

Bending Spoons should either look at shearing back Evernote’s features, or allowing people to easily deselect certain features so the app can act as seamlessly as possible.

…but combine app functionality

Evernote has an array of different apps outside of its core bit of software — and some of these should be folded back into the main product.

On one hand, combining these apps into Evernote is antithetical to the above point of reducing bloat, but hear me out.

The software has tried to do many of the things you don’t want a note-taking app to do. Why, for example, would I ever want to chat on the same thing I’m writing on?

But look at those apps above again. They include a sketcher, a document scanner, and a handwriting app — all things that are useful to taking notes. Instead of being walled off from Evernote and largely forgotten about, these should be key features to make the process of taking notes as powerful as possible.

Reduce Evernote’s price

Cost was a huge element of me abandoning Evernote. At the time, I was paying €70 a year to take notes. That’s a silly amount of money — especially with how I used it.

I never got anywhere near the allocated 10GB a month of storage, had no need of calendar integration or task management, and never found a reason to connect to Google Drive. So what was I paying €70 a year for?

Bear — my current app — costs me around €14 ($15) for the same period, and I can’t say I’ve missed any of Evernote’s features since my transition.

I understand there will be some power users who want to use a full suite of features, but I guarantee there are scores more who just want to clip sites and store notes. So why not introduce a tier that’s closer to €20 a year? Something that offers all the basic features that people need?

Finally, Evernote must respect users

If Bending Spoons wants to save Evernote and for it to reclaim some its former glory, the first thing it should do is respect users. Stop pushing upgrades on people at every single possible opportunity. Stop being so overly restrictive on the number of devices individuals can use the free version with. Stop ignoring users’ complaints.

Instead, there needs to be a culture of respect and dialogue, treating those who use Evernote like people, rather than walking dollar signs.

Yes, Evernote has taken a fall, but it still has a strong enough brand and enough fans to become special again. The days of the unbridled tech boom are done, but there’s still a place for excellent apps doing simple things well. Let’s see if Bending Spoons can make that happen.

Did you know that the world is predicted to produce more than 50 million metric tons of e-waste this year? And, according to the latest statistics, less than 20% of this is recycled properly, meaning that huge amounts end up in landfills.

Gadgets play a big part in this. Just consider that 5.3 billion smartphones are expected to be thrown away in 2022.

But here’s the good news: gadgets will get more sustainable in 2023, and that’s all thanks to the emerging trend of circularity.

“In major markets such as Europe, consumers are looking for more durable, long-lasting products,” Stanton Thomas, Senior Vice President, Sustainability Solutions at o9 Solutions, told TNW.

More durable products will likely result in fewer sales over time due to “lower replacement rates.” This is something that manufacturers will need to accommodate in their business models, as these types of economic trade-offs — Stanton explained — are expected to mark “the transition to a sustainable, circular economy.”

According to Matthew Cockerill — an innovation consultant — manufacturers are already starting to focus on making their tech products last longer. And that’s because of three reasons: pressure from advocacy groups, changes in customer behavior, and recent legislation regarding the right to repair in Europe.

As Cockerill noted, this explains Samsung’s and Google’s partnership with iFixit to supply spare parts, and Apple’s rollout of the Self Service Repair Store for its products.

“Moving forward, these forces will start to shape the very architecture of our technology products and how they are sold, maintained, and regenerated, whilst also changing our attitudes to some of our established technology products,” he told TNW.

This, he believes, will turn some of “our established tech products” into “product classics,” which will maintain their “validity” and “desirability” for up to ten years — instead of being disposed of, or prematurely recycled.

The further we get into next year, the more we’ll see these sort of schemes picking up, with companies trying to design their devices to last as long as possible.

But beyond durability and repair, there’s another big trend that will make gadgets more sustainable in 2023.

The opportunity in refurbishing

“Reselling gadgets to refurbishers elongates the life of technology, as they can then be professionally repaired and re-sold,” Thibaud Hug de Larauze, CEO and co-founder of Back Market — a Paris-based marketplace for refurbished devices — told TNW. This is because “recycling isn’t advanced enough yet” to save every part of a device.

In fact, consumer interest in refurbished devices is growing. A recent survey by Keany found that 28% of more than 5,000 consumers across Europe and North America would opt for a high-quality refurbished product over a lower-quality brand-new product. And the global refurbished electronics market is forecasted to advance at an annual 12.1% rate of compound growth between 2022 and 2031.

But while startups such Back Market and Swappie are among those that are currently leading the transition, big tech manufacturers are expected to follow suit.

So far a mindset focused on constant updates, new launches, and profit-making has kept such companies back, de Larauze explained. But this is changing.

“As the climate crisis continues, we are starting to see major players investing more in refurbishment, as sustainability starts to become a lynchpin for success,” he noted.

Making gadgets more sustainable in 2023 with remanufacturing

Beyond refurbishing, Peter Bragg — Canon’s EMEA Sustainability & Government Affairs Director — believes that remanufacturing is the “missing link” in circular economy practices.

While there’s a rising trend in refurbished tech products, consumers are still hesitant due to optimal performance expectations and the simple feeling of wanting something “new and shiny,” he told TNW. And this is where remanufacturing comes in.

Remanufacturing maintains as much of the old device as possible and it rebuilds it so as to perform as a new product, Bragg explained. It’s an improvement on refurbishing “through its focus on performance and extensive testing which ensures that consumers are receiving what is essentially a new product, as opposed to simply extending the life of an existing one.”

That way, it can also address consumer demand for new, high-quality products, while reducing their environmental impact.

Nevertheless, the responsibility for more sustainable gadgets falls on users as well. And the ways to contribute to limiting the amount of e-waste are simple: consider second-hand products, invest in those that are durable, and take care of your device so you can hold to it for longer.

Just imagine that by extending the life of our smartphones by a single year, we would save Europe as much CO2 emissions as taking two million cars off the road annually.

And, hopefully, with companies making more durable devices, the rise of refurbishing, and a renewed focus on remanufacturing, we can make our gadgets more sustainable in 2023.