I’ve been making steady progress on my project to consolidate all my notes into Evernote. As I’ve said before, there are a few things that I don’t like about Evernote, but I’ve decided that it’s the best solution for my needs.
Last night, I got the usual client software upgrade pop-up on my Mac; Evernote updates their client pretty frequently, so that’s generally not too exciting. But in the release notes this time, I saw that it was a major version upgrade (5.x to 6.0), and the top item in the feature list was “Sleek new design inspired by OS X Yosemite.” I groaned a bit, but went ahead with the upgrade.
The new version is, indeed, more Yosemite-like, with diminished contrast between foreground and background, making it harder for old folks with poor eyesight like me to use. I’m having the same problem with 1Password.
There’s a good overview of the upgrade at MacStories. Other than the unfortunate Yosemite-inspired design changes, the client still works fine, and they didn’t make any unnecessary changes to keyboard shortcuts or anything else that would affect my ability to use the software productively, so that’s good. (When did we get to the point where the main thing I hope for in a software upgrade is that they don’t make it too much harder to use, though? Was it the Office ribbon? The all-caps menus and horrible color scheme changes in Visual Studio 2012? iOS 7? But I digress.)
I’m also not terribly excited about the new features they’ve added to Evernote recently. Over the last few versions, they’ve added a presentation mode, work chat, and now “context“. None of those things really helps me use the software for its main purpose — taking notes and organizing them. But they’re easy enough to ignore. (I’d be even happier, of course, if they’d let me remove the buttons for these features, so I could use the space more effectively.)
And I’d be really happy if programs like Evernote and 1Password would introduce options in their software to switch to an alternate color scheme, like Visual Studio did after enough people complained about VS 2012’s default color scheme.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering if messing with the system font on my Mac will make things easier to read or harder. I want to try out Fira and Input. While replacing the system font probably isn’t something Apple wants you to do, it’s simple enough and appears to be easily reversible, so I might as well try. (I miss the old days, when you could use a tool like Kaleidoscope to change practically everything in the UI!)
Good question, “When did we get to the point where the main thing I hope for in a software upgrade is that they don’t make it too much harder to use…?” On iOS it can be even worse where if you need to reload the OS you are now generally stuck with version 8.x which brings a 4s to its knees [I’ve heard you can sometimes talk Apple into giving you access to version 7.x but who has times for that].
As for making things easier to see on the Mac… I expect you have already tried ALL the other options under Accessibility, Display? Sometimes I “Invert colors” and “Increase contrast” sounds promising.
Dan –
Yeah, I’ve messed around in the accessibility/display area a bit. I should try using the “invert colors” setting the next time I’m doing any late-night computing and see if it helps.