Notable Notes: Springpad vs. Evernote |
 Written by Allison Wahl |
  (9 votes, average: 4.11 out of 5)  Loading ... |
Between busy lives and hectic schedules, who can expect to be on top of everything? While many apps are devoted to enhancing your memory with notes and reminders, two have prevailed, ensuing a tight competition over who reigns supreme in Productivity. Here’s a look at the match-up between Springpad and Evernote:
Springpad (free): Springpad posits itself as the app you can use when something comes to mind, but you want to remember it later. By typing notes, making voice recordings, saving barcodes, searching nearby businesses, restaurants, or places, snapping barcodes, and conducting web searches, Springpad not only enables you to retrieve your trains of thought, but also takes them one step further. Once you save something to Springpad, the app enhances it with relevant, useful information like directions, price comparisons, related links, and even Groupons when possible. Furthermore, all the information saved in Springpad is accessible on the iPhone, iPad, and springpadit.com no matter if you’re on or offline. The app also enables you to access things like shopping lists, recipes, and favorite restaurants, and the web clipper tool saves anything of interest that you find online. You can also set e-mail and text reminders for important tasks and items so that you can be sure to return to your most pressing matters. So far, the current version has only garnered 3.5 out of 5 stars on the App Store, with users saying that it may not be as seamless as other note-taking apps, but it is incredibly powerful, it delivers on all its promises, it is great for its extensibility, it effectively keeps all information in one place across many devices, and they prefer it to Evernote.
Evernote (free): Evernote claims to be an “extension of your brain” through the abilities it provides to create text, audio, and photo notes that automatically synchronize to your Mac, PC, the web, and any iDevices. It may not enhance the notes you save as much as Springpad does, but all text within snapshots is searchable (making advertisements, product descriptions, websites, and even recipes easy to snap, save, and find later), and every note includes a geo-location. Furthermore, Evernote enables file synchronization, so you can add, sync, access, and share PPT, word, excel, PDF, … files across all versions of Evernote in use. The app’s suggested uses include class notes, blog inspiration, saving and accessing information from photos of anything from whiteboards to wine labels, staying in sync with your desktop computer, and generally just facilitating organization. Since it was just updated today, there are no ratings for the current version (although it boasts the biggest interface update to date), but overall, userser have given it 3 out of 5 stars. Some major issues people have encountered deal with the fact that many features, like accessing notes offline, can only be accesses with a premium upgrade, which requires a monthly fee. Futhermore, many people have had qualms with its performance and formatting and the kinks with saving notes, citing just a lot of bugs in general, but hopefully these issues are addressed and fixed in the latest version. However, despite these issues many people have praised it for its elegance and potential, saying how much they love it and how essential it is to them on a daily basis.
If you’re having trouble choosing between the two, remember that both apps are free, so you can take each for a spin. However, it seems that the battle ultimately boils down to this: do you want to enhance not just your notes but your daily routine, or do you want a more efficient way to save information and access files? In the end, the decision is yours — which is most notable, Springpad or Evernote?
