Evernote is a powerful app for managing a variety of notes, though it's power brings complexity and a proprietary note format and cloud server. Even so, it fills a couple of needs better than others note apps. I use it to keep and organize information more than notes, information that is mainly in the form of webpages, or photos. If I used voice notes, this is where I would keep them. Loosely, all these notes are images of ideas lifted from other sources. So this is a catalogue of those images.
The uses for Evernote that keeps it in my workflow is for storing webpages and note photos. For example, when I plan a trip there are inevitably several webpages for reservations, cancellation notices, and local attractions that I simply save to Evernote. This gives me a perfect picture of what the company in question sent me. This is sometimes better than email, for example when the company, say an airline, sends me a confirmation email that is nothing more than a link. And the link requires that after I navigate to it, I enter my login information to access my record, which is several frustrating pages deep in the process. Nothing like adding aggravation to anxiety when traveling! So with Evernote I simply open the app, enter a search term, and voila! There is my information snipped from the web. The plugins and extensions for web browsers make this usage easy for those situations when I use my MBP. This is one of the two Safari extensions I use most.
The other use for Evernote for me is to act as a repository for research on a large or long project that includes images and webpages. Again, I can set up folders and start collecting items as I come across them.
I have tried Instapaper for this, but the fact that graphics are stripped away is a serious shortcoming for this particular use. If you are saving a reservation web page, it is mostly graphics, and many times the essential information is graphic. So Instapaper won't cut it for this, though its great for other things.
Sometimes, a picture is worth a number of words. See a book you want to remember for later? Snap a picture of the cover, in Evernote directly, or in Camera and send it to Evernote. Same with other ideas you see that would take too long to describe. This is such a help when you are on the move! Movies, too, or photos of a project idea or subject. One can even use it to organize photos for an essay if you have a subject in mind, annotating the pictures in real time, and embellishing later.
Originally, I used Evernote for long term storage of written notes. I have moved these to simple TextEdit files on DropBox. I changed this because of past experience with note organizing programs to which I lost access for one reason or another, and therefore lost all my notes. So recipes, personal notes, and long term written notes are now simple .txt files in backed up drives. This doesn't mean I would not be bothered to lose the data in Evernote, but that is mostly data from other sources, not my own work.
Evernote is so popular, there are numerous extension apps for it, to make it work as a better to-do list, to make it easy to capture quick notes, etc. This speaks to its large user base, its inbuilt utility, and its complexity.
I recommend Evernote for anyone who travels through life and needs to carry certain types of information with them. Just don't confuse it with a note taking app- it does this duty well, but less well than other apps, at least for my needs.
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