Jon Aquino's Mental Garden

Engineering beautiful software jon aquino labs | personal blog

Sunday, February 04, 2007

EverNote is Jef Raskin's Canon Cat

In 2000, Jef Raskin wrote a book called The Humane Interface on user-interface design, and one of his visionary examples was the Canon Cat - an ideal computer that had no concept of files or filenames. Rather, you simply turned it on and started typing. I've always thought mandatory filenames an unnecessary burden.

Well, after using the free version of EverNote for a couple of years, I can confidently say that this is the modern equivalent of Jef's Canon Cat. If you have a thought and want to jot it down, or are in the middle of a phone call and need to write down some information, you switch to EverNote with Ctrl+Alt+N (it appears instantly) and start typing. There are no filenames to think up, and no need to save (it saves automatically). The EverNote people call their product an "endless tape", and you can use its incremental search to find old notes.

2 Comments:

  • Hi, Jon!
    Just wanted you to know how much I appreciate your blog. It's not the first time I get a great software thanks to your review.
    Thank you and please don't stop writing.

    Eugenia

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2/08/2007 12:47 a.m.  

  • Hi Eugenia - You're most welcome! Your note brought a smile to my face.

    By Blogger Jonathan, at 2/08/2007 9:52 p.m.  

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