I stumbled upon EverNote the other day, and looking at the feature list, I came to the conclusion that this may very well be the note-taking application I have been looking for. No saving notes to a normal text file, no trying to figure where in a tree of categories I want to put a note—just plop the note down on an endless roll of paper, and worry about how to sort it later. But, of course, nothing is ever that perfect.

The interface completely ruined it for me. The concept is the nearest perfect I’ve seen, but the interface assured there would be no deal. Those fancy blue graphics seen in the screenshots? That’s the look for the application. No way to change it at all. And while that may be half-way appropriate on an XP desktop with the default theme, it sticks out like a sore thumb on my “classic”-themed, soft pink desktop.

See, I have a simple policy on the looks of the software I use: The application should not compete with the task at hand for my attention. Eye candy is distracting, so I lose the eye candy. If I can’t, I lose the entire application. No second thoughts.

And so, I uninstalled EverNote—a little sad to see it go, but my policy is there for a reason—and it turns out the uninstaller opens a form where the software people ask me why I’m uninstalling. I hate those forms. I’ve only gotten a response to filling out such a form once, and that response was a slightly nicer worded “that’s the way our costumers wants it, so go fuck yourself.” I haven’t bothered to fill out many such forms after that.

I was, however, in a good mood that day, so I did fill out EverNote’s form. Then I went on to completely forget about it, until a response plopped into my inbox a couple of days later. A polite response, telling me they were sorry the program didn’t suit me. A couple of more emails back and forth, and I’m left with this:

We really appreciate your taking the time to clarify what it is that you didn’t like about the EverNote look-&-feel. We take this very seriously, and I have asked our engineering team to develop a version that is more plain and less distracting. I’ll be sure to let you know just as soon as that version is available.

I can’t stop pinching myself, and I’m sure as heck looking forward to the next email I receive from them. Stay tuned.