Evernote for Mac Update: Card View, Word Count, New Save Features, and More
Today, Evernote for Mac gets a pretty great update (v 3.1) full of new features, redesigned screens and stability improvements. We've added a completely new Card View, word and character counts for notes, easier attachment export, and much more.
Context & Ripple Effects
This v3.1 release continues the Mac client's steady rebuild that began with the 2.0 beta's notebook stacks and sharing and the data-organization push behind GigaOM's 'too much data' piece; Card View and word/character counts are the latest increment rather than a platform shift. What makes a routine point release notable is its timing: Evernote shipped it two days after confirming the Penultimate acquisition for handwriting input and closing a $70 million round, with CEO Phil Libin putting the user base near 30 million at The Next Web Conference in April.
First-order effects
- Mac users get a denser browsing surface via Card View plus word and character counts — features that matter most to the writers and students who anchor Evernote's core note-taking use case.
- Attachment export becomes easier, lowering the friction of moving content out of Evernote even as the company keeps adding reasons to stay in.
Second-order effects
- Coming on the heels of the March Android update's speech-to-text and widget work, this release shows Evernote running a parallel feature cadence across platforms, pressuring competitors like Springpad and Catch to match release velocity rather than single features.
- The breadth of pickup — Engadget, The Verge, Lifehacker, MacStories and four more outlets covering one version bump — signals how much attention capital Evernote's fresh funding and user growth now command, effectively free marketing for the desktop client.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Evernote is positioning itself as a multi-input capture layer — typed notes on Mac, dictated notes on Android, handwriting via Penultimate — which pushes it toward being default infrastructure for personal data rather than a single-purpose app.
The trend: Note-taking apps are competing on capture-method breadth and cross-platform release cadence as they scale toward mass-market user bases.