Simplenote down?
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Hi everybody.
First of all, sincere apologies for the time it took to address your thread.
Simplenote has been hit by a giant distributed botnet. We’ve managed to make it unimpactful for most of the users, but some of our mitigation efforts have obviously affected some of you.
Everything should be fine, now, but I’d like to personally apologize for not having followed up with you until now.
I’ll wait to see if some of you have any further issues before marking this thread as resolved.
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Hi stephdau,
Thank you so much for letting us know what happened. Could you clarify whether our notes are safe and whether there is any indication that a third party may have accessed them?
I’d also like to ask what exactly you mean by “only its basic functionality is being maintained at this time,” as stated on your website.
What are the plans for Simplenote going forward? Will it continue to be maintained, and if so, what does that mean in practice? Or is there a possibility that the service will eventually be discontinued?
Thank you again for taking the time to share this information with us. We really appreciate it!
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Hey @stephdau what is the actual status of Simplenote now? I think everyone on this thread has appreciated the continuing Simplenote maintenance support of Automattic, even though development has ceased, at least according to the FAQ:
“Simplenote is no longer in active development, and while the app remains available, only its basic functionality is being maintained at this time. No new features or enhancements are planned.”
The uncertainty is a concern for those of us (myself included) that have made Simplenote a critical part of the their lives and work, and appreciate the simplicity of the app (so most of use perfectly fine with no more features or enhancements).
But as operating systems evolve (like Apple’s move to 27) will inevitably require tweaks to apps, plus maintaining cloud services doesn’t come free, so at some point Automattic may have to make some tough decisions.
I think most of us here would happily ante up subscription $$$ to ensure that Simplenote remains a viable business. Perhaps there are plans to either charge for it, or sell the IP to someone who does want to make a business of it?
@stephdau your thoughts on such questions would be greatly appreciated!
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Access: we currently have no indication that any notes have been accessed, and I suspect that Simplenote was simply one targeted online service in a long list of others (in classic botnet fashion). What you experienced were primarily side effects of our remediation efforts to tackle the attack itself. But we’re not letting it go, and if anything changes in our conclusion that you remained protected through the attack, we will publicly acknowledge it. We believe in transparency.
As the FAQ states, Simplenote is no longer being actively developed, but Automattic is a firm believer in not letting existing users who choose to keep using our services down. At this time, we’re planning on keeping on running the service for you all, at our cost, with development being limited to making sure the service remains secure and active. That same mentality is also why we make sure that you can migrate to anything else with ease. Data liberation for all is also part of our core beliefs. 🙂
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@stephdau I truly appreciate the update. As a loyal user of Simplenote for over 26 years (using ResophNotes with it when there was no native Windows client) it has been invaluable. But I started to see issues within the last year when I couldn’t get timely answers to signing in on a Mac, and clearly the problems are compounding.
The fact that it took two full days for there to be a response from the company to itd community indicates that not only is there no longer going to be active development on Simplenote, but that support for it will be minimal at as well. If this true, just let us know, so we can make informed decisions about what to do from this point forward.
Thank you for understanding!
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@stephdau It looks like I just missed your reply. I appreciate the response regarding development, but we already knew that from the company’s previous announcement.
The question is, how many resources are being allocated towards ensuring decent support for the Simplenote system are being provided, and in a timely fashion? To ensure this, it seems some development must be maintained as time marches on and tech advances.
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@glauer42: I fully understand your concerns. I lead a team of developers specifically dedicated to maintaining Simplenote, and other under-maintenance products. What my team can’t do, other Automattic employees give their time towards, outside of their main responsibilities. In other words, we put resources towards making sure you’re not left in the dark, while others actively develop more modern product alternatives, such as Day One.
I take full responsibility for the less than stellar support experience you went through.
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@stephdau Thank you for the clarification!
Does this mean that the iOS app will still receive updates if needed for security or compatibility reasons? As @kiffmeister pointed out, operating systems keep evolving, and it looks like the iOS app hasn’t been updated in about a year.
Once again, I completely understand that Automattic is investing its resources in keeping this free service running, and that we can’t expect anything more. I also agree with @kiffmeister (yes, great minds think alike! 😄) that I’d be happy to pay a subscription fee to keep using Simplenote.
Am I right in understanding that Automattic has no plans to develop new features for Simplenote? Does this mean that, eventually, users will have to move to more modern alternatives, such as Day One? Or is Automattic considering introducing a paid subscription for Simplenote to support its continued development?
And finally, what about support? Will the Simplenote team continue to provide support here in the forum? If something stops working, can we still expect help? Or should we simply start a new topic here whenever we run into an issue?
Thanks again for taking the time to clarify things!
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@leopools: iOS app updates: I can’t reasonably tell you that’ll be the case forever, but we will indeed do, or give you plenty of advanced notice if it ever becomes wholly unrealistic.
No plans for new feature: as we’ve publicly documented, that is indeed the case.
Have to move: my team and I are here to insure that you can keep your existing workflows alive, for as long as possible, but I’d be dishonest by not acknowledging that moving to more modern amenities isn’t the right long term thing to do. I do not feel bringing paid subscriptions into play is the best way to go forward (but again, things can change, regardless of my personal opinion).
Support: what you experienced was my failure to coordinate with support better/faster, having been focusing on the mitigation aspect of things (deep into the night, for parts of it). Our support teams normally answer Simplenote support request in the same way as any of our other actively developed products. As a token of what I mean: I’m replying to you on what is normally my day off, because I felt you deserved that from me, and Automattic, regardless of it being a free product. 🙂
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@stephdau Thank you for responding to us. We are big fans of Simplenote, finding it the most productive note program for our needs, or else we wouldn’t be here trying to figure out the best path forward!
I’ve used it for over 16 years, find it perfect for me, and thus don’t want to move to something else. I was hoping, even with the previous announcement of no new development, that there would be a path forward. But saying that moving to something more modern is the right thing to do long term, it’s clear that we’ll have to move on from Simplenote. And even if we don’t have to today, I sadly think I have to, because I don’t want to be stuck without the time and means to migrate off it when the next problem occurs.
While many other note apps have been influenced by Simplenote and tried to iterate on it to make something “better,” they haven’t. We’ll just have to deal with it!
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@glauer42 That’s my quandary too. While @stephdau is donating his time to keeping the backend running and keeping the app up with OS changes, I’m in seventh heaven. But this is so critical to my workflows, as I was reminded on Monday, I need something that will be there, even if @stephdau moves on. I did look at Day One and if you’re into apps with lots of bells and whistles, it looks very good. But maybe I’m a dinosaur, but I prefer Simplenote’s simplicity.
I was reminded of this after I exported my Simplenote notes to Apple Notes. The process went well, but when I tried to copy what I thought was a block of plain text from an Apple Notes note, and tried to paste it into a document, I discovered it was full of various formatting-related meta data, the kind of garbage I don’t need. But I can count on Apple Notes being around forever (I’m 69 so I think I can say that safely) and I can find workarounds for the garbage that Apple Notes inserts.
But thanks @stephdau for all your time and effort, plus your forthrightness here. And I’m still not absolutely committed to Apple Notes, so I could return to the Simplenote fold!
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@kiffmeister Agreed on all points! And while I’m now on Standard Notes (alas while I have an iPhone and Macbook, my desktop is a Windows machine, otherwise I’d just use Apple Notes), it took me HOURS to do it, realize things weren’t quite right (Standard Notes has note headers, and preview lines that work differently), delete the notes, redo the import, still not be happy, try again, try AGAIN, realize I’m not going to get it exactly right, and eventually live with it.
Do I want to go through all of this again, in the other direction, if Simplenote comes back? Sadly, no. If I move off Simplenote today (which I likely will), I won’t be back, because I can’t go through this tiresome export-import process more than once every two decades…
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Hey folks, I don’t want to contribute more to the traffic, but could a good soul list all the reasonable alternatives that were found so far (besides Apple Notes)? Many of the things I tried in the past suffered from Bloatware…
I’ll stay loyal to Simplenote for now but I think it’s responsible to start checking for other options.
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A couple questions:
- Did the recent incident have any known data security leak/breach associated with it?
- Was the recent incident related to the fact that password reset emails weren’t working (see my comment here for more info, as I got an unrequested Spanish password reset email on October 15th and did not receive password reset emails that I requested)
- How is it possible that a botnet would seemingly affect only the Apple platforms?
- Does Simplenote have any plans to address this data loss issue specifically?
- Does Simplenote have any plans to implement end-to-end encryption?
Thanks for all of your hard work on what is admittedly a free multi-decade service.
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Also, strong agree on not liking the garbage formatting and other bells that other notes apps add to my text as baggage. The whole reason I’m able to gracefully migrate away from Simplenote in the first place is because my thousands of notes spanning back to 2014 are just plaintext. I don’t even use the markdown features.
Replying to turtlebriefly28b5c7539d, see my Reddit comment (which also links back to some comments I made in this forum) and that Reddit thread in general for alternatives to Simplenote. I’m firmly in the camp of Apple Notes and/or Bear being the best alternatives with solid company backing and the same philosophy but opinions differ and there are a bunch. Many have different features that might be worth it, i.e. Obsidian is a whole other beast entirely.
Lastly, ignore my #1 above, as I see it was already answered. One additional question, though: Would y’all consider just selling Simplenote? I watched a very messy series of acquisitions unfold over the years with the Castro podcast app for iOS and it was a rocky road but the app is now in a good place when it was once abandonware. I’m wondering if the natural course of things at this point would be to sell Simplenote to a dev or company that would endeavor to make it profitable and thus potentially make it more viable in the current market. One example would be Tiny, who bought Castro and honestly kind of ruined it in my opinion before the current dev took it over, but at least in theory Tiny would be a good company to take ownership of Simplenote.
I would rather roll the dice and see Simplenote sold to a passionate and transparent dev than watch it just wither and die on the vine if that’s the alternative. I know you say you’ll continue to support it but this recent issue with a full day of downtime and radio silence on top of #4 and #5 I listed above make it really difficult to continue using Simplenote at this point. I would almost rather see it sold or sunsetted instead of this strange limbo state that I haven’t seen many (any?) other apps do where it’s not being actively developed and the devs themselves are soft recommending that we move on.
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I would probably go with Bear if I weren’t so deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem, which makes Apple Notes the best option for me. But it does pain me to leave such a great app like SimpleNote behind. But I would probably switch back if Simplenote were to be acquired by the kind of firm that @paulgemp614e5204f9 describes, not that I don’t appreciate the dedication of Automattic and its staff like @stephdau.
