Evernote Acquires Penultimate

Our Notes | 07 May 201207 May 12 | By Phil Libin

77 comments

Cocoa Box’s Penultimate, the beautifully simple handwriting app for iPad, has been one of our favorites pretty much since it came out two years ago, so we’re very thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired the company and that Penultimate is now part of the Evernote family!

Penultimate is hugely popular. In fact, according to Apple, it’s the #4 best-selling paid iPad app of all time. When you have such a great product, the last thing you want to do is mess with it. That’s why Penultimate creator, Ben Zotto, is joining Evernote to head up future app development. Penultimate will stay a separate, elegant application and will get many much-requested Evernote-y improvements including full search and synchronization. Ben will also lead the effort to put handwriting and digital ink functionality into other Evernote products and platforms, so you’ll see handwriting cross-pollination popping up everywhere.

We couldn’t be more excited that Penultimate is joining Evernote. Our team has been working on handwriting recognition and digital ink forever and it feels like for the very first time, the experience of writing on a tablet is actually great. That’s what Penultimate has done. Now that we can add Evernote’s technology and expertise, it’s about to get a lot more powerful. Just wait till you see what we’ve got in store.

Penultimate is available for $0.99 from the iTunes App Store.

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Asad

Hi. I have Evernote on my I phone and thik pad. My think pad has tablet HWR. Can I get any benefit more more from penultimate? I am a novice at these things. Thanks.
- Stefanie Fazzio
  
  Penultimate is currently available for iPad
dennis

All i have to say is Android!!!!!
http://leh.io Andrew

Now this sounds snappy! Oh my goodness!
JB

Great Job and Congrats! I am thrilled like millions of other users. I have been a user of both for years and have really wanted to write in my Evernote notebooks for a long time.

I can’t wait to see where the new unified team takes both products.

You have such a winner on your hands, all due to the passion and fantastic work of your team.
Dale Otero

i’d like to second the possible availability of PU for android. i use evernote on android/desktop 7 days a week to run my ENTIRE business and would love the possibility of taking clean notes on PDF docs. keep up the good work EN!!
- Andrew Sinkov
  
  Dale, we plan on bringing Penultimate to many platforms.
http://www.onlineinfo.net Richard

Great decision. Handwriting is the one feature you have been missing.

Looking forward to a clean integration.
Sam Avella

Would be great if the functionality of “convert tt text” could be added.
Shane

Great acquisition. The 2 primary reasons I am not a penultimate user are no import features for PDF’s and there is no handwriting to text functionality. If both of those come in, along with the integration into Evernote, I will be an immediate user.
Rogerio Barlotti

Please, as a lefty who suffers I beg you to move the tools (specially the new notebook) from the top… My hand keeps touching this all the times and breaks the writing by including a new notebook.

Create a full screen feature with no tools and it will solve lefty problems and will change me definitely from Notetake HD with Zoom to Penultimate. Indeed, your writing algorithym id the best on market.
- Stefanie Fazzio
  
  You can actually move the tools to the bottom in the settings. Tap the gear in the top right corner, then turn “tools on top” to the off position
David Marshall

I love the Evernote and ability to store notes using penultimate and sketches using skitch. I am, however, hoping that Evernote will bring together the abilities of both applications into one. This app should include:

A variable intelligent pen size – I love how the line thickness in sketches changes in penultimate by swiping across the page, but there are only 3 pen sizes. skitch has multiple pen sizes.

A typed text input to the Penultimate app – similar to skitch. One font type is fine.

The ability to set paper sizes to A4.

Skitch ability to export to Evernote and email as a PDF.

The more I use Evernote the more I find uses for it. Keep up the great work.

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