$29.99 for BusyCal 2 upgrade? Don't Think so!!

[baronbuzby]

BusyCal 2 is now released, and guess what guys, if you've been a loyal BusyCal user, you pay the SAME price for the UPGRADE as a NEW user.

This is scandalous.

Upgrade to Mountain Lion was cheaper.

Why not a proper upgrade price BusyCal???

[fhall1]

I agree and sent them an email stating the same. $30 is way too much for loyal users to pay to upgrade.

[jax72]

I agree with you.

Do you know what happened to the 2 purchasing options, though?

Is it only available on the App Store, now?

[baronbuzby]

Originally Posted by jax72

I agree with you.

Do you know what happened to the 2 purchasing options, though?

Is it only available on the App Store, now?

Yes, only App store now!

[jax72]

bummer... the website purchase was for 2 or 3 computers, so my wife could also use one.

[baronbuzby]

Originally Posted by jax72

bummer... the website purchase was for 2 or 3 computers, so my wife could also use one.

To be fair, if purchased from App store, licence is for anyone sharing your Apple ID

[jax72]

True.
But different people have different IDs.

Unless Busycal has amazing new features, I don't think we'll upgrade to 2.0.

[coachingguy]

Originally Posted by fhall1

I agree and sent them an email stating the same. $30 is way too much for loyal users to pay to upgrade.

I did the same. Busy Cal is clearly superior to iCal/Calendar and I've gotten at least 5 other people to make the switch... but $30 for this? No way...

Coachingguy

[DoctorCrap]

BusyCal 2
Calendar on Mac OS X, built in application.

What seems better?

[tdhurst]

Have any of the commenters here ever produced software for a living?

Or do you know the time and expertise it takes to make quality offerings?

Also, it's not a fair comparison between any software and OS X. Apple likely sells those at a loss in order to entice people to buy the high margin Macs.

[r3m1]

Originally Posted by tdhurst

Have any of the commenters here ever produced software for a living?

Or do you know the time and expertise it takes to make quality offerings?

Also, it's not a fair comparison between any software and OS X. Apple likely sells those at a loss in order to entice people to buy the high margin Macs.

Irrelevant - if you price yourself outside the market, the game is over - it doesnt matter how much time and expertise it takes to produce software. Its the market that ultimately decides.

[fhall1]

Originally Posted by tdhurst

Have any of the commenters here ever produced software for a living?

Or do you know the time and expertise it takes to make quality offerings?

Yes I do - not as a coder, but as a program manager on software development efforts for over 15 years. Indeed, producing quality s/w costs money, and I'm not saying they should price it at $4.99, but I consider it a slap in the face when long-time users (upgraders using the previously current version) have to pay the same price as new purchasers to get the new version.

[tdhurst]

Originally Posted by fhall1

Yes I do - not as a coder, but as a program manager on software development efforts for over 15 years. Indeed, producing quality s/w costs money, and I'm not saying they should price it at $4.99, but I consider it a slap in the face when long-time users (upgraders using the previously current version) have to pay the same price as new purchasers to get the new version.

Our entire outlook on what it takes to create digital goods has long been flawed because we've settled on crappy, free software and pirated the good stuff.

----------

Originally Posted by fhall1

Yes I do - not as a coder, but as a program manager on software development efforts for over 15 years. Indeed, producing quality s/w costs money, and I'm not saying they should price it at $4.99, but I consider it a slap in the face when long-time users (upgraders using the previously current version) have to pay the same price as new purchasers to get the new version.

Now this I can get behind. I also agree that some sort of consideration should be paid to long-time users.

When Things relaunched as Things 2, they gave it away for free to existing customers. Smart.

[moosecat]

As a regular BusyCal user, I was also shocked and disappointed at the lack of a discounted upgrade path. And frankly, it doesn't look like enough of an overhaul for me to feel the need to upgrade at anything other than a nominal price. (Indeed, it seems as though it has LOST some syncing functionality, based on the upgrade notes.)

[chatoyer]

I'd be happy to shell out $30 for it, but the new version removes Google Calendar sync, which I rely on extensively.

So, until they add that in, I'll stick with the previous version and/or go back to iCal/Calendar.

chatoyer

[radicalcentrist]

Doesn't it just remove the sync for calendars on your mac that you're publishing to Google?

You can still host the calendar on Google and then subscribe to it.

Originally Posted by chatoyer

I'd be happy to shell out $30 for it, but the new version removes Google Calendar sync, which I rely on extensively.

So, until they add that in, I'll stick with the previous version and/or go back to iCal/Calendar.

chatoyer

[Sital]

Originally Posted by baronbuzby

BusyCal 2 is now released, and guess what guys, if you've been a loyal BusyCal user, you pay the SAME price for the UPGRADE as a NEW user.

This is scandalous.

Upgrade to Mountain Lion was cheaper.

Why not a proper upgrade price BusyCal???

Even worse is that the $29.99 price is a special discount price only available until Dec. 31st. After that, unless they change their minds, current users will have to pay even more to upgrade.

[2stepbay]

I wrote:

Glad to see the next version of BusyCal make its debut. However, I find the "upgrade" price unfair. Making the price for BusyCal2 the same for a long time user versus new users makes no sense at all. As a "thank you" to those who have used BusyCal, seems $14.99 would be a more fair price.

From Customer Support at BusyCal:

BusyCal 2 is available exclusively on the Mac App Store.

The Mac App Store doesn't allow us to charge different prices for new or existing customers so we are offering upgrade pricing of $29.99 for all users, new and old.

You can download a 30-day trial here:
http://www.busymac.com/download/BusyCal.zip

And you can purchase here:
http://www.busymac.com/buy

[fhall1]

Originally Posted by 2stepbay

I wrote:

Glad to see the next version of BusyCal make its debut. However, I find the "upgrade" price unfair. Making the price for BusyCal2 the same for a long time user versus new users makes no sense at all. As a "thank you" to those who have used BusyCal, seems $14.99 would be a more fair price.

From Customer Support at BusyCal:

BusyCal 2 is available exclusively on the Mac App Store.

The Mac App Store doesn't allow us to charge different prices for new or existing customers so we are offering upgrade pricing of $29.99 for all users, new and old.

You can download a 30-day trial here:
http://www.busymac.com/download/BusyCal.zip

And you can purchase here:
http://www.busymac.com/buy

Yep....I got the same "canned" response. Guess I'll be using Calendar from here on out, or sticking to V1.6 - haven't decided yet. Now that they've gone "App Store" we won't even be seeing BusyCal in a bundle deal any more.

[jacg]

The snooze function offers no additional functionality over Calendar other than being able to adjust the default snooze in the application preferences.

Pre-ML we were able to adjust the snooze at the notification level. Without this, the advantages of Busycal are dwindling. Repeating events - I think that is the other reason I have it. £21? After less than a year with Busycal? Hard to justify.

Interesting to see how the App Store develops to deal with situations like this. Can't be long before we see Apple release paid updates to some of its titles. Perhaps then we will get an upgrade path?

[jacg]

Just discovered the smart filters in v2 - they could be really useful if you often want to view different sets of data in different ways. Easy to set up too.

I've emailed them about the per-notification snooze time option. If they don't get this working in ML it would be a real shame. I assume there are technical hurdles with notification centre, otherwise it would just work the way it did before ML (whereby you could snooze an alert and optionally adjust the snooze time for that individual alert).

Perhaps the dialogues that the notification centre API uses aren't set up for that sort of input?

[Sital]

Originally Posted by jacg

Interesting to see how the App Store develops to deal with situations like this. Can't be long before we see Apple release paid updates to some of its titles. Perhaps then we will get an upgrade path?

I'm not going to hold my breath. I don't think we'll get an upgrade path, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if we do.

[yojitani]

The reduced functionality and "upgrade" price are the consequences of going MAS. It's really a shame. I finally had a chance this morning to read over the changes in BC2. I was hoping for improvements, an upgrade. My credit card was ready to fork out, but I don't see this as an improvement at all. Publishing calendars was one of the main draws for me - without that I might as well use Calendar.

[Oldmanmac]

Originally Posted by jax72

Unless Busycal has amazing new features, I don't think we'll upgrade to 2.0.

+1

[jacg]

Update via email from BusyMac on custom snooze time:

"As you've noticed, Apple's Notification Center is not very flexible with snoozes. We may consider bringing back our own alarm window with custom snooze capability if enough people hate the new Notification Center integration. I'll add your vote to that camp."

Shame that ML Notification Centre is so limited. No point in snooze if I can't decide there and then when I want to postpone the notification to. Hope Apple make this possible and in the meantime perhaps BusyMac will bring back the functionality via their own notifications.