has their ever been a positive comment for any previously-purchased app that went sub based?
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Fantastical Unifies Its Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch Calendar Experience With Weather, Tasks, Meeting Proposals, and More
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has their ever been a positive comment for any previously-purchased app that went sub based?
You can go back anyway, if you kept the old Fantastical 2, with iTunes 12.6.5.3 or Apple Configurator.
I see it more as that’s the price you need to charge to be sustainable. The developer is essentially maintaining an app across 4 platforms (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac), plus ongoing server and weather access costs. I suspect the last two would impose fairly significant costs that essentially scale with your number of users (ie: no economies of scale).
The disconnect then comes when you realise that the customer doesn’t care about this sort of thing, only what value he is getting for the price.
Wow! I didn't realize they changed back to offering a lifetime license for Postbox. Good for them. Thanks for this.
I bought the lifetime license before they switched to subscription, but the switch still left a bad taste in my mouth and I stopped recommending Postbox to friends.
For context: when I started using Fantastical in 2011 (!), it was only a menu-bar app and cost $15. The $50 fee for V2 seemed outrageous to me; I got it for $40 during a sale just over 2 years ago, and even that seemed steep.
I realize that Apple's annual OS updates sometimes mean more work for devs to keep applications current (though this isn't always the case). I'd be willing to pay a small fee for maintenance updates. But I don't need any of the features in V3, and there's no way I'll use a subscription-based calendar app.
long time paid-user of Fantastical 2 on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
just got an auto-update to Fantastical 3 on my phone and now I see that I can't get the Fantastical complication on my Watch any more - can't even see the Fantastical app in the Watch app anymore. My watch is original gen, still runing WatchOS 4.3.2, so I guess Flexibits is no longer supporting WatchOS 4 ?? in spite of them saying very clearly that "the Fantastical 2 features you know and love are still available to you for free". False advertising
just got an auto-update to Fantastical 3 on my phone and now I see that I can't get the Fantastical complication on my Watch any more - can't even see the Fantastical app in the Watch app anymore. My watch is original gen, still runing WatchOS 4.3.2, so I guess Flexibits is no longer supporting WatchOS 4 ?? in spite of them saying very clearly that "the Fantastical 2 features you know and love are still available to you for free". False advertising
v3 now requires you to sign up for a "Free" flexibits account (you can use Apple Sign in or whatever too) in order for it to work on the watch -- but it isn't working on the watch now anyhow, all you'll get is a red spinning wheel as they rushed to get the update out without testing -- they claim an update has been sent to Apple and waiting approval which fixes that issue.long time paid-user of Fantastical 2 on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
just got an auto-update to Fantastical 3 on my phone and now I see that I can't get the Fantastical complication on my Watch any more - can't even see the Fantastical app in the Watch app anymore. My watch is original gen, still runing WatchOS 4.3.2, so I guess Flexibits is no longer supporting WatchOS 4 ?? in spite of them saying very clearly that "the Fantastical 2 features you know and love are still available to you for free". False advertising
This is much greater way for sub-models: https://agenda.community/t/get-all-features/21
E-mailclient Postbox: From version 7 no longer lifetime, but the same price as before, but this time every year is a sub model. User complaints that much ... lifetime licence went back: https://www.postbox-inc.com/store/pricing
And how about, let's say ... (Windows-alert
1-time buy for € 37 (without tax). Imagine that, a powerhorse (even for the die-hards - home-user to sys-engineers) ) with that changelog. 25 years (even longer!)
Hello Flexibits?? V1, V2 on all platforms ...and now. S.T.O.P. Loud and Clear.
I was a die-hard Total Commander user back in my Windoze days... loved that app... and I think I paid about $15 for it when I first got it ... and Christian Ghisler is STILL updating it... I actually bought the app more than once because of his approach to software sales and development.
I bought Fantastical 2. Fair and square. They overwrote my app and gave me this nag-ware that now requires me to sign in to use the software/features I previously paid for. They didn't ask me if it was OK to take away my paid software. If I had sold Flexibits something 3 years ago and then went and changed the terms on how they used that item (more restrictive), then I think they'd be quite upset. So why is it OK for them to do this to thousands of people? It's borderline fraud and 100% unethical. They should have spun off this new version as a stand-alone product and left the previous PAID version alone. Their arrogance and greed have somehow convinced them that this is OK. I'm NOT OK with it. We need to complain to Apple for our money back. These companies need to realize this kind of forced obsolescence and feature restriction is unacceptable.
It's the same as Zbrush. I bought the app years and years ago. It's still being updated with major releases... for free. They generated a huge amount of goodwill that in turn created more sales.
Well I have read a lot of the responses regarding the subscription model. I for one do not mind the subscription model IF the developer continues to update frequently and add new features. There is the option to use the app fr free, with some additional features if you purchased version 2, or you can subscribe at $4.99 a month or as low as $3.33 a month when you pay for a full year at once. I have been using Fantastical since it's version 1 when it was only a menubar mini app. It has been great and I rarely use the Apple Calendar, so for me I will most likely pay the subscription price of $39.99 a year, which is what an updated version would probably have cost anyway. Been using the app for 2 days now and I love the new version.
Just out of interest - how many updates and new features do you really want for a calendar app once it’s past a certain point?
Seems like that expectation will be let down at some point before too long.
And the other problem is that it motivates the developer to add questionably useful “features” and ultimately add bloat simply to make it look as if value is being added.
I definitely agree with this. And I believe someone mention that the integration of weather had added to the cost of the app.
And I’m of the belief I don’t care about having to check for weather under a calendar app. I’m perfectly fine with using Dark Sky or Carrot for weather purposes.
Many other calendar apps have added weather to their apps, BusyCal, Outlook, and Informant just to name a few. It's becoming pretty common that calendar apps have weather. Nice feature, necessary? questionable, but it's handy. I do remember paying some pretty hefty fees for FantastiCal 2 when it came out a few years ago, I also believe there was a fee for not just the Mac, but separate fees for both the iPhone version and iPad version. Those fees alone would probably pay for at least 2 years of the annual subscription. Do I agree with the subscription model, not entirely, but of it's an app I use regularly and like, then to me I will pay it. You can argue "it's just a calendar app" all you want, but to me it's much more and worth the price.
Is this distinguishing enough.....
BusyCal. $49.95 (Mac) $4.99(iOS)
Informant. $49.95(Mac) plus $24.99 a year to sync with iOS
Outlook (Part of Office 365) @ $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month
Fantastical $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month Now THAT is a DISTINGUISHED feature.
I don't mind paid apps, but you cannot innovate indefinitely with a calendar app. The subscription model just doesn't fit this app.
Been using since v1 on my mac, then iPad, iPhone from v2. The fact that the app overrides the previous version on my phone was a deal breaker for me.
Weather, who cares, we have many decent weather apps now (see prev. posts), but paying the same amount for a calendar app as Apple TV monthly is just not worth it.
You need to create an account with them, just to view the basic calendar layout...
Not many incentives to pay, too many popups to pay...time to remove it, I guess...
Been using since v1 on my mac, then iPad, iPhone from v2. The fact that the app overrides the previous version on my phone was a deal breaker for me.
Weather, who cares, we have many decent weather apps now (see prev. posts), but paying the same amount for a calendar app as Apple TV monthly is just not worth it.
You need to create an account with them, just to view the basic calendar layout...
Not many incentives to pay, too many popups to pay...time to remove it, I guess...
No
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Precisely correct
They are trying to force this into being a bigger business than it necessarily is or should be.
You can deny location access and simply input a city and state for the weather settings.
You can DEFINITELY do a better job than Flexibits.
My three favorite apps:
1Password added subscription for extra features, while still supporting old iCloud accounts. It costs less than Fantastical, and they even have server costs and a team of around 200 people.
Apollo the Reddit client. Subscription for extra features. And the cost is just $1 per month. The developer has a wonderful attitude and many users even tip him extra money.
Bear the note app. $1.5 per month. Free to use on one device, subscription enables syncing. I have seen mostly positive comments.
Exactly. My o365 subscription is $10. This is outlook, word, excel and 11 other hosted applications/business tools. And my local calendar app wants half of that.
Fantastical is far and away the most popular calendar app for Mac the past 5+ years . They’ve clearly deluded themselves into thinking it’s life changing software, as opposed to reality - a simple desktop utility that’s easily replaced.
Out of curiosity I decided to trial busycal. It’s very similar feel and feature set (and not a stupid subscription).
This is the correct answer.
In 3 years it will be a $148 calendar (and counting). And it will be literally indistinguishable from the one you see/use today
Apollo is amazing, the dev is super activeon Reddit, and the pricing is tiered perfectly.
For sure. They definitely planned ahead and did their due diligence with the advetorial placements well in advance. Look how many were published yesterday, the exact day of the release. What are the chances? All the journalists got their beta copies weeks ago and coincidentally all published their ‘review’ at same time.
Flexibits should’ve put some of these resources into legit revenue streams/ Biz Dev instead of the PR push to counteract the negative response.
Update: App Store average rating is now down to 2.4 in Germany. 😂
This is true. However. You should review HOW they are syncing the data between phone and watch. That’s what they use the free account to do. You calendar event data are being sent to their servers and then down to the watch.
They claim with end to end encryption however it’s not been audited, and it’s not clear how the keys are shared between the systems so it reall might not be secure.