Update: App Store average rating is now down to 2.4 in Germany.
Dropped slightly from 4 to 3.8 in Singapore. Maybe not enough people using it to care or make a dent. Last review was in 8 Oct after all.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Fantastical Unifies Its Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch Calendar Experience With Weather, Tasks, Meeting Proposals, and More
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Dropped slightly from 4 to 3.8 in Singapore. Maybe not enough people using it to care or make a dent. Last review was in 8 Oct after all.
No, thank you. I think I would tolerate replacing just 1 app in favour of completely compromising security on my device.
Haven't been on this thread for a few days, but I am angry! Woke up this morning and was in transit to the airport trying to line up appointments with my clients along the way. Open up Fantastical on my iPhone and it looks like it was auto-updated to the new v3 without asking me...and now I can't do a single thing at all...I am just getting harassed with opening accounts, etc, etc, etc. I don't have time for this and in the midst of my busiest time, I lost access to what I had with Fantastical 2 and I never asked or prompted to upgrade to v3.
I don't have time to investigate right now, but I am ticked off because I paid real money across all my devices for Version 2 and now they have wiped that out without any warning or forethought. I am pretty certain I am going to complain to my credit card company and I will likely dump this developer as well.
I don't have time to investigate right now, but I am ticked off because I paid real money across all my devices for Version 2 and now they have wiped that out without any warning or forethought. I am pretty certain I am going to complain to my credit card company and I will likely dump this developer as well.
Already down to 3.2 and continuing to fall
And also someone here (or Twitter, I don't remember) suggested marking the negative reviews as "Helpful" as they make them more visible on the default view.
Yep... if you go there and sort by recent, it is just a torrent of one star reviews.
Is it legal for the developer to do this? This was a fully paid application that was removed from our devices.
At the very least, is this a violation to any Apple App Store regulations?
Are there any recourses a consumer can do other than leaving a poor review and stop using the app?
I have been a Fantastical user for years on my iPhone. When I recently switched back to using Reminders for my task management, I started using Fantastical even more heavily. The update is nice and definitely makes the app more functional. I get a 6-month free trial of premium so will use that and see how I feel at the end.
HOWEVER, like many, I have issues with how this update was rolled out. The developers have insisted that people who purchased version 2 previously would not lose any features, but reading the posts on Reddit and twitter make it clear that this was not the case, and people DID lose features they had already paid for. While this seems to be due to an issue with the roll-out, failure of the developers to acknowledge this is a bad sign.
In addition, I don't have an issue paying for an app that is very well-supported and constantly comes out with new features AND is reasonably priced. Day One is such an app - the developers have heavily supported the app, new features are added all the time, and they provide extensive support to customers. The annual subscription cost is also very reasonable. Fantastical is charging $40 a year and even for me (someone with a decent disposable income), I do not consider that reasonable. The added functionality in Fantastical does not warrant that cost IMO.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's not clear yet if Flexibits just shot themselves in the proverbial foot or if, after the dust settles, enough people will become premium subscribers to sustain this product. Personally, while I will be using my free trial of premium, I will also be exploring other apps that have similar functionality, such as Calendars 5.
HOWEVER, like many, I have issues with how this update was rolled out. The developers have insisted that people who purchased version 2 previously would not lose any features, but reading the posts on Reddit and twitter make it clear that this was not the case, and people DID lose features they had already paid for. While this seems to be due to an issue with the roll-out, failure of the developers to acknowledge this is a bad sign.
In addition, I don't have an issue paying for an app that is very well-supported and constantly comes out with new features AND is reasonably priced. Day One is such an app - the developers have heavily supported the app, new features are added all the time, and they provide extensive support to customers. The annual subscription cost is also very reasonable. Fantastical is charging $40 a year and even for me (someone with a decent disposable income), I do not consider that reasonable. The added functionality in Fantastical does not warrant that cost IMO.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's not clear yet if Flexibits just shot themselves in the proverbial foot or if, after the dust settles, enough people will become premium subscribers to sustain this product. Personally, while I will be using my free trial of premium, I will also be exploring other apps that have similar functionality, such as Calendars 5.
I understand the need to make money, but honestly, how many people are at Flexibits working on this app? I mean, this is a whole company? For a calendar app. I got to be honest, I always thought it was just a couple of people making this from how long the wait between Fantastical 2 and 3 have been.
If they would have said $1 a month or $10 a year, ok. But $40 is an automatic cancel and delete.
If they would have said $1 a month or $10 a year, ok. But $40 is an automatic cancel and delete.
I suspect they have to pay a lot of money for their cloud servers and the connection to AccuWeather. The problem here is that they decided to turn Fantastical from a mere app into a cloud service, without asking their users if they are ok with that. Instead they automatically updated their users to v3, and thus have installed ransomware on their users' devices. Users don't have the choice if they want to stay with v2 or if they want to join Fantastical 3 cloud service. They have to. And that's why users give Flexibits the finger.
[automerge]1580485612[/automerge]
It's one thing to release a new app - as a new, separate download in the App Store - and to say: "Hey, we have extended our offer from a mere app to a cloud service with the following extended functionalities. Version 2 won't get any updates. Make your choice: Stay with v2 or download v3 and subscribe." They even could have published an "update" of v2 where a notification in re: to v3 could have popped-up for 3-5 times.
But it's another thing to force your users into your new cloud service, without giving them a choice, other than to delete Fantastical altogether. But I suspect Flexibits knew how most users would react to a subscription scheme, and so they decided to do the ransomware thing.
And I'm deeply disappointed by all these supposedly "pro-reviewers" like Viticci from MacStories that none of them pointed out this problem, which could lead their readers into thinking how much Flexibits payed them to omit this critical point.
Last edited:
Have used Fantastical on my phone for 6 years and on my Mac as well. Loved V1 and V2. V3 is a cash grab.
We can only hope that Flexibits see sense and either a) reduce these insane prices or better still b) re-release v2 for the people that had already bought it and release v3 as a standalone product. You can then choose to subscribe to v3 if you want to or remain with v2, agreeing to the lack of updates.
Frankly from some of their posts on Twitter they have responded poorly with a degree of arrogance and I doubt will change anything. They deserve to be hit...hard. Rating now at 3.1 in the UK store.
We can only hope that Flexibits see sense and either a) reduce these insane prices or better still b) re-release v2 for the people that had already bought it and release v3 as a standalone product. You can then choose to subscribe to v3 if you want to or remain with v2, agreeing to the lack of updates.
Frankly from some of their posts on Twitter they have responded poorly with a degree of arrogance and I doubt will change anything. They deserve to be hit...hard. Rating now at 3.1 in the UK store.
The thing Flexibits have to learn: You don't spit on the people who pay your bills. At least if you're not a giant like Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
I'd be fine with something like the following:
Keep the app as it is for free, and offer:
One-Time In-App Purchase for "Deluxe" mode
To me this seems fair for users and still lets Flexibits make money on their work/server costs.
Keep the app as it is for free, and offer:
One-Time In-App Purchase for "Deluxe" mode
- Unlock different UI views
- Unlimited calendar sets
- Time travel / time to leave notifications
- Hide events
- Time Zone Support
- Templates
- Extended weather data
- Smart Scheduling features
- Interesting Calendars
To me this seems fair for users and still lets Flexibits make money on their work/server costs.
I would of been happy with V3 and a ONE TIME price of £10-15. I am not paying a subscription for a calendar app which costs almost as much as Netflix! Pure greed from the developers.
AFAIK, they only have three products (more if you count 3 apps on phone/watch/tablet/Mac)... Fantastical, Chatology and Cardhop. Not sure what the split is, but I'd guess the lion's share of their developers are working on Fantastical.
They just released the update for iOS and it has not fixed the Apple Watch issue, I still get the red spinner.
Update: Average rating in German App Store now down to 2.3.
Maybe so. But I don't think Flexibits is the kind of company that needs 100 employees working 9 to 5, 40 hours a week on a Calendar app...
Just seems odd. The whole new pricing scheme is ridiculous.
What I liked most about Fantastical was, that you see calendar appointments and reminders/tasks together in one view.
Natural language input is also nice.
Last edited:
Does anyone know how to figure out if you're getting the feature set that they claim you get if you'd previously bought Fantastical 2? I've seen tweets where they ask if you are using it in F2 mode or in Free mode, but I can't figure out which mode I'm in. What should I see if it's recognizing that I had previously bought Fnatastical 2?
I can't find anything in the app that displays that and I've asked 4 times on Twitter, but they keep ignoring my question. Is the whole "you get your F2-paid features" thing a lie and you just get what everyone gets who downloads the app for the first time now?
Thanks to anyone who can help.
I can't find anything in the app that displays that and I've asked 4 times on Twitter, but they keep ignoring my question. Is the whole "you get your F2-paid features" thing a lie and you just get what everyone gets who downloads the app for the first time now?
Thanks to anyone who can help.
The Stock iOS Calendar App has improved greatly and really closed the feature parity between the two in many areas. If iOS added Natural Language Processing into the iOS calendar app it would effectively kill the main selling point that Fantastical has over iOS Calendar app for me. Their notification center widget is also amazing, being able to see your calendar on different days directly within the widget. Honestly, if iOS added those two features, Fantastic would be removed from my phone.