Only damage control they can do that would be effective would be to reverse this stupid decision for a subscription model. Else the flood gates will continue to open was people leave this app by the masses!
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
Only damage control they can do that would be effective would be to reverse this stupid decision for a subscription model. Else the flood gates will continue to open was people leave this app by the masses!
Fairplay to them if they can get it, I'm getting a bit of subscription overload these days. I'd pay $29.00 for the entire bundle.
No disrespect to them, if they can get it, more power to them. I personally don't see the value
No disrespect to them, if they can get it, more power to them. I personally don't see the value
I'm having an issue with Fantastical 3 on my Mac. Whenever I try to right click on an appointment or anything else in the calendar it crashes an closes. Restarted the app like 10 times; can't right-click without it crashing. Anyone else run into this? Also events are no longer color coded as I had them in Fantastical 2. What happened?
Look what happened to Airmail, and that they were actually offering some service (the email servers). All 1 star reviews since except a few surely paid/by employees and now a 2 star app fallen off the face of the earth basically.
More fair. The problem though is what if you just own an iphone? Subscription at one price doesnt work.
Im sure if you had a Mac (the app was $50) and an iphone and ipad then $2/month may be worth it. For 1 device its not. They would have been better doing 99 cents per device and $2 for the Mac (you would get 2 years for what it cost up front). Pick what you need or dont need rather than a 1 size fits all.
I still would not pay a subscription for a calendar app, but that would be more fair.
My biggest problem with Fantastical 3 on a Mac is its still insisting on the use of an "app specific password" for iCloud. As far as I'm aware, it's not really an app specific password and is completely insecure. Any app can use that password to bypass 2 factor authentication and access any of the data on you account that can be reached via an "app specific password". Just because you initiate an auth with that password to Fantastical, doesn't mean another app can't also use that same password to syphon off data from iCloud. The password is not locked to a specific install instance of Fantastical, or even more broadly just Fantastical. The password is there for any app to use.
The moment you set one of these "app specific" passwords up, you are significantly weakening the security of your data stored with Apple. Worse still, according to the Apple Support documents, an App Specific password can still access all kinds of goodies including your iCloud Mail.
From what Flexibits told in the past, the reason this is not tokenised as they do with other accounts (Google, Todoist, etc.) is because Apple hasn't bothered to make it possible to implement secure authentication for calendar data on a Mac.
I find this ridiculous after all this time. App specific passwords were there at the start to support legacy applications in the transition between simple passwords to a new world of multi-factor authentication. Apple should not still require developers to handover app specific passwords anymore to access iCloud data. They should be doing what practically every other company now does and securely authenticate and handoff a token or some other secure API method. (See how: Fantastical 3 does Google authentication, or how Tweetbot does Twitter authentication, or how any app authentications work with Todoist) And when you perform the authentication, you give it access to the data you want to share - and can uncheck anything else.
The moment you set one of these "app specific" passwords up, you are significantly weakening the security of your data stored with Apple. Worse still, according to the Apple Support documents, an App Specific password can still access all kinds of goodies including your iCloud Mail.
From what Flexibits told in the past, the reason this is not tokenised as they do with other accounts (Google, Todoist, etc.) is because Apple hasn't bothered to make it possible to implement secure authentication for calendar data on a Mac.
I find this ridiculous after all this time. App specific passwords were there at the start to support legacy applications in the transition between simple passwords to a new world of multi-factor authentication. Apple should not still require developers to handover app specific passwords anymore to access iCloud data. They should be doing what practically every other company now does and securely authenticate and handoff a token or some other secure API method. (See how: Fantastical 3 does Google authentication, or how Tweetbot does Twitter authentication, or how any app authentications work with Todoist) And when you perform the authentication, you give it access to the data you want to share - and can uncheck anything else.
I don't know about the last part. If you're the type that uses a calendar enough to justify spending $60 or whatever it is to get into the Mac + iPhone apps for this in the first place you probably aren't going to think too much about spending $3 or so a month to keep the train going.
If you just used Fantasitcal because you got it free through some bundle or discounted elsewhere and you have basic calendaring needs, then I can see why even $3 or so a month is too much.
Everyone has their own calculus on the value here. I'm sure Flexibits is planning on losing some of their customer base, but doing so in a way that helps them better serve the customers that want/need what Fantastical offers and the "power user" crowd in general seems to be a trade off they are willing to make.
Not really worth some of the hand wringing on here though. If you like it, great. If not, there's plenty of other options.
Fantastical 1 on all devices = $65 investment in 2013
Fantastical 2 on all devices = $65 investment in 2015
Fantastical 3 on all devices = no chance in hell am I paying $40 A YEAR for a calendar app.
Fantastical 2 on all devices = $65 investment in 2015
Fantastical 3 on all devices = no chance in hell am I paying $40 A YEAR for a calendar app.
I think your comment hits the nail squarely on the head regarding the calculation here. It makes absolute sense from a business perspective for Flexibits to focus on the people who really use their Fantastical app extensively. $3-$5 a month is nothing if you make significant productivity gains from having Fantastical in your life.
The casual users will need to go elsewhere if they don't want to pay a high premium for a nice looking calendar app they use occasionally.
Good luck guys! This just reminded me of Newton AKA Cloud Magic. I looked it up on the appstore not only did they go out of business close their doors promise prorated refunds and not honor them, they got purchased came back to the app store with a new we don't honor any old discounts nor refunds and they haven't updated the app for iOS 13 in any way but still allow people to pay 50 a year.
So just keep in mind you can pay yearly but good luck if the company goes sideways. This is usually the milk it hard before it dies run.
[automerge]1580322569[/automerge]
You know I understand what you are saying but its getting ridiculous. Everything is go big or go home. I remember when I could have an affordable MSDN Subscription to everything Microsoft for home hobby stuff and nowadays its "well if you like that stuff you need to pay small business prices for that server in your basement."
Go elsewhere to the next person for a few months until they go high premium as well.
So just keep in mind you can pay yearly but good luck if the company goes sideways. This is usually the milk it hard before it dies run.
[automerge]1580322569[/automerge]
You know I understand what you are saying but its getting ridiculous. Everything is go big or go home. I remember when I could have an affordable MSDN Subscription to everything Microsoft for home hobby stuff and nowadays its "well if you like that stuff you need to pay small business prices for that server in your basement."
Go elsewhere to the next person for a few months until they go high premium as well.
They keep insisting that Fantastical 2 functions are still available. Except in the previous version, I was never confronted by premium subscription pop-ups. Every time I use the new version, I am reminded that I don’t have a subscription with red icons, nag screens, and UI traps. They are not just limited to the settings tab, but are pervasive throughout the whole interface. Big no for a productivity app. I am looking for an alternative moving forward.
Last edited:
There is certainly now an issue for people who previously enjoyed purchasing a good list of high-quality apps and building a collection they would occasionally use. Doing the same today could easily cost you $100 a month in subscriptions when you tally them all up, which is completely unrealistic. Unfortunately, there will always be edge cases that nobody has real financial incentive to care about.
And it's subscriptions galore everywhere now - music, video, gaming, news, storage, devices, warranties, etc. It seemingly never ends. I get the complaints totally.
This is my thoughts. Been a fan for it for years.. and I’m not totally sure what my plans are now. I do understand that subscription model is best for developers. But as others have mention... they could of went cheaper.
Completely correct.
I have it on my Mac and on my iPhone. I never paid for the iPad version as I recall. I like it as an app, but do not use it enough because they do not support non-Julian dates (Hebrew, Japanese or Islamic calendars), as my iOS/macOS devices do. I requested but was told it was not on their roadmap, but not it seems weather was more important to them (I hope based on user requests, as it is not of interest to me).
They are one way, creating new versions on occasion (as they already did from Fantastical 1 to Fantastical 2), is another.
I completely understand their dilemma. There is an ongoing cost to keep a product up to date (just ensuring it runs on new OS versions, let alone taking advantage of new features). The problem these developers face is that they either have to try to grow their customer base (and use the new customers to pay for ongoing development), periodically create new versions (that they have to re-sell all their existing customers), or move to a subscription model.
Start with 10 developers at $120,000 a year (plus 25% for benefits for a total of $150,000), they need to net $1.5 million adding taxes (at a minimum of 20%) brings it to $1.875 million. Add in Apple’s cut brings you to $2.679 million. Not counting any other costs, they would need to have about 45,000 subscribers at $60 a year, or 67,000 new customers a year at a purchase price of $40.
If they pick a subscription model they have to decide at what price they will get enough customers to justify the cost of the work. The problem is that for many people, there is no difference between $12 a year and $60 - they will not pay either. So that, while if they got 100% adoption at $6 a year (or even an increase from new customers who are more comfortable with that than the $40 entry price before), it would be the same as 50% adoption at $12, 25% at $24, and 12.5% at $48, they are just as likely to get close to the same adoption at $6 a year as at $60.
All I can say is that I hope they know what they are doing and have done some customer research so they do not lose everything trying to stay alive.
Start with 10 developers at $120,000 a year (plus 25% for benefits for a total of $150,000), they need to net $1.5 million adding taxes (at a minimum of 20%) brings it to $1.875 million. Add in Apple’s cut brings you to $2.679 million. Not counting any other costs, they would need to have about 45,000 subscribers at $60 a year, or 67,000 new customers a year at a purchase price of $40.
I figured that it only was a matter of time before Fantastical went to a subscription model. Looks like that day has finally come. I'll echo the sentiment that others mentioned in their posts that subscription overload is in full effect.
I paid and used Fantastical 2 last year until the UI got tiring for me and I just went back to the stock calendar app. I like the refreshed UI in the update, but I already pay for a handful of subscription services already and I have no need to add another one when the stock calendar app works for what I need it to do.
I paid and used Fantastical 2 last year until the UI got tiring for me and I just went back to the stock calendar app. I like the refreshed UI in the update, but I already pay for a handful of subscription services already and I have no need to add another one when the stock calendar app works for what I need it to do.
Subscription...no thanks not for a Calendar app...bye bye Fantastical
This idea of a recurring revenue stream doesn’t make much sense. For instance... I decide on trying the subscription, and after one month.. I realize it’s not for me.
I like the idea that it’s all under one unifying experience.. whereas it syncs with all the Apple devices. But recurring revenue stream just seem bogus to me. But as I said previously... I do understand devs need to go the subscription route, I just feel Flexibits should price it cheaper.
And what‘s annoying customers even more.. is that this is a mandatory update instead of being standalone.
Last edited:
Hopefully enough people will take their frustrations out in the app store reviews. This app went from being a stand-out calendar app to a complete mess. Anyone trying to use the free version is constantly reminded of what you can't do. Between purchasing each version since launch for iOS, iPad and Mac, I've already given this company a lot of money. I'd be fine with a paid upgrade to v3 as a ONE TIME CHARGE but a subscription to a calendar app is just not going to happen. I'm curious about this big roadmap of innovation they have ahead that requires a subscription model to bring to life. Unless they can start attending my meetings for me, this app is almost at peak capability.
Weird! Quite a few of them were able to do it for decades, up until just the last few years.
Doing the same and so far there are other less greedy calendar apps that offer a lot and do not ask you to pay for their rent