Fantastical Updated With Home Screen Widgets, Scribble Support on iPad, and More

[MacRumors]

Popular calendar app Fantastical today received an update with support for new iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 features, including Home Screen widgets and Scribble.

A dozen customizable widgets are available, providing users with the date, a monthly calendar, scheduled events and tasks, and even the weather at a glance. All of the widgets are free to use, while widgets that incorporate Fantastical Premium features like conference call detection require a subscription for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

Scribble support allows iPad users to handwrite in any field with the Apple Pencil and have it automatically converted to text.

The full release notes for version 3.2:

- Widgets for iOS 14! 12 new and customizable widgets to view the date, weather, calendar, upcoming events, and tasks right on your home screen.
- Support for Scribble on iPadOS 14
- Support for new date and time pickers on iOS 14
- Recurring events are now shown more prominently when viewing hidden items
- Short back-to-back events are now less likely to overlap in Day and Week views
- Fixed an issue where sync to Google could get stuck in some situations
- Fixed an issue where sync errors on Zoom accounts sometimes wouldn't be shown
- Fixed an issue where notifications for recurring events could disappear suddenly
- Fixed an issue where deleting an event in the Apple Watch app wouldn't sync to the phone
- Various fixes and improvements

Fantastical is available on the App Store.

Article Link: Fantastical Updated With Home Screen Widgets, Scribble Support on iPad, and More

 

[GIZBUG]

while widgets that incorporate Fantastical Premium features like conference call detection require a subscription for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

** cringe **
At least there are a few basic widgets though.....

 

[jonnyb098]

Amazing apps like this with 12 widgets are EXACTLY the reason apple needs to allow widgets ANYWHERE on the damn screen!

 

[TiggrToo]

Popular calendar app Fantastical today received an update with support for new iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 features, including Home Screen widgets and Scribble.

A dozen customizable widgets are available, providing users with the date, a monthly calendar, scheduled events and tasks, and even the weather at a glance. All of the widgets are free to use, while widgets that incorporate Fantastical Premium features like conference call detection require a subscription for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

Scribble support allows iPad users to handwrite in any field with the Apple Pencil and have it automatically converted to text.

The full release notes for version 3.2:Fantastical is available on the App Store.

Article Link: Fantastical Updated With Home Screen Widgets, Scribble Support on iPad, and More

Woot! These are the widgets I’ve been looking for since my life runs on Fantastical...

 

[ericg301]

waiting for the onslaught of "a subscription for a calendar app? a CALENDAR app?" replies. old and tired.

if Fantastical is "just a calendar app," then it's not for you. if you see it mission control to schedule your entire life, then it's money well spent.

 

[dlopan]

The minute I saw it's 40 a year, pass. Maybe for 1password or my vpn. Not much else

 

[jb-net]

Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!

 

[ebika]

I'm probably in the minority, but I've purposefully kept Fantastical v2 on my iPhone because it bothers me that v3 requires I proxy my Apple Watch traffic through their servers. Now I'm caught between v2 and widgets that do look somewhat useful. Maybe it's time to jump over to Calendar 366.

 

[posguy99]

Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!

Fantastical's switch to subscription could be used in case studies of how to piss off users of your application. They turned it into nagware, didn't matter whether you had purchased the previous version and were quite happy with it or not.

 

[ericg301]

Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!

weird, because i had many pleasant exchanges with them over email when v3 relaunched..to where they gave me a free month or two and got me in the testflight beta. it is an essential piece of software to me.

and if it takes a small monthly sub fee to ensure ongoing, constant updates, i'll take the tradeoff compared to the YEARS where they let V2 just languish in both design and features.

also did you miss the part "All of the widgets are free to use."

 

[iObama]

waiting for the onslaught of "a subscription for a calendar app? a CALENDAR app?" replies. old and tired.

if Fantastical is "just a calendar app," then it's not for you. if you see it mission control to schedule your entire life, then it's money well spent.

I completely agree. Every other calendar app I try just doesn’t come close to Fantastical’s ease of use/design or the natural language processing.

For a third party app (aside from the biggies — YouTube, Twitter, etc.) to have stuck around my iPhone for ten years tells me all I need to know. Many others have come and gone lol.

 

[anthonymoody]

Sure wish they'd add the time to these.

 

[ericg301]

Sure wish they'd add the time to these.

it's always in the top left corner of your phone.

i dont think widgets can update every minute either...

 

[anthonymoody]

it's always in the top left corner of your phone.

i dont think widgets can update every minute either...

I like the bigger/bolder presentation of the time possible in a widget, but don't want to dedicate the screen space to a widget that's just the time. I hadn't thought about the refresh time. Did Windows Phone Tiles update in more or less real time?

 

[posguy99]

weird, because i had many pleasant exchanges with them over email when v3 relaunched..to where they gave me a free month or two and got me in the testflight beta. it is an essential piece of software to me.

Because you PAID them. For myself, I'd bought v1 and v2. v3 didn't interest me, but even though they claimed that you could still have the features you'd had on v2 without the subscription, it was so naggy about "why don't you subscribe" that I deleted it less than a day later.

 

[Mansu944]

$40 a year? I am never going to subscribe for an App. Make it and if there are compelling updates I will purchase those, but I will not subscribe.

 

[adamjackson]

I reluctantly subscribed to Fantastical's subscription a while ago and I'm blown away with the updates they've put out since then. Every month something new is out and ever time Apple adds a new feature to iOS or MacOS, Fantastical is first to support it and their applications are very reliable and super well done. Beautiful, functional, full of great features and they run on every computer I have (phone to iMac). Happy to be a subscribe. Very few applications that offer a subscription provide the value that FlexiBits does.

Edit look at the progress they've made in 2020 - https://flexibits.com/fantastical/releasenotes

 

[CarlJ]

waiting for the onslaught of "a subscription for a calendar app? a CALENDAR app?" replies. old and tired.

if Fantastical is "just a calendar app," then it's not for you. if you see it mission control to schedule your entire life, then it's money well spent.

The thing is, Fantastical decided that they only cared about customers who LOVE their app, and their other customers who merely liked the app (even if they had paid handsomely for numerous versions in the past) could go screw themselves.

 

[kuwxman]

Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!

There is no “subscription to use widgets.” The article simply says that in order to use the Premium features WITH the widgets, you need to have a Premium account. You don’t need to have a Premium account to use the 12 widgets.

I’m fully on board the Eff Fantastical boat for their dumb subscription model, especially having been a user for many, many years. However, you either didn’t understand what was being said or are just being disingenuous.

 

[ericg301]

The thing is, Fantastical decided that they only cared about customers who LOVE their app, and their other customers who merely liked the app (even if they had paid handsomely for numerous versions in the past) could go screw themselves.

sigh. this keeps getting rehashed every time Flexibits is in the news.

When they released V3, they didn't remove ANY of the features from V2. Everything worked exactly the same as before. But if you wanted the new features, you had to jump aboard the subscription train. they didn't screw anyone.
[automerge]1600873779[/automerge]

$40 a year? I am never going to subscribe for an App. Make it and if there are compelling updates I will purchase those, but I will not subscribe.

cool. you're gonna be missing out on basically any power-user app from here til the end of the iphone.

 

[chris4565]

weird, because i had many pleasant exchanges with them over email when v3 relaunched..to where they gave me a free month or two and got me in the testflight beta. it is an essential piece of software to me.

Can confirm that. I always made positive experiences with their customer service. Right now I'm in an email conversation with them trying to track down a bug where some widgets display a birthday for today that should be in 2 days (on the 25th).

 

[nutmac]

Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!

If Flexibits offered Fantastical v2 features as IAP ($5 for iPhone, $15 for iPad, $50 for Mac), I think they would get far less criticisms. Luckily, I have Fantastical v2 license so I don't have to get subscription to enjoy features that covers good majority of what most people need. I certainly don't think features like custom app icon and full screen view are worth $40/year. I just wish Fantastical lets me hide these subscription-only feature options on the UI.

 

[ericg301]

If Flexibits offered Fantastical v2 features as IAP ($5 for iPhone, $15 for iPad, $50 for Mac), I think they would get far less criticisms. Luckily, I have Fantastical v2 license so I don't have to get subscription to enjoy features that covers good majority of what most people need. I certainly don't think features like custom app icon and full screen view are worth $40/year. I just wish Fantastical lets me hide these subscription-only feature options on the UI.

But then they wouldn't have the recurring revenue they need to constantly update the app.

I'm in the testflight beta and they push out updates several times a week.

 

[LogicalApex]

weird, because i had many pleasant exchanges with them over email when v3 relaunched..to where they gave me a free month or two and got me in the testflight beta. it is an essential piece of software to me.

and if it takes a small monthly sub fee to ensure ongoing, constant updates, i'll take the tradeoff compared to the YEARS where they let V2 just languish in both design and features.

also did you miss the part "All of the widgets are free to use."

We agree that ongoing development should be supported where possible. But I disagree that the subscription model is the only way to accomplish it.

But I've aired my grievances on this many times and Fantastical has no interest in shifting gears so I'm not going to waste time re-iterating it. They calculated that focusing on the customers who see the app as absolutely essential is their only focus for the future. They caught so much flack as they forced the painful choice down the throats of the rest of us at the same time...

They could have easily done Fantastical 3 on the App Store w/ a subscription model and put a one time notice in Fantastical 2 for us to download it and check it out and swap over if we want to. They could then have removed Fantastical 2 from the App Store so only those who already own the app could re-download it from purchase history. Even if they wanted to offer a nicer "base tier" to customers who owned Fantastical 2 in Fantastical 3 they could have done that by having a link in Fantastical 2 that launches 3 to let them know you owned it and all that jazz. Would have gotten them to the same place with zero damage to their image.

But here we are.

 

[CarlJ]

sigh. this keeps getting rehashed every time Flexibits is in the news.

When they released V3, they didn't remove ANY of the features from V2. Everything worked exactly the same as before. But if you wanted the new features, you had to jump aboard the subscription train. they didn't screw anyone.

Sigh yourself. Please tell me then why my app is littered with buttons that are advertisements for the paid version.

They also changed the app to have less information on the screen - information density was one of the defining features that made me prefer their previous version to all other calendar apps (and I paid them a bunch of money for a bunch of versions). The other was natural language input. Which was really nice, but now Siri can do the basics of that faster, without opening any app. To justify the expense, they excitedly explained how they added weather, which I don’t want in my calendar (I built my own weather station software and hardware, I don’t want their less accurate generic weather), and tracking of conference calls, which I don’t want (that all lives in my work calendar on my work machine - wouldn’t use my iPhone for work videoconferencing). I used to highly recommend Fantastical to people, but not any more.