Journaling Platform 'Day One' Transitions to a Subscription Service

[IrishVixen]

I think because this thread is Day One the mods probably want to keep the thread on topic? My guess. No idea.

On Topic: noticing how Day One is coming out with more updates more frequently. Kinda cool. They are fixing a lot of stuff that bothered me. I'm a happy customer. For $25 I'm cool with it.

Hopefully they'll keep this up, and start getting those promised new features out to those who subscribe.

After a week of checking out the alternatives, I've pretty much decided to stay put for now. I just couldn't find anything I was happy with. I won't be subscribing just yet, and I'm still wondering how they'll grow their customer base at those prices, but Day One still fits my needs best at this point.

 

[i_AnonGuy]

You don't remember the days when your forever old FULL copy of Adobe to upgrade to a better version only when you needed? I used CS2 for years after better versions came out. Now I'm stuck paying monthly FOREVER.

I was on the 2004 Office for Mac for ages. Never needed the bells and whistles of upgrades. Now I'm forced to keep paying.

I hate the new models.

Here you go. Buy it now and use it forever. You are not "forced" to upgrade.

You could have bought Adobe CS6 for a while even after CC was released. They kept selling it for a long time for those people who wanted perpetual versions that didn't require a subscription. Their website clearly states:

As of January 9, 2017 Creative Suite is no longer available for purchase.

So, you had until this year to upgrade to it and avoid the subscription fees, at which point you could have done the same thing you'd do with your Office License (still available, obviously) - use it forever.

These companies have actually been quite generous in catering to users like you, and for users who would actually consider those subscriptions; they pack a hell of a lot of bargain in those subscriptions than Day One Premium.

Office 365 can allow you to completely delete a Dropbox Plus and Evernote premium subscription, while paying less - particularly when multiple people in a household use these services. There's a reason why services are jumping on the "Family Sharing" bandwagon. They are already starting to feel the crunch of people who realize how much these subscriptions add up.

If we are all to play the good Samaritan card, as some in this thread have insinuated (cause we gotta support our fellow humans, those desperate developers!), we could be paying upwards of $350-500+ a year in subscriptions.

It's hilarious how much some people will rant against a carrier or cable company for adding a few bucks to their bills, but those same types of people will come here to tell us we should put up or shut up with these $2-3/mo. subscription fees. Well, the problem is that after you have a few of them, it becomes $20-40+...

Evernote Premium: $49.99/year
Dropbox Plus: $99.99/year
Apple Music: $99.99/year
Day One Premium: $50.00/year

etc.

Stop cutting in down to days to make it look better. At the end of the year, some people are ratcheting up almost as much as the cost of a new iPhone with these subscription fees.

 

[macjunk(ie)]

They dev had a response on this thread today. What happened to it?

banned by macrumors. I am a little put off by this. I contacted the dev and requested them to provide more clarity on this thread for everyone's benefit. Apparently they were banned because of self promotion. I thought it was okay cause I have seen kyle from 1Password here on more than a couple of occasions. Anyway, anyone wanting to reach them can do so at twitter: twitter/dyrii.

Still pissed...why ban them? They just clarified a few things

 

[AppleInLVX]

I think because this thread is Day One the mods probably want to keep the thread on topic? My guess. No idea.

On Topic: noticing how Day One is coming out with more updates more frequently. Kinda cool. They are fixing a lot of stuff that bothered me. I'm a happy customer. For $25 I'm cool with it.

As already mentioned, the dev was banned from the forum for self-promotion. I had a short discussion with him on twitter @dyrii. He invites anyone here who wants to follow up to go find him there. I also sorta thought this was dumb. I get that we don't want a ton of devs in the forums pushing their product, but I thought that the discussion was on point, and useful. Ah well.

As for frequent DO updates, I'm of two minds. It's super fishy that there's been so many upgrades in short a time. Going by precedent, DO has been pretty glacial with updates. It seemingly took forever for them to get 2.0 out the door. So, it looks like either they're trying to improve optics so that the product seems worth the upgrade price, or updating with minor things here and there to bury the negative reviews since the subscription went live. Much as I like things to keep moving smoothly, I'll be more impressed when a new version with actual promised feature additions (not just minor bug fixes) gets released. At this time, there's literally no reason to subscribe if everything stays the same but there's nothing new.

 

[macintoshmac]

I do believe that DO is issuing frequent updates to take down the negative reviews. If, say, we were to keep bombarding them with negative reviews, we could figure this out sooner than later, the truth.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I do believe that DO is issuing frequent updates to take down the negative reviews. If, say, we were to keep bombarding them with negative reviews, we could figure this out sooner than later, the truth.

Kind of sad but I've wondered too. :/. I don't like bashing but DO definitely isn't helping themselves in this case. IMO

 

[LDNA]

updating with minor things here and there to bury the negative reviews

Bingo. But I keep updating/re-publishing my review. I swear at one point my review was the only one they hadn't replied to in the App Store

 

[AppleInLVX]

Bingo. But I keep updating/re-publishing my review. I swear at one point my review was the only one they hadn't replied to in the App Store

They didn't reply to mine either, FWIW. And strangely, I still see it when I go to the app store, so who knows?

 

[anothertime]

Just to reiterate - if you are a 2.0 user as of end of June, there is nothing to pay. You get to continue for free. The payment only affects new users (or those wanting the more expanded features).

My concern as a long time dayone user is that this is an indication that the company isn't financially stable and that if this doesn't generate enough revenue, at some point it will be sold or will shut down.

I'd be tempted to ditch evernote and dayone and just do everything in notes, but there is no decent export function in notes - that's really concerning to me.

I will be ordering books of my past few years of dayone journals though. I am happy to pay for these and at least if the service does go belly up, I'll have my journals in bound hard copies.

 

[t.portis]

I really like these single use apps -- it helps me focus on the task at hand. However, I won't get a subscription, I just don't use it enough. Evernote and Dropbox make sense because I use them throughout the day, everyday.

 

[AppleInLVX]

Just to reiterate - if you are a 2.0 user as of end of June, there is nothing to pay. You get to continue for free. The payment only affects new users (or those wanting the more expanded features).

My concern as a long time dayone user is that this is an indication that the company isn't financially stable and that if this doesn't generate enough revenue, at some point it will be sold or will shut down.

I'd be tempted to ditch evernote and dayone and just do everything in notes, but there is no decent export function in notes - that's really concerning to me.

I will be ordering books of my past few years of dayone journals though. I am happy to pay for these and at least if the service does go belly up, I'll have my journals in bound hard copies.

That's a great idea, except, oh wait... the publishing feature isn't available outside the U.S., and there's no set timeline for when it will be.

Snark aside though, it'll still save down to PDF, and it's probably a wise best-practice to generate at least annual PDF copies of your journal to disaster-proof it should they shutter the windows. Also probably a good idea to keep a dedicated, up to date JSON export.

 

[macintoshmac]

Just to reiterate - if you are a 2.0 user as of end of June, there is nothing to pay. You get to continue for free. The payment only affects new users (or those wanting the more expanded features).

What? No. I get to continue, I will get bug fixes, but anything new will have to be subscription route. If I want more than 10 journals, which I might do, I need to pay $25 per year. Any other new features added will come to subscription users only, in my understanding.

 

[AppleInLVX]

What? No. I get to continue, I will get bug fixes, but anything new will have to be subscription route. If I want more than 10 journals, which I might do, I need to pay $25 per year. Any other new features added will come to subscription users only, in my understanding.

That's my understanding as well. The more I think of it though, the more I think that that's just fine. As long as the bug updates happen and all is kept going and the lights stay on over at Bloom, Day One 2.0 is a very nice package just as it is. Before I had multiple journals, I simply used to differentiate by tag, and that worked well enough. I currently use only 4 of the 10 I have at my disposal, just because I haven't found a real reason to change them all that much. The tags work fine to find what I need, and you can export by tag, so what's the point in a million different journals? To me, it's just clutter. If everything works just like it does today for the rest of my journalling life and I don't pay anything, that's not a bad scenario at all.

Really the only burn for me is that I wouldn't be able to avail myself of the audio recording options going forward (assuming the folks at Bloom don't pull a nasty and add international printing of journals as a 'new' feature that requires a subscription--book publishing was a part of 2.0, so international book publishing should fall under that umbrella if they want to be fair). But audio--that would have been nice, and it WAS promised for 2.0 but Bloom reneged. There's been lots of times where I am someplace, and I want to capture just a moment of sound to complement the entry--surf on the shore, the bird singing in the back yard, the crowd at an event. It's rare, but it happens. But for the money, I have lived without for this long, and could continue to do so. I guess I could even link to an external audio file from the entry, but I haven't found an elegant way to do that.

Otherwise the whole 'unlimited everything' thing doesn't strike me as necessary for my journalling. 10 photos is more than enough for a single entry--if I need more, I'll make another entry, or better still go to something like a photo album, which is where it belongs more. My video needs have been handled by YouTube forever (and those can be elegantly included in a Day One entry already). I've already said I don't need unlimited journals. Upon thinking about it, this situation isn't really a dire one for me in any case.

Maybe I'm just not the intended audience. But for me, if I wanted a full-on multimedia experience of journalling, I'd head to WordPress or SquareSpace and for about the same as the annual premium price of Day One get a full-on private blog and use Ulysses as a front end CMS. Problem solved.

In fact, I sorta worry about Bloom adding all of this. Once audio and video come to the mix, assuming for a moment that they even get enough subscribers to keep the ship afloat, maintaining that proprietary sync solution will be hell, and *expensive*. In this way, I think Dyrii's got the way better idea in letting people use whatever storage they like and pay for it as a back end. Offloading that to Day One sounds like a bag of hurt for Bloom, and yet another thing that might well kill this whole thing one day.

Anyway... I'm rambling. Sorry.

 

[trainwrecka]

So, you had until this year to upgrade to it and avoid the subscription fees, at which point you could have done the same thing you'd do with your Office License (still available, obviously) - use it forever.

I was trying to make the point that those things are going away. I understand that they were available for awhile, but the full transition to subscriptions is happening.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

That's my understanding as well. The more I think of it though, the more I think that that's just fine. As long as the bug updates happen and all is kept going and the lights stay on over at Bloom, Day One 2.0 is a very nice package just as it is. Before I had multiple journals, I simply used to differentiate by tag, and that worked well enough. I currently use only 4 of the 10 I have at my disposal, just because I haven't found a real reason to change them all that much. The tags work fine to find what I need, and you can export by tag, so what's the point in a million different journals? To me, it's just clutter. If everything works just like it does today for the rest of my journalling life and I don't pay anything, that's not a bad scenario at all.

Really the only burn for me is that I wouldn't be able to avail myself of the audio recording options going forward (assuming the folks at Bloom don't pull a nasty and add international printing of journals as a 'new' feature that requires a subscription--book publishing was a part of 2.0, so international book publishing should fall under that umbrella if they want to be fair). But audio--that would have been nice, and it WAS promised for 2.0 but Bloom reneged. There's been lots of times where I am someplace, and I want to capture just a moment of sound to complement the entry--surf on the shore, the bird singing in the back yard, the crowd at an event. It's rare, but it happens. But for the money, I have lived without for this long, and could continue to do so. I guess I could even link to an external audio file from the entry, but I haven't found an elegant way to do that.

Otherwise the whole 'unlimited everything' thing doesn't strike me as necessary for my journalling. 10 photos is more than enough for a single entry--if I need more, I'll make another entry, or better still go to something like a photo album, which is where it belongs more. My video needs have been handled by YouTube forever (and those can be elegantly included in a Day One entry already). I've already said I don't need unlimited journals. Upon thinking about it, this situation isn't really a dire one for me in any case.

Maybe I'm just not the intended audience. But for me, if I wanted a full-on multimedia experience of journalling, I'd head to WordPress or SquareSpace and for about the same as the annual premium price of Day One get a full-on private blog and use Ulysses as a front end CMS. Problem solved.

In fact, I sorta worry about Bloom adding all of this. Once audio and video come to the mix, assuming for a moment that they even get enough subscribers to keep the ship afloat, maintaining that proprietary sync solution will be hell, and *expensive*. In this way, I think Dyrii's got the way better idea in letting people use whatever storage they like and pay for it as a back end. Offloading that to Day One sounds like a bag of hurt for Bloom, and yet another thing that might well kill this whole thing one day.

Anyway... I'm rambling. Sorry.

You weren't rambling just concerned about the dev as I a'm and wondering how long before they sink the ship. I still think that if one want's the journal, they should head over to WordPress or SquareSpace and keep it in the cloud.
[doublepost=1499794948][/doublepost]

Just to reiterate - if you are a 2.0 user as of end of June, there is nothing to pay. You get to continue for free. The payment only affects new users (or those wanting the more expanded features).

My concern as a long time dayone user is that this is an indication that the company isn't financially stable and that if this doesn't generate enough revenue, at some point it will be sold or will shut down.

I'd be tempted to ditch evernote and dayone and just do everything in notes, but there is no decent export function in notes - that's really concerning to me.

I will be ordering books of my past few years of dayone journals though. I am happy to pay for these and at least if the service does go belly up, I'll have my journals in bound hard copies.

I have a feeling that a self hosted cloud storage is costing them a bundle more than they thought.

 

[IrishVixen]

That's my understanding as well. The more I think of it though, the more I think that that's just fine. As long as the bug updates happen and all is kept going and the lights stay on over at Bloom, Day One 2.0 is a very nice package just as it is. Before I had multiple journals, I simply used to differentiate by tag, and that worked well enough. I currently use only 4 of the 10 I have at my disposal, just because I haven't found a real reason to change them all that much. The tags work fine to find what I need, and you can export by tag, so what's the point in a million different journals? To me, it's just clutter. If everything works just like it does today for the rest of my journalling life and I don't pay anything, that's not a bad scenario at all.

Really the only burn for me is that I wouldn't be able to avail myself of the audio recording options going forward (assuming the folks at Bloom don't pull a nasty and add international printing of journals as a 'new' feature that requires a subscription--book publishing was a part of 2.0, so international book publishing should fall under that umbrella if they want to be fair). But audio--that would have been nice, and it WAS promised for 2.0 but Bloom reneged. There's been lots of times where I am someplace, and I want to capture just a moment of sound to complement the entry--surf on the shore, the bird singing in the back yard, the crowd at an event. It's rare, but it happens. But for the money, I have lived without for this long, and could continue to do so. I guess I could even link to an external audio file from the entry, but I haven't found an elegant way to do that.

Otherwise the whole 'unlimited everything' thing doesn't strike me as necessary for my journalling. 10 photos is more than enough for a single entry--if I need more, I'll make another entry, or better still go to something like a photo album, which is where it belongs more. My video needs have been handled by YouTube forever (and those can be elegantly included in a Day One entry already). I've already said I don't need unlimited journals. Upon thinking about it, this situation isn't really a dire one for me in any case.

Maybe I'm just not the intended audience. But for me, if I wanted a full-on multimedia experience of journalling, I'd head to WordPress or SquareSpace and for about the same as the annual premium price of Day One get a full-on private blog and use Ulysses as a front end CMS. Problem solved.

In fact, I sorta worry about Bloom adding all of this. Once audio and video come to the mix, assuming for a moment that they even get enough subscribers to keep the ship afloat, maintaining that proprietary sync solution will be hell, and *expensive*. In this way, I think Dyrii's got the way better idea in letting people use whatever storage they like and pay for it as a back end. Offloading that to Day One sounds like a bag of hurt for Bloom, and yet another thing that might well kill this whole thing one day.

Anyway... I'm rambling. Sorry.

No reason to apologise, you just said what we've all been thinking: the way this is being handled doesn't bode well for Day One staying afloat long term.

I'd like audio as well, but it's not a *must have* for me. Likewise with video. If I need writing prompts, I can get them elsewhere, but generally speaking, I don't use them, because that's not central to my journaling style. The one supposed new feature they've mentioned that I do want is being able to design and use a custom template within the app. As that function is basically possible now via Workflow, what exactly would my $24.99 get me? I don't need more than 10 journals, or more than 10 pics per entry. And it will be a while before I have enough entries of the one journal I'd consider printing to make the book discount attractive. So it looks like I'm supposed to give up my cup of coffee each month strictly to pay for a sync solution that I'd rather have on Dropbox.

I wish they'd done an a la carte deal instead, and parted out new features that could be added at individual prices, with a discount package deal. Even if they were yearly subs, at least I wouldn't feel like I was being asked to shell out for things I'll rarely or never use. I'm all for devs making a living. I love this app. I'm fine with paying a reasonable price for what I use. But right now, there's no value add in this sub for me. And I can't see it being attractive to newcomers at all, so how is the business supposed to sustain a decent rate of growth?

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

They needed more than one app in the store. Day One is not enough.

 

[Ibalek]

Actually this looks quite nice. Reasonable pricing as well. I will try this app out. Never heard of this before so not sure if it is a legit app

I am the developer of Dyrii. DM me here or on twitter/dyrii if you have questions.
[doublepost=1499958451][/doublepost]

All that said, the thing is pretty unstable. I used the macOS version for all of 7 minutes and it crashed once, and hung on exit. The iOS version crashed within 2 minutes of opening it for the first time. All the features are lovely and it looks pretty nice--certainly embarrasses Day One for features, but if the thing pitches a fit and crashes all the time, you can't USE those features.

We have fixed some of these crashes in our recent releases v1.05.02 and v1.05.03. With the updates, the app should get quite stable now. If you still run into any issues, please reach out to me on twitter.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I've been using Day One again but I also got Dyrii because as promised they came out with an update that imports Day One data. I love having backups of my data so for $10/year - why not - and it uses iCloud. The import went incredibly well - the export to iCloud took awhile but once it got there, I have Dyrii on my Macbook Air, iPhone, and my Mac Mini and it is handling the 1500 photos and 1200 entries perfectly.

I like backups of my data so I have my Day One entries, I have Google Docs, and now I have Dyrii.

I'm hoping with Dyrii competition - Day One will see this and make things better for us customers .

 

[rhett7660]

Evernote Premium: $49.99/year
Dropbox Plus: $99.99/year
Apple Music: $99.99/year
Day One Premium: $50.00/year

This right here says it all. I refuse to pay a subscription service because it does add up. I would rather spend the money now and use the product basically till the end of life or the OS stops supporting it. Heck I am still using PS CS3. I have no plans of upgrading to the latest version and if the new OS doesn't support it, I won't upgrade to the new OS. Pretty simple.

Same thing with MS and the different services for music. I won't do it. I do pay for Amazon prime though, but I order so much off them, it pays for itself with the savings I save in shipping.

 

[macintoshmac]

I am the developer of Dyrii. DM me here or on twitter/dyrii if you have questions.
[doublepost=1499958451][/doublepost]

We have fixed some of these crashes in our recent releases v1.05.02 and v1.05.03. With the updates, the app should get quite stable now. If you still run into any issues, please reach out to me on twitter.

MR mods have issues with developers coming in and talking and resolving things about their products on MR forums. Be advised, thou shalt be banned soon.
[doublepost=1499963074][/doublepost]

This right here says it all. I refuse to pay a subscription service because it does add up. I would rather spend the money now and use the product basically till the end of life or the OS stops supporting it. Heck I am still using PS CS3. I have no plans of upgrading to the latest version and if the new OS doesn't support it, I won't upgrade to the new OS. Pretty simple.

Same thing with MS and the different services for music. I won't do it. I do pay for Amazon prime though, but I order so much off them, it pays for itself with the savings I save in shipping.

I should say, while you may see sense in not updating your OS because it will break PS3, but in today's world, I think an updated OS is top priority to the point of being something that should need no saying at all.

 

[BigMcGuire]

MR mods have issues with developers coming in and talking and resolving things about their products on MR forums. Be advised, thou shalt be banned soon.

Does Macrumors even offer a way for them to do this? Maybe by creating a thread in the Apps area? I'm genuinely curious. I really like it when devs interact with customers but I could see how with all the apps out there it could get out of hand. Banning seems kinda severe on first offense.

 

[rhett7660]

MR mods have issues with developers coming in and talking and resolving things about their products on MR forums. Be advised, thou shalt be banned soon.
[doublepost=1499963074][/doublepost]

I should say, while you may see sense in not updating your OS because it will break PS3, but in today's world, I think an updated OS is top priority to the point of being something that should need no saying at all.

While I agree to a point with the bold'ed text, given how many OS's have not been updated to include older hardware, once the cost of updating the hardware, the OS (it is free, but moving to it, the time needed), and then the cost of the software on top of it, whether a subscription or one time purchase has to be weighed.

Upgrading to the latest and greatest OS can and has brought on a whole other slew of issues. Just look over the threads here and on the Windows side when folks update or upgrade.

 

[Ibalek]

MR mods have issues with developers coming in and talking and resolving things about their products on MR forums. Be advised, thou shalt be banned soon.
[doublepost=1499963074][/doublepost]

I should say, while you may see sense in not updating your OS because it will break PS3, but in today's world, I think an updated OS is top priority to the point of being something that should need no saying at all.

I will create a seperate new thread for this. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to hijack this thread.

 

[macintoshmac]

While I agree to a point with the bold'ed text, given how many OS's have not been updated to include older hardware, once the cost of updating the hardware, the OS (it is free, but moving to it, the time needed), and then the cost of the software on top of it, whether a subscription or one time purchase has to be weighed.

Upgrading to the latest and greatest OS can and has brought on a whole other slew of issues. Just look over the threads here and on the Windows side when folks update or upgrade.

True, it isn't like you are running Windows 98. As long as you are on a fairly recent system, you can eke about 5 years out of it, till some security flaw makes you upgrade.
[doublepost=1499964196][/doublepost]

I will create a seperate new thread for this. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to hijack this thread.

My point was that MR might delete your posts. Something similar happened in this very thread and the reason stated was self publicity. I like it when devs respond to users, it is a very natural progression of events and a very symbiotic relationship.