It will be a Pareto distribution? 20% will use 80% of the features. I use about 20% of them
I don’t take any advantage of scripting in it: one day I hope to, I said that about a lot of apps I never used much and dropped though. I did start using Keyboard Maestro and it became essential to me after about 3 years of marginal use…
100$ for the upgrade is worth it for me, however I keep everything on it. I buy far fewer apps this last year than I did before I will say, not by design either, I feel we hit a kind of plateau on Mac and the app-o-sphere.
Thanks @memex that makes it a very different proposition.
I said before I can imagine how abused the old rule was. I understand how tough it can be financially for post grads and so on though and have a kind of marginal sympathy for them when they ‘share’ stuff. I think of my app set, which is now pretty stable, as part of my Mac and I think my expenditure, overall, has, actually dropped.
I mainly use DT for 2 features: it’s the easiest way i found to encrypt files end to end and sync them over could storage, being able to access and manipulate them on macOS and iOS, and it does so with a folder structure external to the database (which allows fo convenient hazel / KM magic).
I guess everybody have to evaluate if the feature they use are worth the price requested.
Before upgrading I think I will give a try to FSNotes, which might do what i need for a (much) lower price…
I don’t use DT but if I were a power user of it, I’d want them to accelerate the pace of development and give me more frequent releases to buy. That’s how I feel about OmniFocus, which I use heavily, anyway.
My own feeling in light of the insightful comments here from several of you is that DEVONthink should go the subscription route. First time I find my self actively saying that to a developer. On past performance with upgrades this one is only going to be about 15$ a year for those of us already owning the app? Less than I pay for the old user Text Expander and way less than for Ulysses. Spread the cost over 8 years is another way to look at it from one’s own perspective.
I think they found a way. A version with 5 seats would be too expensive since now they want $99 for a seat and I don’t think they would change the pricing since a lot of users already paid for DT 3.
I was an enthusiastic DT user for a while but then I cooled to it rapidly. The user interface is cluttered and busy, and I began to worry about the database becoming corrupt and losing data. Also, with DT, backups seem to be a fussy process.
I’m finding most of what I wanted to do with DT are either things I don’t need, such as keeping a database of articles I read online; or things I can just as easily do using the native Mac/iOS filesystem.
If we’re talking about logic, we should talk about the logic of the market, where a product is only overpriced or underpriced relative to a target demand. If DT’s pricing pushes the company below its target demand, they’ve overpriced. If not – if the product’s price generates the company’s target demand – it’s set the price properly. On the consumer side, all anyone’s really talking about here is whether they’re part of the demand pool.
I am, because I bought DT years ago, love it, and paid for the upgrade early in the beta process.
If you own Devonthink 2 you can upgrade to version 3 (which is basically a new app) for a discounted price based on the specific version you own and the date you purchased it.
You can see the price directly from within the app.
I tend to agree with @Wolfie. We can’t go into the whole thing here but frankly I think your view of “logic of the market” is seriously flawed. I know a lot of us believe it and that kind of premise seems almost obvious but I think it is seriously flawed. Nowhere is that better illustrated really than computer software. However I agree with you that DEVONthink is worth it even if you use only half of its capacity. Same goes for Macs though…
My point about “the logic of the market” wasn’t to insult you (though you seem insulted). It was that DT’s pricing ultimately isn’t about what either of you think about the features relative to your individualized sense of its “value.” You’re right that additional features don’t “automatically justify the cost,” but they also don’t not automatically justify the cost. The question itself is beside the point. The question is whether enough people will pay the current price to meet the company’s revenue objectives. If not enough people will do so, the price will drop.
Moreover, it’s obviously true both (i) hat the operation of the market for a commercial product is entirely unconcerned with my feelings, and (ii) that there are plenty of values that this sort of market can’t measure. But when it comes to the pricing of a commercial product in a functioning market, to characterize the idea that “a product is worth what people will pay for it” as “flawed” or “damaging” either just communicates frustration with the market outcome or depends upon a non-monetary, and necessarily individualized, definition of “worth” or “value.” I just mean money, as that’s the only language an unregulated market can speak. But markets, do, in fact, set prices in money. To say this isn’t “exploitative”; it’s just true. I’d love to own Jeff Bezos’s yacht, as I suspect it would have a lot of value to me and its features would make me happy in many non-monetary ways, but I can’t afford to pay the monetary price the market for that product has set.
And the Skreli example doesn’t apply. He was a monopolist in a setting where consumers had no choice but to pay or die (so that it wasn’t even a “market”; it was an opportunity for extortion, which is why unregulated markets for life-critical products is bad policy). Very few things, including DT (reasonable alternatives to which can quickly be found in the market), are that critical.
The “market” is totally and obsessively concerned with your feelings. There is a whole PR/advertizing industry dedicated to it: probably the biggest industry in the World at present: plus a sizable chunk of online resources and IT is dedicated to manipulating your feelings in pursuit of various ends, many related to selling goods and services in the ‘market’. You made intereting points and I liked your insights into monopolies and other market distorters. Thanks and to you too @Wolfie who I pretty much agree with
You do realize that almost nothing in your long post makes sense? You do not even distinguish between a market and a company. I get Wolfie since he bases his opinions on feelings and not facts, which is quite common, but your post is almost ethereal
Depending on perspective, the cool thing about version 2 was how frequently it was updated over the years at no charge, with what some developers may have held back for a new version.
