I am a Fantastical user. I could get by just with the stock calendar app, but I am very happy to see how Flexibits does make use of everything Apple has to offer:
- Very customizable Apple Watch complications that actually do work.
- The new lock screen widgets definitely do provide value to me.
- The ability to show Reminders in Fantastical - you can customize what Reminders you would like to see. And no, you do not need to show reminders.
- The ability to show the next event in the menubar in MacOS and the ease of use to get into my calendars from there.
- So many options to customize how Fantastical behaves and looks.
- The beauty of their UI, no matter if it is the Mac or the iDevices.
And much more stuffā¦
Only a few days ago most of us noticed Appleās App Store Awards over here and here and commented that they were more like āmehā. I felt the same to some degree.
What we are experiencing right now is that the market for software is changing - again. @WayneG has has mentioned it above: there once was a time when software did cost a fortune. That has gone way down to a point where software started to be called āappsā - it was the advent of the App Stores. And everybody tried a concept where software had to be dirt cheap or even āfreeā. That can work for open source projects with a striving community of developers, but commercial products being sold by developers that want to make a living off their apps need to earn real money and they need to find a niche in the market for it to be sustainable.
As @Jeremy has phrased it in his own words, Flexibits has made a decision: make apps that are of value and sell them at a price Flexibits considers to be adequate. It is the customersā decision if the price is ok given their individual needs or not.
It took me some time, but I am back in my personal pre App Store period when I did not need every app only because it was the new and shiny one. I am absolutely ok and even happy to pay the price for an app if it is worth it to me. That is something that can and does change all the time. Appleās Reminders app is the perfect example for that. I switched back to Appleās Reminders after having been a Things and OmniFocus user for years (not simultaneously of course). Why? Because I got to the conclusion that my GTD needs are more than fulfilled in the stock app in 2022. And I am perfectly aware of the fact that there are a lot of users that will come to a different conclusion.
I have paid the yearly subscription fee back in September. I will think about it in August 2023, if I am willing to pay the new price or not. Right now I am undecided, because I am definitely no calendar power user (but then again I am someone who likes Fantastical so much that I already have come back twice to use it after abandoning it). But I totally get what Flexibits is doing and why they are heading this direction. I guess we all have to learn again just to make our own individual cost-benefit analysis for software (at least that is what I have to learn again). I have to admit that I maybe was too lax in that matter in the last decade when it comes down to āappsā. Why? Because a lot of apps were sold at prices so low that they were āno-brainersā just because of their price, not necessarily because of their value/features. That is not sustainable in the long run. Neither for the developer, nor for the customer.