That’s the thing; you don’t need every single app.
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I absolutely abhor running, but picked it up during the pandemic and actually have to pay attention to the weather now.
I’ve never used carrot weather and wasn’t aware of comments. Never even considered it. Out of curiosity, what makes it worth it to you? Is it that much better than the stock app?
The degree to which Carrot Weather is customizable is really remarkable. It also gives access to things like air quality, pollen/allergen levels, wind and I think even tides (not useful to me these days, but it once would have been!).
In effect, I have built my own weather app, or at least that’s what it feels like.
Previously, its hourly forecast and immediate-future rain forecasts were a major point of differentiation, but I gather Apple Weather has that now.
The snark can be mildly amusing. I turned off the audio – I mostly don’t like my phones talking to me anyway – and toned down the snark a bit (there are several possible levels). But mostly I don’t even notice it.
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Apparently when Apple purchased Dark Sky they threw out its best feature, hyper local forecasts. DS was frequently accurate to the minute when predicting when rain would start and stop. The new Apple Weather app is never that accurate and frequently off by hours.
I try to walk 5 miles a day and relied on Dark Sky’s forecasts. Now I carry a poncho.
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Has anyone tried Calendars 366 as an alternative? The iOS apps also look compelling and are much better priced.
I am right in remembering that is exactly what Fantastical 1 looked like
Watch complications are important for me too.
According to BusyCal support they have already finished working on watchOS support and are currently internally testing it out. They also have a public TestFlight version but I don’t see it there just yet.
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I always thought that the whole point of Carrot Weather is that it is insipid and annoying. 
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I have plenty of annoyances in life for free–I certainly don’t want to pay $15 - $30/year for more. 
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I use Calendar 366. The Menu Bar thingy is a great convenience if I don’t have my calendar open, and the developer regularly issues updates. I think you can do a trial, so by all means give it a go.
I’d use Fantastical, but their Exchange and Office 365 support is iffy, so I dropped it a few years ago. In my business a missed appointment means lost income so if an app can’t keep things straight reliably, its gonzo.
I do it to annoy you, lol… 
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In the “good ole days”, applications like Excel were very expensive and rather easily and extensively “stolen”. I don’t think that that was really such a bad thing for their developers. Responsible businesses who could get “caught”, paid a lot of money for legitimate copies. The general “nerd public” stole the software and became addicted to it which helped Word and Excel etc. become near monopolies with all the benefits that accrue.
With these programs free “readily stolen” it was impossible for other parties to compete “on price” which was sad and doomed many clever developers with interesting ideas from having a prayer in the spreadsheet/word processor etc. markets.
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I’m struck by this form of words, which seems to me to be designed to obscure the actual percentage increase. Otherwise, why not compare current and new annual prices, or current and new monthly prices.
I won’t comment on the merits of the increase - I’m a non-subscriber, grandfathered in to the old OTP, so not affected.
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I had people ask me if they could “borrow” a copy of Microsoft Office at every company where I worked. I don’t think it even occurred to most that it would be stealing. Or that they would be hurting people, not just a big corporation. It happened so often that I kept copies of OpenOffice to hand out to those that asked for MSO.
But no company, including Microsoft, can prevent all theft so they try to protect their products (add copy protection, etc) and raise their price a bit to make up their losses. That’s true of all companies that make something to sell. And we all end up paying for it.
Not that it matters much but I think I’ve decided to drop Fantastical after some deliberation on this.
The email announcing the price increase was very poorly worded (mixing up the annual cost with a seemingly minimal monthly increase in cost in what seems like a dishonest attempt to make the increase seem smaller than it actually is, +42%). I’m a communications professional working mostly for tech companies so this matters.
It’s not about +$20 or whatever it ends up being in euros (which was also communicated poorly – or rather not at all, as it’s impossible to find out the new pricing in euros anywhere). Though I’d like to keep the subscriptions costs from spiralling out of control, I do have that $20 but I see no value proposition anymore here. I like the nice UI and the natural language input plus the calendar sets, but being a freelancer I don’t care much for openings and other team features. I just don’t think the value proposition is still there for me at over 60 euros for a calendar app.
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I haven’t decided whether to keep Fantastical in November 2023, but I’ve settled on the side of disliking their communication around this. I wrote them about this issue and didn’t appreciate a boilerplate reply from support with wording essentially copied from the email.
They also sent a one month subscription extension coupon link, which is an appropriate concession, but I can’t use it because I signed up through the App Store. Also, when you click the link you’re invited to cancel your App Store subscription and sign up directly, which would cost me more than the price increase.
I understand the inability to manage App Store customers and that no one manages their business perfectly, but it feels bad to receive a tone-deaf email of bad news, write them a personal note, receive an impersonal reply with the same text, and be linked something that would hurt you if you acted on it.
I should at least credit them for the customer support lesson. It’s probably worth the present value of $20/year to my career. 
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I think it’s almost the stance a purely-subscription company has to take though, if they feel they need to hike prices. Maybe not just giving the increase number, but focusing on the monthly (or weekly, or daily) amount.
Ultimately, when the software expires and becomes unusable after the subscription is cancelled, the software has to be worth its value each subscription period. It therefore behooves marketing to pick a relatively-short time period and make that number look as small as possible.
Same here. I use BusyCal, and I got it on a BundleHunt deal a few years back. It periodically shows up discounted various places, so I’ve gotten some upgrade deals - but I’d happily pay some amount for a better calendar…just not $60/year. 
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I unsubscribed a couple of months ago, but when I recently heard about the Openings functionality, I had to give it a second chance. It could be a good alternative to Doodle. Unfortunalely, there doesn’t seem to be a way to modify or cancel a meeting after you booked it. That would be a deal breaker for me.
I’m not as impressed with the Openings feature as I thought I would be. Unless I am missing some documentation or setting things up wrong, I can’t create an openings invitation that respects certain calendars or calendar sets. For instance, it will only respect my personal work calendar which does not have the team meetings from my group work calendar.
Toolbar natural language input and location-based calendar sets are my favorite features.
This is working fine for me. I’m using a calendar set that has icloud and google calendars. Might be worth talking to support.
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