Almost certainly part of the reason, I suppose
…but they have for Notes and reminders. Both are really excellent reliable apps now.
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Depends on your requirements. Both are now only useful within the Apple ecosystem. No support for open standards anymore.
Im gonna digress a little bit here. This must have been discussed before. 1password 6 extension stopped working when Safari 13 was released. 1Password 6 users have to upgrade to 1Password 7 to get the extension working in Safari. 1Password 7 can be purchased as a standalone app but you will be hard pressed to find the link to purchase it on the site. They are highly promoting the subscription model. I already paid for 1Password 6. Why do I have have to pay again for 1Password 7 just for the extension to work? Why do all other extensions work with Safari 13 except for 1Password 6? 1Password 7 doesn’t even have any upgrade worthy feature. In fact the new extension seems very bloated to me compared to 1Password 6.
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As I understand, Apple phased out Safari extensions with 10.14, at least partly due to privacy concerns. Apparently prior to this change extensions were able to read browser history, now they cannot. I don’t know all the details of this change but it also killed the Evernote extension and required EN to create a standalone web clipper app.
There’s no separate download/link. As noted in another discussion last week you download the basic app, then do an in-app purchase within the app. True, it’s not obvious.
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Thanks for providing a link to that discussion and its more apt for this type of discussion.
I used the new Fantastical for about 5 minutes before deleting it from all of my devices. I liked the old version, but not enough to take on another subscription.
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Went through the trial and agree with most, the features aren’t worth the price of entry for the majority out there. The new features are cool and I can see how a small percentage of users out there who are solo-managing a lot of different calendars and commitments would get utility out of it. I think they really targeted freelance/small-business types with this new version of the app combined with the price point. Probably most that had version 2 of the app, including myself, weren’t even heavily getting the maximum benefit out of it. I do appreciate the gesture of keeping version 2 features free for the previous version users, but the pop ups to push you to upgrade for the premium features are annoying. It actually kind of makes you rather not use it. Wish they had a toggle to hide premium features and pop ups. That would’ve been the solid way to do it.
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Yes I agree. I think they targeted small business types with this.
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They sure did target solo and small business types but irritated the majority of the users who loved the product, with their annoying premium hooks/pop-ups to upgrade to premium features. When I own an app, I own it full with no limits. Fantastical with their V3 upgrade just killed it and made it irritating to use. This feature shown in the screenshot below should have been hidden completely for V2 owners. It irritates me when I see that and I have to remind myself not to even touch that. I did not pay for this irritating behavior in V2 and now Fantastical is enforcing this on users of V2 to get into a premium subscription!
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As a long time customer, we respect your decision to not purchase our subscription and will handle this like the professionals we are. We value your business and our reputation.
( some time passes )
Application popup window appears “Buy our subscription! This feature is paywalled! In your face!”
This new Sweet Setup review seems to be more aligned with what MPU members have been posting in this topic:
Thanks for the link. I managed to get through the typos in the intro to the meat, which I think reads like a struggle between their natural desire to enthuse over the shiny new thing and a recognition that there’s a real issue.
I think it’s fair but rather clumsily done
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The main aspect is to get the user’s mail addresses for two reasons:
- Obtaining a way to directly communicate with the previously anonymous user.
- Preemptive removing obstacles in the subscription sign-up process.
They fully knew that only a small subset of their users will subscribe. But they also fully knew that a much larger number uses the Fantastical complication on their Watch. Forcing those users to sign up for the account creates an intrinsic motivation to go through the tedious process of creating yet another account.
I don’t know where I read the case study (probably on medium) of a small start-up’s founder, who reported on seeing a huge increase of new users, once they switched from requiring to create an account with an email based login before you could even use the app to allowing to explore the app first, but then making you create an account, if you want to store the settings/progress made during your initial exploration phase. You lose a lot of potential new users, if you force them to create an account upfront.
It’s the same with Fantastical. You have to create an account to subscribe. If that step is already eradicated you might be more likely to just hit subscribe later on.
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I’m on iOS 13 and Mojave with my Mac. Ever since I upgraded to iOS 13 I lost the ability to see reminders on my Mac. I’m still running Fantastical 2 on all devices. What I’m saying is, your reminders not working in High Sierra or Mojave is on Apple, not Fantastical.
As a workaround, I’m using reminders on my iOS devices and Things app, which has not been affected by the iOS 13 upgrade. It’s a pain, but it’s working for now until I upgrade my Mac.
Since I made the mistake of upgrading my Reminders when I went to iOS 13, my 2 Macs on High Sierra can’t access them. My workaround was to go to Busycal (which is available on Setapp). It has the option of using reminders or its own Inbox scheme which seamlessly syncs between all the Mac and iOS devices. Good integration with its calendar or you can use a panel to the right of the active calendar that lists the to-dos. I’m quite happy with it.
I don’t understand why BusyCal isn’t mentioned here more frequently. It was the calendar darling before Fantastical, and I think it’s still a very good app. Much better than the stock app. Custom fonts. Natural language entry. There’s even an Alfred workflow to enter events within Alfred. I like it as much as any calendar app I’ve used, including Fantastical.
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Honestly, to me BusyCal has always looked a bit antiquated and too “corporate”. Sometimes apps become successful just because they bring a bit of a fresh take on things, even if it mainly is visually.
At some point many users got convinced to invest the $64.97 for the entire calendar suite of Fantastical for all three platforms. The $4.99 for BusyCal for iOS are a steal, but adding another $49.99 for the macOS version is steep.
All of a sudden you have spent $120 for calendar tools in the last years.
I’d argue that a lower price for BusyCal on macOS would make more people switch, potentially including myself. (Yes, I know it is part of setapp, however, this is yet another subscription.)
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I used BusyCal & BusyContacts extensively when I was working and found them a powerful combination. I especially liked how BusyContacts would bring up a list of all meetings and emails associated with a particular contact.
One of my last big projects lasted about 15 months and involved working with a couple dozen people from four different companies. BC/BCs was about the only way I was able to keep up with all the players.
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