Who did already downgrade from Premium (free trial) to F2 “legacy”?
Anything I should do while still Premium to have a smooth transition?
(still not sure what path to take, probably going to try F2 “legacy” for a while, to see what I will miss - if anything)
It was indeed ironic as I think it’s fair to say that this thread has strayed just a little bit from the path…
Trying to get this thread back on topic. Why do they require you to create an account ? . Is it secure ?
Also it is difficult to use on the “free” ( already purchased) tier, because of the nag screen to go premium.
According to their privacy policy, the account is needed to sync data to Apple Watch, sync calendar set configuration, handle event suggestions, and apparently push/sync notifications between devices when changes are made.
Is it secure? No idea. They have the Sign In with Apple option for those interested in using it.
I’d love to understand why the account is needed to sync to Watch. No other app needs it, AFAICS
Maybe I’m missing the point of Fantastical but I just can’t figure out anything about it that makes it worth paying for in any fashion whether it be a one time purchase or subscription. I keep up with multiple calendars across multiple email accounts including my and my wife/coworker’s work calendars. I use the stock calendar app on IOS and a a single Safari tab on Mac opened to one of my Gsuite accounts that has permissions to every calendar I have to manage. What are our would be benefits? natural language doesn’t make sense to me as it is just easier to tap the calendar in iOS and enter my appointment or open a time block on Safari for Mac. I don’t like list views of appointments. I need to see blocks of time blocked out. Just wondering if anyone can give me insight. Thanks!
You need some kind of account to sync any Watch app when it’s not near its iPhone companion.
I don’t know if iCloud accounts were too limited as far as watch-phone sync. However, the Flexibits account has an advantage over iCloud as it allows syncing between different iCloud accounts using the account key. That’s the only reason I was able to use Fantastical on my work Mac and sync with my personal devices.
That, the e2e encryption scheme they detailed, and the way it distributes Google account push notifications makes the account a pretty impressive service and is part of the value of the subscription for people who want that.
Well, the only reason I bought Fantastical on macOS was that I needed an application that could show Reminders/Tasks that are stored on a calDAV server. Since Apple Reminders isn’t standard compliant anymore - at least not after “upgrading” the database in Catalina - I had to revert to another option. And basically there’s only 2: Fantastical and BusyCal.
I’m with you on the natural language thing. I don’t need that, and actually I think it’s more work to enter an appointment or task that way than it is to just click the right boxes. I also tend to forget the right syntax. I also really don’t need much of the other features either Fantastical or BusyCal offer (weather being the most obvious superfluous extra). I was in fact perfectly happy with the featureset of Apple’s Calendar and Reminders. But again, Apple in all its wisdom decided to no longer support syncing with stndard calDAV. At least not for Reminders on Catalina.
I agree with many of the points raised here and I too am disappointed with what appears to be the MPU podcast going too far (understandably*)down the path of uncritically shilling for the developers.
I also don’t have a problem with subs if they are fair and I think the market will sort all this out eventually.
I think there is a pathology here that has developed as a result of Apple no longer charging for OS X. They now feel less pressure to develop the stock apps like calendar and mail and are happy to let developers sort out the marketplace. Now there is no turning back. For one, we will all freak out if we had to now pay for OSX updates. Two, the developers would freak out if Apple wiped them out by actually improving the OSX stock apps by stealing their innovation.
Personally, I wish Apple would just make mail and calendar etc better so I don’t have to deal with this mess of subscriptions.
*“shilling” sounds more pejorative than I intend. I of course understand and support podcasts using ads to make a living
Almost certainly part of the reason, I suppose
…but they have for Notes and reminders. Both are really excellent reliable apps now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes I agree. I think they targeted small business types with this.
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!
