I am not reflexively anti-subscription — I currently subscribe to several apps — but Fantastical does not make the cut. For me it is just a read-only front-end to my calendars on my phone. I have the mac app, but I rarely use it, and my personal mac does not have access to my work calendars, so the Mac version is not at all useful to me for managing work calendars.
On my phone, I primarily used it as a read-only view of my work calendar because iOS and our work Exchange server did not play nice together and doing things like accepting meeting invites from the phone could cause havoc.
So, $40/year to be able to get a nice view of my calendar on my phone? So not worth it. One thing that the subscription model has done for me is force me to compare and rank apps that are in totally different areas, because I feel I can only justify so many subscriptions. So Fantastical at $40/year gets compared to say, Drafts 5 at $20/year. I get a ton of use out of Drafts 5 compared to the use I would get from Fantastical, so I drop Fantastical. In a single-purchase world, the fact that I spent money on Drafts would not have much bearing on whether I spend money on Fantastical (other than perhaps waiting till next payday to purchase or something). In a subscription world, these apps are now in competition with each other. Which is weird.
Finally, I am especially annoyed by the watch app change. I really liked the watch app. In the upgraded v3 version, it tells me I don’t need a subscription for the watch app, but I DO need a Flexbits account so it can sync my events to my watch when I’m not near my phone. This certainly makes it sound like Flexibts is going to transmit data from my iOS and Exchange calendars to their servers, and that is a HUGE HUGE HUGE NO from me. I think the InfoSec team at my work would have a fit if they found out. Transmitting potential sensitive internal company data (in the form of meetings) to some random 3p company? NO. Flex bits does not need my calendar data on their servers. They should have made that optional — no account, fine, we’ll sync directly with the phone and you lose out on this other type of syncing. Requiring it? No.
Is Andreas not allowed to have a favorable opinion of an app? There’s no need to agree with him, of course, but there’s also no need to accuse him of being a shill.
Objectivity does not exist in media. We must be responsible consumers of media and take the information for what it is. There are facts, and then there is interpretation. Take the later for what you will.
Like a few of the others, I previously needed to use multiple calendar apps as there wasn’t one that did everything the way I liked it. This update changed that for me. The previous iPhone version of fantastical didn’t give me a month view that I could look at “at a glance” and see what was happening specifically over the month, it just gave me dots that let me know something was happening, but not what it was. In the specific case for me, I am in a different city most days of the year, so it is nice when someone asks me about a date in the future, or when are we going to be in a certain city etc, I can have a quick glance to see rather than having a month view of just dots. While I could get that view on the stock app or on Readdle Calendars 5, I like the natural language input of fantastical better, so I used both.
Now the “full screen” mode of the month view shows me the specifics I need and with having the existing natural language support, I now get the features I need in a single place.
I have a question about using v3 which I hope doesn’t get lost in the discussion of the change in the business model:
How does one use the new Google Hangout functionality? I can’t find any tutorial for it and there’s no obvious place in the UI for setting up a Hangout.
That was the intent of this thread, but it seems to have derailed a bit. To be honest I don’t understand all the fuzz. If you liked V2 but don’t need the extra features, then don’t subscribe and keep v3 with UI upgrade and the features you like.
Sorry, now I also ranted about the business model. I don’t know about the hangout feature. I Use the meetup calendar feature a lot and to have it come to iOS and iPadOS is great.
Well, calendars are very personal and I suspect this is why. It’s also an app that has been around for a long time and all the fuzz can be explained with the fact that people really love and like this app. And I guess a lot of the fuzz is also directed at the general tendency for well-loved apps to go subscription only.
@andreasl, The new version asks me to create a Flexibit Account and sync to their servers. V2 did not. I cannot have enterprise data on 3dparty web servers. This is a deal breaker. Correct me if I am wrong and if I misunderstood it.
Jeebus Crispy… how much more clear could David have been? In THAT URL THAT YOU LINKED TO David explicitly said:
When the Fantastical developers were getting ready to release version three of the application, they asked me to prepare an extensive screencast series on how the app works and how I use it
He also did videos for Fantastical version 2. He has also said that he was a user of the app since long before they hired him to work on the videos.
If you think that means that he secretly dislikes the app but won’t say it because they paid him, then I would definitely stop listening to the podcast.
You should be able to re-install from your “Purchased” list.
Calendar Sets can not only be enabled / disabled via keyboard shortcut, but can also be enabled / disabled based on location. It’s very handy. I normally only want to see my own calendars, but I can switch to “my calendars + my family’s calendars” with a keystroke.
It’s one of those things that seems like a little thing, but if you use it a lot, it’s much better.
FYI - Setapp already includes BusyCal.
If you hate subscriptions, blame Apple. We had upgrades until they made the iOS / Mac App Store and decided not to support upgrades.
In the iOS and Mac App Stores? Where and how? (I’m really not sure what you mean.)
There were upgrades before there were in-app purchases. But there were no upgrades in the app stores.
Apple’s defenders said that “normal people” didn’t understand upgrades, which I never understood and seemed incredibly stupid, but was said over and over. If people can learn how in-app purchases and subscriptions work, they can understand “You paid full price for a previous version so you get a discount on the new version.”
But that’s not what Apple did. Apple effectively killed upgrades (not that upgrades are impossible, just impractical) via their app stores.
I don’t blame @MacSparky, if he liked or not liked the app. If he got paid to do, he did a great job at doing the Field Guide. Liking or disliking is his personal thing. If he had sold the Field Guide, I still would have purchased it.
