Search Results for 'script'

[Brian Quinn]

So disappointing, Brendan!
Having paid £26 for the OSX & IOS versions I’m shocked to find that they no longer sync over iCloud.
That was the great advantage of the previous product for me – synching across my several devices. Now I’m supposed to open an account (possibly chargeable) for IBM Cloudant, which I’ve never heard of before.
The alternative of wi-fi synching requires all devices to have Tap Forms open at the same time, which is hopelessly impractical and messy.
I feel deceived that the store description refers to Cloud synching without making it clear that it’s not iCloud.

[C F]

Subscription? Bleh! Take that back at once…a pox on your keyboard! I think the pricing is fair and there won’t be another version like this in near future–does suck for those that just bought TAP, but we are talking less that 40 bucks for months and months of product use (and months and months of his development). I am sure that subscription would be more, and no one likes their credit card on file and being auto-charged if they can avoid it.

[Brendan]

Louis,

That in and of itself is a controversial topic. Not everyone agrees with software subscriptions. I myself subscribe to Adobe Photoshop too and have no problems with it. But it may not be so easy for everyone to accept. They may feel they’re being nickel and dime to death.

This is the first time me ever charging for an upgrade, so it’s a new experience and learning process for me too.

Thanks for all your understanding.

Now back to my 320 emails which keeps growing…

[AngriBuddhist]

Yeah.

I’m not suggesting you go this route. I am, however, interested in what a developer and users of a very cool and useful productivity app think of the whole thing. The fact that there are new possibilities is fascinating.

The first few well known developers who switch their productivity apps to subscriptions will be self selected canaries in the coal mine for all the rest. While, however slight, there’s a chance that just good enough apps (that would gain features over time) could disrupt the more established ones with the right subscription price.

Or, hopefully, it’s just that we get some new cool types of apps. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but, I’ve had an idea for an app/service that, if available, I’d personally pay more than $10 a month for.

Here’s my first App Store Subscription Model prediction.

Marco Arment will make one of the first big splashes with a subscription only app for the total creation, recording, editing and publishing of podcasts. It’ll be his first Mac app and, if iOS 10 doesn’t have the needed changes, he’ll bring it to the iPad once the system is opened up further.

[Brendan]

I saw a tweet today that productivity apps are good candidates for subscriptions, even if the productivity app goes into a read-only mode if the subscription ends.

I still haven’t decided if I would entertain even going down that route. It didn’t seem to be a good move for TextExpander. They got lots of flak for it. I think people will just take a little time to get used to the idea, especially if more apps go that way.

[AngriBuddhist]

Just finished watching the WWDC Introducing Expanded Subscriptions in iTunes Connect session video.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/301/

I had read that the durations for subscriptions could be 1, 3, 6 and 12 months. This video didn’t cover that so I’m assuming that’s still true.

The presentation that did show prices was in U.S. dollars, the lowest being $.99 and steadily increasing by a dollar. From here on out I’ll just round up to the nearest U.S. dollar.

A developer could combine these durations and prices to come up with a variety of subscriptions.

At the $1 subscription
$1/year (12 month subscription)
$2/year (6 month subscription)
$4/year (3 month subscription)
$12/year (1 month subscription)

At the $2 subscription
$2/year (12 month subscription)
$4/year (6 month subscription)
$8/year (3 month subscription)
$24/year (1 month subscription)

At the $3 subscription
$3/year (12 month subscription)
$6/year (6 month subscription)
$12/year (3 month subscription)
$36/year (1 month subscription)

And on and on.

I was originally hoping that Apple would allow subscriptions below $1 as some apps might not justify $12 a year indefinitely. Obviously, though, I hadn’t thought through the implications of the duration options.

Then there’s the ability to offer different prices for the different durations. A developer could set the subscriptions as follows.

$1 every 1 month
$5 every 6 months
$9 every 12 months

Or…

$1 every 3 months
$3 every 12 months

All together, it means that developers can find a reasonable subscription price for their app.

[AngriBuddhist]

@Steve

Either I chose the wrong words or you perceived a tone that I didn’t intend. Either way, I agree with everything you’ve said.

When it comes to Feedly, I use it an hour or more a day. It’s a simple app but I get so much value from it that I’d pay a subscription.

On the other hand, it takes about 45 days for me to use the way more complicated app Numbers for a total of an hour. Yet, it also provides me so much value that I’d pay a subscription for it too.

Someone else may get little to no value from either of those apps.

[AngriBuddhist]

As far as I’ve read, App Store subscriptions can be for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. I wonder if a dev can have all four for just one app?

[Brendan]

Those are all good points. I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to find out what Apple can tell us more about subscriptions. I currently pay for Adobe Photoshop CC for $120 USD per year. I think that’s fair for what I get, even though I’m not a graphic artist and don’t use it as much as an artist would. I use it mostly for tweaking icons and making graphics for Tap Forms. But I also use Sketch for that and they’ve just recently announced they’re moving to a subscription model. In fact, they announced that a day before Apple announced their subscription model. But they sell exclusively outside of the Mac App Store. They used to sell in the MAS but they left. I sell both in the MAS and direct. I will have no problems paying an annual subscription fee for Sketch since it’s a really useful app for developers. It’s my go-to app when I need to make an icon.

Paddle.com is the provider I use for direct downloads. They have a Subscription module with a yearly option, but I don’t know how that works as I haven’t investigate it yet. I don’t know if it’s for downloadable content or just for access to the app and all upgrades. I’ll probably have to look into it now though.

Also, I’m close enough with my next upgrade that I don’t want to wait to release it to turn it into a subscription model. But hopefully Apple will have some guidelines on how to migrate an app to a subscription model.

I agree, a yearly option is much more preferable than a monthly option for software. Although strangely enough I find it just fine to pay a monthly fee for Netflix. I guess it’s because you’re not paying for the app, but you’re paying for the content and that’s always updated and changing every month.

Lots to think about.

[AngriBuddhist]

I fully believe that the drive to the bottom of App Store prices has helped to re-enforce the notion that non-physical items have little to no value. The financial well being of people who make non-physical items then, of course, is taken into little or no consideration.

I pay subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, mobile phone service, electrical service, etc. and when I unsubscribe it’s completely understandable that I have nothing to show for it. I paid for access to something that I value and have now stopped paying.

I have no use for, and therefore ascribe little value to, SaaS such as Office 365 or Adobe Suite but I understand that some do and are willing to pay a subscription fee even though they’ll lose access once they unsubscribe.

I wonder, though, if there’ll be a be way to offer an app as both a purchase and a subscription? I’ll use Tap Forms as an example although I’m unsure whether this would be possible.

Currently, Brendan has TF ($9.99 as of today) and TF Lite in the App Store.

Could there instead be Tap Forms 1 ($19.99) and Tap Forms Subscription ($.99 per month)? On Day 1 they’d both be the same.

TF1 would be usable forever, or until Brendan stopped updating for OS compatible, and only get bug fixes. However, TF Sub would get both bug fixes and new updates/features.

Then at a certain point down the line, Brendan could cease offering TF1, fork off TF Sub ($.99 per month) into TF2 ($19.99) and start again with them both being the same.

There’d be no need for TF Lite as TF Sub can offer one month free. After that “trial” period, the user could continue subscribing, simply stop subscribing and using TF, or stop and purchase TF1 (or 2) because, in it’s current state, it’s good enough for them.

[Steve Cross]

Did a little more research and it appears that Apple will allow you to offer 1 year subscriptions. With that in mind, I would vote for annual billing for the reasons mentioned above. However, it seems as if you can also offer monthly subscriptions at the same time with perhaps a discount for a 12 month commitment.

Good luck with adjusting to the new changes in the app store. It always seems to take a while for Apple to get all the kinks worked out of new systems.

[Steve Cross]

FWIW, I’m all in favor of app developers being able to make enough to sustain (and improve) apps that I use and like. Having said that, some apps (and categories of apps) will inevitably be worth more to me than others. If Apple sticks with a $0.99 per month minimum, a lot will not make the cut. BTW, that is not meant as a warning. Database and other “full-time” productivity apps can and should be worth at least that much. I’m thinking more of occasional usage utility apps, games, etc.

The announcement isn’t very clear (at least to me anyway), but I hope that it is possible to get annual subscriptions instead of just monthly. To me anyway, the psychology is different. I don’t mind paying an annual fee if I’m sure I’m going to use a service at least several times during the year. OTOH, it annoys me to pay monthly during those times that I may not use the service at all.

For example, I still subscribe to a few dead tree magazines even though I know that not all of the monthly issues are likely to appeal to me — but the overall convenience of not missing the good issues makes it worthwhile.

With software, I think the issues are similar. For better or worse, most of us have grown up with the concept of “purchasing” software for a one time fee (in spite of the near ubiquitous “licensed not sold” verbiage in the fine print). Even though the iOS and Mac OS app stores have confused the issue with their “free re-downloads for life” policies, I think most people can understand (and agree with, perhaps grudgingly) the need to pay upgrade fees for additional functionality.

I think an annual fee / annual upgrade cycle makes a lot of sense for software. NO ONE really likes the idea of “software as a service”. Paying a monthly fee simply to “maintain access” is too similar to paying your cable or cell phone bill. Prices seem to creep up, service gets worse, and there is a strong tendency to get “locked-in” because switching is expensive and/or difficult.

OTOH, most software should be upgraded annually — for security at least. For a lot of reasons, it is impractical to add new features on a monthly basis. End-user learning curve issues alone make it a bad idea. In addition, any really significant new functionality (not to mention security issues) often require a non-trivial architecture change — not something that can be safely done every month. There are good reasons that virtually all significant software products have carefully defined release cycles.

Like I said, I don’t have any idea what Apple is going to allow, but I hope they do permit annual billing. If you happen to be attending WWDC, please suggest it if you can. While it is clearly not as “developer-friendly” (or Apple friendly) as a predictable monthly income, I do feel that annual billing will be much more palatable to end-users and thus more successful overall.

[AngriBuddhist]

Yeah, the Subscription session videos will probably be the most watched of all time. I’m not a developer and I’ll be checking them out.

[Brendan]

I think we’ll find more about this when WWDC gets going. For now there are a lot of unanswered questions. I don’t know if the subscription system works by limiting access to the entire app if you’ve unsubscribed or if it’s just that certain features will be limited. I haven’t found out about that yet. If it’s that you subscribe to just using the software and keep paying while you still want to use it, then Apple will probably have some fairly inexpensive price tiers. In that scenario a developer probably doesn’t even need to write very much code or any at all to enable this. It would be something built-in to iOS. If it’s a feature subscription, then I don’t see it as being any different than a recurring in-app purchase. You pay for just those features that you want to keep using. Maybe it reverts back to a form of a Lite version if you don’t keep your subscription active.

Lots of questions, so few answers.

[AngriBuddhist]

Apple just announced a whole new subscription model for the AppStore.

http://daringfireball.net/2016/06/the_new_app_store

Whatever your opinion, this will cause a huge change.

I personally think that most consumers are unwilling to pay a reasonable price for quality software already and that this won’t chase away potential purchases. However, it could possibly convert an amount of them into subscribers, depending on what those 200 different price points are.

This just happened today. I’m not saying that TF should or shouldn’t go the subscription route. These are just my thoughts while I try to digest what it means for me, using Tap Forms as an example.

Tap Forms for iPhone (6S) is something that I use in my personal life. I don’t use it for work all day every day. Tap Forms for iPad, while I love the larger canvas, doesn’t perform well on my Air 1, which is 2 years and 8 months old.

Of course, if I use TF for light personal use, on iPhone only, I wouldn’t ever pay $4.99 a month. Even Apple’s current lowest price of $.99 a month might be too high for my TF usage and it’s current features.

That doesn’t rule out the possibility of me being willing to pay a subscription for TF.

What could be added to TF to justify a higher cost to me? What would it take for me to be willing to pay even $.99 a month? I don’t know. Maybe that will be answered in TF2.

The main question I have when thinking about the AppStore and new subscription model is, are there any monthly price points below $.99? If I can’t be convinced at $.99, is there a $.69 or $.79?

You want to be fair to the developer but also think about what makes sense for yourself financially. Do I want to pay $60 over 5 years for an iPhone app? Will I if I’m convinced of it’s value?

What happens when you unsubscribe? Do you no longer receive updates? Or do you lose all functionality?

Beyond today, will developers be able to fund and make a living off more ambitious pro apps? Or new types of services? Whatever the answers, this will be an interesting next couple of years.