[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Amory

People can charge what they like, but that does not make it good policy or good business.

Perhaps you could explain why it is not good policy or good business? The Omni Group appears to be a growing concern selling quality products to customers around the world. They are confident enough in their offerings to offer a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, including absorbing Apple's 30% cut for App Store purchases. Their expressed goal is to make the best software they can, not to make the most possible money. If that isn't doing it right, what is?

It is misleading to characterize, as OG does, the three platforms as independent. Synching between Macs, iPads, and iPhone is built in to most modern applications. What you the consumer buy is a function (organizing one's life by projects and tasks, in OF's case). $140 is a high price for this.

How is it misleading? They are independent! Did OmniOutliner for Mac have to change when OmniOutliner for iPad came out? No. OmniGraffle when OmniGraffle for iPad shipped? No. OmniFocus when OmniFocus for iPad? No. Can you use any of those apps without buying any of the others? Yes, and many people do. Do you have to buy all of them? No, only the ones you want (and you can run the iPhone version on the iPad). Is it true that the Mac version of all of those apps is the most powerful? Yes, and it is also true that it runs on more powerful hardware and has been under development for years before 3rd party development for iOS, so this should be no real surprise!

As for the price of the package of all 3 apps, it's peanuts compared to what you would pay to go to a GTD seminar. It comes with excellent, essentially unlimited free support by email and phone, whereas you could spend almost the entire purchase price with just 3 calls to Apple's support if not under warranty ($29 for iOS/AppleTV, $49 for Mac/consumer apps). No attempt is made to tie each purchase to a specific computer, like Adobe is fond of doing, and upgrade pricing is very reasonable (and allows you to skip versions at no penalty, again unlike many other high-priced vendors). As for the wisdom of charging for each additional component, each one is a separate development with a hefty investment of effort by people both inside and out of Omni. 1Password is a good example of another successful company offering its products on multiple platforms to work together; to use your characterization, their function is password management, and the price you pay depends on how many platforms you need. Or should I feel that they owe me a free copy of their Windows app because I own the Mac, iPad and iPhone apps?

Let's look at some of Omni's competition in the productivity space:

Things: $50 Mac, $20 iPad, $10 iPhone, no bundling, not as powerful
The Hit List: $50 Mac, $10 iPhone, iPad app in development, sync by subscription charge
DevonThink: $50 (or more) Mac, $15 iPad/iPhone, universal app, but terrible reviews
Yojimbo: $39 Mac, $10 iPad, crippled mobile product, only local sync
Evernote: free apps, subscription charge, data has to go through their server

If your beef is that they don't offer a discounted bundle, you've got Apple to blame for that. If you buy software directly from Omni, you get a sliding scale discount that goes up with the number of apps you buy. There's no practical way at the moment to do that through Apple's stores.

Finally, it doesn't take much for an organizer to save you $140. Missing bill payments, failing to meet a client obligation, inefficient trip planning are all examples of activities where sub-optimal execution could lead to substantially higher costs. Anyone who bills for their time will recoup the cost rapidly if it makes them use their time more efficiently.

In my case, I own the Mac version and the iPhone version. I'd love to be able to adopt the "set anywhere, ready everywhere" method that is current and helpful in other Mac ecosystem apps. It is disappointing the OG does not adopt this model for its already premium priced products.

Example? Perhaps I just don't understand your terminology.