[pitamakan]

You know, whenever the subject of OF pricing comes up here, one of the faithful inevitably responds with a statement suggesting that someone shouldn’t purchase the software if their data isn’t important enough to merit the purchase price. I know that’s an easy way to dismiss an argument, but it's honestly more than a little tiresome ... in part because it comes across as condescending, whether it’s meant that way or not.

But now, the problem is that those statements aren’t even accurate anymore. For current OF users, the software has suddenly changed from being a $20 program to being a $40 one -- without giving the buyer that information beforehand -- and that’s very unfortunate for someone who’s only been using the program for a few weeks or months. Since few people will want to entrust their task management data to an app that won’t even receive bugfixes, most of us are realistically stuck with paying twice -- Omni has effectively painted us into a corner. It’s a great concept for a cash-cow product, I suppose, but it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At the very least, I think Omni ethically owes its 1.x user base a guaranteed period of bugfix upgrades.

It should also be something of a warning to anyone who’s considering purchasing any other iOS apps from Omni. Given what just happened with the iPhone app, no one in their right mind should buy the current version of the iPad app now, because it’s pretty much guaranteed that over the next few months the $40 app is really going to cost you $80.

And honestly, from looking at the promotional video it’s really difficult for me to even consider this a 2.0 app. There are lots of bright colors and lots of white space, but little in the way of new functionality, and the new landing page for the app is unintuitive and poorly designed. It's a rush job. I’m not sure at this point whether I’ll buy it, or get up the initiative to move on ... but either way, Omni has definitely lost my advocacy and my goodwill. I know it’s hard to quantify that sort of thing, which is probably why Omni decided to ignore the topic, but I can say with some certainty that in my case that lost advocacy is worth considerably more than the $20 they may or may not get from me.