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I'm just one customer, and not a wealthy one at that, but from my point of view the concerns over price obscure the far greater importance of improved functionality: for example, more easily adding sub-tasks, for those of us that pine for a capable outliner for the iphone. $20 is a pittance when one considers the value gained every single hour of the working day from such capability. Bear in mind that some OF competitors are charging a monthly or annual fee.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
When we originally introduced OmniFocus for iPhone, we surveyed the landscape of similar apps and found that most serious apps on the space cost $60-$80—so we came in at $20, an incredible deal.
Respectfully, I'd be very interested to know what those similar apps are, since to my knowledge the OF products are the most expensive mainstream GTD apps in the iOS space.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
When we introduced our iPad apps, we discounted 50% for reduced functionality from the desktop, and another 50% because we were unable to preserve investments by offering upgrade discounts.
OF for Mac is $80, with the potential for upgrade discounts; OF for iPad is $40, with no discount potential.

Regardless, best wishes.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pitamakan View Post
Respectfully, I'd be very interested to know what those similar apps are, since to my knowledge the OF products are the most expensive mainstream GTD apps in the iOS space.
OmniFocus for iPhone was launched at the beginning of the iPhone's App Store in 2008, so it wasn't other iPhone apps we were looking at. Instead, we were surveying what was available for BlackBerry, Palm, and (I think? it's been a while) the Windows Mobile markets. There were quite a few, but all of the quality apps were between $50 and $100 and none of them were as capable as OmniFocus.

Quote:
OF for Mac is $80, with the potential for upgrade discounts; OF for iPad is $40, with no discount potential.
I was specifically thinking of our most expensive apps, OmniGraffle and OmniPlan.

OmniFocus for iPad was (and is) actually better in many ways than our current Mac offering with its addition of Forecast and Review modes, as well as much clearer navigation—though it was also more limited in others (no scriptable navigation), so on the relative value scale it seemed roughly equivalent. (To this day, many people tell me that they prefer the iPad app to the Mac app.) Its 50% discount relative to the Mac app's price is largely because of this problem of not being able to offer discounts to existing customers through the App Store. (This discounting problem isn't just limited to upgrade discounts: we would also love to offer bundle discounts to people who have purchased the other editions.)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
Please understand that we do still support our 1.x customers and will do what we can to make sure their existing investment is preserved.

But please understand that this situation is caused by the current limitations in the App Store, not by some policy decision on our part. Customers who purchased Logic Pro 9 from Apple before the upgrade to Logic Pro X are in the same boat, for example: those who paid $199 two months ago still have to pay $199 again today, and appear to be left without any channel for bug fixes.

For purchases from our own online store, we've always offered upgrade pricing, long-term bug fixes (e.g. providing updates to OmniGraffle 4 long after we shipped OmniGraffle 5), and so on. And we're trying to provide what we can through the App Store as well. (It remains to be seen whether Apple will approve an update to an app we no longer sell—but we do plan to try.)
Thank you Ken! I finally registered on the forums mainly to raise my concern on your blog post, where you stated (emphasis mine, both the bold and the italics):

Quote:
The old versions of OmniFocus for iPhone, OmniOutliner for iPad, and OmniPlan for iPad will be removed from the App Store. If you’re not planning on updating to iOS 7 or need a version of any of these apps that runs on iOS 6 for any reason, you’ll want to grab them before the new releases ship. However, please note that we don’t plan on doing any more work on these iOS 6 apps: our iPhone and iPad development efforts are now fully focused on iOS 7.
And then in the PS (again emphasis mine):

Quote:
We expect that you should all be able to continue to use our version 1 apps on iOS 7.
To me that sounded like you wouldn't even attempt at solving any compatibility problems for version 1, and that is not what I expected of a serious company like the OmniGroup. It made me really consider looking into alternatives - where the risk of purchasing abandonware might be equally high or even higher, but where prices would be low enough for me to accept that risk.

Now what you say here is something totally different, and it is just the thing I needed to hear to again be confident in investing more money in your great products. Thank you!
 
I just checked and it turns out that I bought OmniFocus for iPhone back in 2008, for £12, back when it was just "OmniFocus". I won't be getting this upgrade.

That statement, about wanting to pay for perceived value? It cuts both ways. I realised I've not used very much in the past few years, certainly not enough to warrant buying it again. I've mainly used it purely when I don't have access to my desktop or ipad and want to jot something down. These days I just use notes to make notes, and then sort them later.

Had the upgrade cost been nominal, I would have bought it without hesitation. Perhaps the changes to the interface would be enough to convert me back to actually using it on a regular basis.

As it is, I see the whole Omnifocus product line as really just one system (I am even tempted to think of it as just Omni Sync Server) that I pay for convenience (or platform taxes, if you will). I've spread the cost of each of these over several years, which I've been perfectly happy to do. But now I'm faced with a decision: do I inevitably buy the whole suite again in a short period at a rather hefty expense, or do I buy it piecemeal, maybe just the Mac version for example, and thus miss out on the best feature: having my data synced across my devices?

I suspect instead what will now happen is I'll start to gravitate towards the third option: considering alternatives. Because OmniFocus has a LOT of features. Do I really need them all, I wonder. Maybe I can get by with just a hierarchical structure of notes. Maybe the free, web/desktop/iphone/ipad-based notes.app and reminders.app will actually be "good enough".

I can live without OF2 for iPhone, really I can. I wouldn't have considered any of this an issue if you hadn't completely and suddenly pulled the plug on version 1. What happens then next time I restore my iPhone from iCloud? What happens when version 7.x of iOS completely breaks it, and I'm held hostage to just buying version 2. Maybe none of these things will happen, but there's a bitter taste in my mouth.

Right now, it seems like I have until you kill OF for iPad to decide what my options with this product are.
 
Before you want to plunk down $20, check out the Asian Efficiency walkthrough of OmniFocus 2 for iPhone on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBcRJ_vkkgU


In regards to pricing, Mac blogger David Sparks had this to say:

http://macsparky.com/blog/2013/9/omn...-for-iphone-20

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I’m pretty sure I paid $25 for OmniFocus for iPhone version 1. That was five years ago. Over the past five years I’ve used the heck out of this app (which ended up costing me $5 per year to own). For the price of one cup of coffee per year I’m more productive and kicking ass with this application. Moreover, the Omni Group did not hold back on updates to version 1. During those 5 years, syncing got really great, OmniFocus became location aware, the Omni Group added an innovative forecasting feature, OmniFocus learned to talk to Siri, the Omni Group built an entire back-end syncing engine for my data, and OmniFocus obtained the ability to add tasks via email. The list goes on. I believe over the next five years, the Omni Group will be just as productive and add more useful features to version 2 that will become equally essential to me.

To those complaining about the price I’d ask you to look back and honestly answer the question of whether the Omni Group hasn’t already given you your money’s worth with version 1. If we, as discriminating users, want to continue to have excellent software, we are going to have to pay excellent developers so they can buy shoes, beer, and Pop Tarts. If you’re really hung up on this, think of it as an extended software license to get you through several more years.
 
I'm becoming more and more reticent to invest in the app stores. Convenient they may be, but the cost is becoming too much. When apps where $10 and under this was fine as a one off payment, but now with increased prices it is way too expensive.

As much as I have liked OF and OO over the years the release cycle has been much too slow. Yes they help me to be more productive, but no more than other apps that are much cheaper. In the end facing £13.99 to upgrade on my iPhone with the ipad version not yet available nor the updated version for Mac, then another £20.99 for OO on the iPad (but not available on the iphone) it all seems too messy and expensive for me.

In the end I decided to stick my money into Evernote. They have a much faster update cycle, moving into GTD and able to cover both OF and OO general functionality. The real benefit is that my support documents and my todo's are in the same place. I've also decided that Omni's lack of at least giving an option for tags, not really changing anything in the database architecture from OF 1 makes me wonder why I should upgrade. Yes the Ui's nice, but that's no the most important thing for me.

I'm sorry, but omni is too slow with too little. Oh and should I mention that Evernote's apps are FREE on every PLATFORM and available on most devices. Ken seems to want people to invest, but with so many alternatives and the cross platform mix increasing for people, I certainly would not invest well over £100 for omni's products.
 
I wrote to complain about the lack of upgrade pricing [i.e. Lowering the cost for an initial period of time as a thanks to longtime customers, like me] and got a boiler plate response, so the Omni folk knew in advance that their pricing would be problematic. All told, if I were to buy each Omni app upgrade for all their products on my Mac and mobile devices, the cost will be prohibitive for me. I've been a devoted customer since the old OmniWeb days and was an early adopter of OF, buying it while still in beta. I just cannot continue to pay full price each time they update their products.

Sadly I am leaving Omni after more than a dozen years.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wintergreen View Post
Had the upgrade cost been nominal, I would have bought it without hesitation. … But now I'm faced with a decision: do I inevitably buy the whole suite again in a short period at a rather hefty expense, or do I buy it piecemeal, maybe just the Mac version for example, and thus miss out on the best feature: having my data synced across my devices?
You know that we do offer substantial upgrade discounts on our own store, right?

Quote:
I wouldn't have considered any of this an issue if you hadn't completely and suddenly pulled the plug on version 1. What happens then next time I restore my iPhone from iCloud?
You can restore OmniFocus 1 from your Purchased Apps list in the App Store.

Quote:
What happens when version 7.x of iOS completely breaks it, and I'm held hostage to just buying version 2.
We're not selling version 1 anymore, but we're certainly still supporting it. In fact, we're working on some iOS 7 compatibility fixes for version 1 right now which we plan to submit to the App Store once they're ready.

It's not our intent to force people into upgrading to version 2 because version 1 stopped working for them; it's our job to make version 2 better and better until everyone using version 1 feels it's worth upgrading.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by prider View Post
I just cannot continue to pay full price each time they update their products.
Our most expensive apps are all on the Mac, where we're still able to offer substantial discounts for upgrading customers. We'd love to have the same flexibility in the App Store!
 
 


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