[Nick]

Good morning,

I'm on the last day of my OmniGraffle 5 trial. I quite like your software, but I have some reservations about buying it right now.

I read an Omni Group blog post from January 2010. It mentioned that at that time you had already done a fair bit of work on version 6. Now that it's well over a year later, I'd expect that version 6 is right around the corner. I'd hate to buy version 5 right before you release 6...

Could you please offer me some advice?

Thanks,

Nick

[whpalmer4]

Yeah. It's not right around the corner! In fact, when they say it is right around the corner, it still probably isn't right around the corner :-)

From all appearances, the OmniGraffle group has been busy churning out much-needed updates to the OmniGraffle iPad app. It is of course possible that they've also been making great progress on OmniGraffle 6, but looking at the progress made on the other apps where both an iPad and a Mac app are under active development, it might not be the smart call to rely on that. Also, there are two Mac apps (OmniOutliner 4 and OmniPlan 2) which they did say they were trying to get out in that same post, only one of which has even started private beta.

The Omni 30-day money back guarantee will protect you from buying the "wrong" version for 30 days. There's no sign of any beta preparations for a new version of OmniGraffle, and the betas are typically lengthy (months). Omni generally gives you credit for 60-70% of the price you paid on any previous version toward the latest version, so your question to answer for yourself is what could you do with OG 5 in the next 3 months (minimum), and would it be worth 30-40% of the price of the current version, to be paid at some date in the future, if you decide you need OG 6? If that trade-off makes sense, you should buy it now. The longer they take to deliver, the more the balance swings in your favor. I think the combination of upgrade pricing and money back guarantee makes it an easy call to go ahead and buy, and I suspect that result isn't accidental!