Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/watchlist/fantastical-3-0/
Major new release for the calendar app with a refreshed user interface, unified look across all platforms, and new subscription pricing model. ($39.99 annual subscription, 21.7 MB)
If you own a Fantastical 2 license, launching the app will automatically update it to version 3.0 with existing Fantastical 2 features unlocked and usable.
I read this to mean that somehow FlexiBits was going to force-update an existing v.2 app to v.3, then unlock the v.2 feature set.
Thankfully, thatâs not right, but it did make me a little nervous about my existing installation of Adobe CS6 that Adobe has made clear theyâd like to tear right out of my Mac if they could.
Subscription models are clearly gaining ground. Thanks to discounts and generous family-share policies, Iâm hooked in to the Microsoft Office 365 suite even though I swore Iâd never pay them a red cent in subscription fees. Itâs not as onerous as I once thought it would be. In my newest job, Iâm having to keep careful track of car expenses, and was delighted to learn that the MileIQ app for iOS is considered part of the Office 365 subscription.
If companies like FlexiBits can be generous with the value they provide in exchange for a subscription, they may win over more folks like me. (âGenerousâ is doing things like defining a subscription package as including other platforms.)
Now that Busycal is on Setapp (also a subscription), I may not go Fantastical premium version 3. That Flexibits are looking after version 2 customers is incredibly generous IMO.
FWIW - BusyCalâs new event natural language parsing is terrible compared to Fantasticalâs.
Of course you can (for the foreseeable future) use Fantastical 2 for entering new events and use BusyCal for the rest. If you are already paying for Setapp, I can see that as being an attractive solution.
I bought licenses for BusyCal versions 1, 2, and 3⌠and for Fantastical 1 and 2 (Mac and iOS). Iâve always liked Fantastical for creating new events, but preferred BusyCal for most other calendar-like things. Fantastical has had some great features such as calendar sets, the ability to specify how you want âweek viewâ to look (I want to see today+6 days, I donât care about days already passed), etc. but it never stuck as my âfull timeâ calendar app.
Fantastical 3 looks like it may have added enough of the features to get me to switch over. Iâm watching David Sparksâ free field guide to Fantastical to get up to speed.
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Another subscription application? D.O.A. for me.
Since I had already purchased Fantastical 2 for my iPad, iPhone and iMac Fantastical 3 is working fine for me. However, if I didnât already own Fantastical 2 I probably would decide to avoid Fantastical 3 due to subscription pricing. I am not opposed to software subscriptions, I have a few, but paying $5/month for this and that adds up. I am not interested in using Fantasticalâs cloud offerings but would be happy to pay a smaller monthly fee to get all of the other functionality.
At work we use Adobe CC. Prior to CC we paid annual maintenance fees to Adobe. CC is much, much, much more expensive than what we previously paid. I think companies need to look closely how much annual upgrades would cost their customers compared to subscription fees. I feel that subscription fees should be lower since not everyone paid for annual upgrades but everyone has to pay the subscription fees if they want to use the software.
Yes, that is the main thing (it also applies to âcord cuttersâ and streaming) you eventually end up paying MORE over the life of the item than you do paying upfront basically windfall profits for the seller. In addition, with software subscriptions if for some reason your subscription lapses, then you not only lose the software but also there is a high possibility your data will be locked or even lost to you.
I think thatâs harshâmost of the developers I know arenât rolling in dough. The reason for subscriptions is because modern software requires constant maintenance, and the business model of working for very little for a year or two and then hoping for a huge spike in sales and upgrades is stressful, dangerous, and not always successful. In fact, thatâs what killed Now Software, one of the top calendar and contact companies of yesteryear.
And keep in mind that you can use Fantastical in feature-reduced free mode thatâs supposedly essentially equivalent to Appleâs Calendar.
This is a legitimate concern in theory, but given that Fantastical can export in standard ICS format and has a free version available, not an issue here.
âHowever, that limited version lacks support for adding tasks, collaboration features, and even viewing the Day, Week, Month, and Year calendar viewsâ
Iâm a Fantastical 2 buyer upgraded to 3 and I did not go âPremiumâ. I canât speak to the collaboration features, but I can add tasks in the in the mini-window just fine and Cmd-0 (zero) brings up the full calendar view allowing me to view daily/weekly/monthly/yearlyâŚ
This turns out to be an interesting edge case that I worked through with Michael Simmons yesterday. It turns out that I had an unlicensed copy of Fantastical 2 on my drive, so when I launched it, it promptly wanted to upgrade to version 3.0. Fine, that was what I wanted anyway. But because my copy of Fantastical 2 wasnât licensed (I had installed a beta or some other special copy way back when), the Day, Month, Week, and Year views required the Premium subscription. Had I owned a proper license, that wouldnât have been the case.
Regardless, once I had the subscription in place, Premium worked fine.