Hey friends! Developer of Updatest here.
Just wanted to clarify a few things as I feel like my communication around what happened in Updatest 3.0.0 was not as clear as it should have been.
When folks originally bought Updatest pre-v3, it was a paid app. There was no way, outside of the 14 day free trial to use the app unless you paid for it. I announced that the Updatest Network (something that was heavily requested by a majority of our user base, whom were former MacUpdater users) was going to come but we needed a financially stable business model to not end up shutting down like them. I advertised it as a subscription coming soon, both in app and on the website.
As of Updatest’s 3.0.0 release, after a bunch of private beta testing that existing Updatest users had access to, it was released to the public. The subscription cost was revealed, and I highlighted that this was not meant to replace Updatest, but be an optional additional subscription for those users who needed additional coverage that Updatest itself could not cover, specifically around apps that showed up as “No Source” or were created by developers not using a traditional update platform Updatest could read from.
We also made the core app free. Having to pay for an app, and then also pay a subscription on top of it was something I was not okay with. The Updatest Network has associated costs to running it, and we’re trying to avoid going down the MacUpdater route and end up shutting it down because there’s no sustainable financial model. This was the model I chose so Updatest could stand the test of time.
Because folks paid for the app in the past (and some less than others, because Updatest got a price hike to keep things going about half way through its released) my intent and goal as a thank you to those customers was to set everyone on the same playing field in terms of cost, and give them equal access to the Updatest Network without a subscription based on what the current licenses were being charged for today. I understand that not everyone finds the Network itself useful, but it is the only remaining paid product that exists within Updatest today, so it’s what was offered to folks as an extra thank you for the original purchase they made.
The last piece I’ll touch on is the UI. I reverted our UI back to the V1 version where the app list is to the left, and the content to the right, which I got constant emails about. We removed the sidebar and moved the design language to match Apple, with a top bar. Many users found Updatest’s UI confusing, overly complex and showing too much information. However, a lot of that information needs to be displayed, it just doesn’t need to be displayed all the time.
The rest of the UI has not been changed. The list looks identical to how it did before, the right hand side does too. They’ve had a few polish passes to make sure everything was consistent, and some words removed where they did not need to be. But the core fundamentals of the UI for those areas have not changed, which has caused me a bit of confusion as to some of the feedback I’ve read here, and I’m happy to address further.
