Looking forward to OmniFocus 2 on your iPhone? Then you can also look forward to ditching OmniFocus 1 and paying full price for the update. And if you do want OF1, then you’d better buy it now, as it’ll be disappearing as soon as the new app is launched.
OmniGroup, the developer behind OmniFocus, OmniOutliner and OmniEverythingElse, has laid out its plans for dealing with the lack of upgrade pricing in both of Apple’s App Stores. And they sound completely reasonable.
If you’re happy to pay $50 per year for your Dropbox account or Evernote Pro sub or whatever, then why not drop $20–30 every couple of years for an amazingly polished and useful piece of software?
The new Omni apps (OmniFocus 2 for iPhone, OmniOutliner 2 for iPad, and OmniPlan 2 for iPad) have been submitted to Apple, hopefully to be available in time for iOS 7. In fact, the apps will require the new OS, so you really do need to buy the old version now if you aren’t planning on upgrading from iOS 6 (although you might reconsider, as there will be no more updates for the current versions after the new ones ship).
I wish more developers would do this. I have a few apps that I love, and use every day, and I’d be happy to pay for new versions. As it is, an app seems to have a life of just a few years before returns diminish, and most of the people who will buy it for a reasonable price have already bought it.
The alternative seems to be abandonware, like Simplenote (although Simplenote offers the worst of both worlds, being abandoned and also requiring a subscription to activate many features).
Sure, cheaper upgrade prices would be nice, but iOS software is so cheap anyway who really needs it?
Anyhow: what might get overlooked in this announcement is that there’s a new OmniFocus coming any day now. And that’s good news however you look at it.
Source: OmniGroup
