Wow! What a response! Our customers are fantastic. Truly special. I’m honored to be working with Chris, Tabetha, Keith, and Wesley to make this release a fantastic one. Yes, there are a few bugs – there always are. Chris is hard at work on a 5.01 and we’ve already begun internal testing of that release and hope to have that 5.01 release in the near term.
You may have noticed a new name in the list above – Keith. He’s been replying to a lot of comments on Twitter, on our page here, and elsewhere. Keith is a marketing Fanatic (get it?) and has been the driving force for our surveys, tweets, and a better two-way conversation with our customers. You will be seeing a lot more of him 🙂
Informant 5 is a labor of love for me. There were major aspects of it that were direct implementations of my vision – the Informant Home screen, the new bottom-focused action toolbar and scrolling navigation at the top. Email. Triggers. Moving the date picker into the editor, but in what I consider a better implementation that Apple’s and many competitors. I love all of things about Informant 5 and find my day-to-day productivity greatly increased. However, its not perfect – most first releases aren’t. There are things we can and should improve: the date picker needs a better way to handle inputting days, especially those that fall opposite of where today is; we can probably use iPhone 7+ and iPad screen space better for the date picker; Informant Home’s view picker should be more customizable and offer more shortcuts; and of course some bugs fell through the testing. But overall, for a X.00 release – I am ecstatic! Most of the reported bugs will be fixed in the 5.01 update – and we will continue to listen to your feedback.
Pricing for Informant 5 is a conversation-starter, to say the least. As consumers of software ourselves, moving to a subscription was risky. No, rewrite that – is risky. We’ve watched major apps move to subscription and blow up and some thrive. We have a rich history of making major improvements to our software on a continuous basis, and with Informant 5 we have a rich template for the features and improvements we are making for the next year. Furthermore, we will be making an announcement in the coming weeks and months that will further solidify our promise to you that you will be excited! about what’s coming to subscribers: I’ll give you a sneak peak – we’ll be unlocking a whole new level of productivity that people have been asking us to do for 15 years through a partnership that I think will be amazing. Stay tuned – I know I’ve said that a lot over the last few months, but I guess I get a bit optimistic in my timelines sometimes 🙂
Alex, As Fanatic’s “new face of marketing”, as you stated in a different post, Keith, should make it a priority to gauge & promptly respond to the concerns & comments of your loyal users. You need to initiate a damage control plan to retain your current users & attract new ones. Hope that you will give serious consideration to this suggestion from a long time user.
Thank you.
If you’ve been following our blog, FB, and Twitter – Keith has been doing a TON of gauging, surveys, and getting feedback. He’s done more feedback gathering in a few weeks than I’ve done all year.
As for damage control – I don’t understand what that means. That assumes that things are going poorly. Yes, we do have a strong vocal minority who aren’t happy with the subscription and we have been listening to them. That said – it is a minority so far. Most people understand that as a business we need a recurring revenue stream otherwise we’re a once-and-done shop. We’re a productivity software package – not a video game.
Alex, in the other thread I have been very specific about the many issues I have with Informant 5. Most of my concerns are shared by many others who commented there. Still nothing of what I wrote has been addressed by any of you. Noe that you are requesting a premium price I expect more responsiveness, not to mention quicker solutions of bugs (like the one on filtering by tag I’ve explained several times and has been bothering me for many many months).
Just FYI – I’ve responded to your long comment on the previous blog post. The reason why I didn’t respond before is that my response would be somewhat argumentative as I don’t share the same point of view on several major Informant features as you do – and I don’t believe that in general that kind of response from me would be appropriate.
To be clear, all your feedback was read and received – I simply want to keep a more positive tone in my responses.
Yes, I have been following your blog. No, I do not use FB or Twitter. Yes, I care about an App that I have supported since its inception on the iOS platform.
Looking at the App Store reviews for Informant 5, the overall rating is 2 1/2 stars. There are 30 reviews among which 14 report technical concerns (which I know you are addressing) and 11 question value for money. This is hardly a minority. If I were a new user, this would be enough to turn me away from trying out the App.
I’m not happy about the star situation, but I expected it to some degree because of moving to subscriptions. The question for me is not what star rating we are at now, but what will be as time goes on. And that number of reviews is still a tiny minority compared to the positive responses we’ve gotten directly via email and support.
We are in it for the long-term – not just launch week.
The unfortunate thing is we’ve gotten responses from people saying something like: “This is a comment I just typed and erased from Alex’s latest blog post. I didn’t submit the comment because it wouldn’t do any good. So just know there are those of us who are happy Informant users.”
So there are two sides to the feedback coin – but honestly we are listening to both sides, not just ignoring the negative and going with the positive.
Well done on cooling down before answering, Alex, I tend to get argumentative instead.
Hi Alex
Congrats on the launch of PI 5. Where can I find a list of known bugs that will be addressed in 5.01? While in dark mode, On the iPhone the UI for the priority selector to change / assign a priority to a task is very faint…almost impossible to see. On my iPad the priority selector is unseen…the screen looks black. The priority selector UI is useable in non-dark mode. Wondering if this is a known bug that will be addressed in 5.01. I like the dark mode addition, but this UI issue makes it non useable. Thanks!
Re; pricing. I’m fine with the subscription model. In many ways it’s going to be a boom for users. You need you team will have to show value every year to get your base to renew – keeps your team innovating and your users engaged. Makes everyone honest in my view ….
We are posting the 5.01 bug-fix list today.
Here is the link to the 5.01 fix list:
Hi Alex
Congrats on the launch of PI 5. Where can I find a list of known bugs that will be addressed in 5.01? While in dark mode, On the iPhone the UI for the priority selector to change / assign a priority to a task is very faint…almost impossible to see. On my iPad the priority selector is unseen…the screen looks black. The priority selector UI is useable in non-dark mode. Wondering if this is a known bug that will be addressed in 5.01. I like the dark mode addition, but this UI issue makes it non useable. Thanks!
Re; pricing. I’m fine with the subscription model. In many ways it’s going to be a boom for users. You need you team will have to show value every year to get your base to renew – keeps your team innovating and your users engaged. Makes everyone honest in my view ….
I don’t want to copy&paste what I already wrote a couple of times in the comments to Keith’s blog post, but please be aware that many of your long time users are much less excited than you. As for me, to summarize in just a few words what I already wrote, I have some major problems with the new user interface, and I am very frustrated with your strategy of introducing new features of little value while not focusing on the core features of your software: calendar and tasks.
I appreciate the feedback, though I do strongly disagree with the premise of your comment. However it is valid feedback and it is appreciated.
I second these comments from Gennaro. I’ve elaborated more in the “Now available in itunes thread” but in summary I think you would see a far greater enthusiasm around PI 5 from your core, loyal followers (of which I would could myself as one) if we were seeing progress on the core functions (calendar + tasks). We just didn’t see any of that in PI5.
Alex, Love your PMA!. But let’s stay grounded in reality. Agreed, some bugs are normal. They are small when they affect a minor feature. I can’t even create an event outside of the default time without a crash, if I make it for the default time then edit later, crash. That’s kinda huge in a calendar app.
If any employee/representative/marketing guy is worth his weight, he should not be calling concerned (and correct) customers Henny Penny aka Chicken Little. In my business THAT comment wouldn’t be tolerated toward another employee and ABSOLUTELY not directed to a customer. His apologies to that customer should be as public as his transgressions. That should be step two in your efforts to control damage. You just took step 1. Thank you for that.
Not to “pig pile” on what tab wrote above, and I definitely don’t want to get into public flaming etc, but I can tell you as the Director of Marketing for a Global Multi-National company, if anyone from my marketing team dealt with customers the way Keith has on the other thread, we would be having some serious discussions. I was not aware of his role until now, so I wasn’t sure how to judge his responses, although one could say not appropriate regardless of his role, but knowing he is and will be the face of Fanatic, I think he needs to take a quick and long step back and reconsider how he handles customer feedback. Alex, I have been an avid user since the days when you were known as WebIS, from Palm Pilot to Windows CE to BlackBerry to iOS, like many of the others in the other thread. My only comment is that if there is much more coming, and I get it you can’t tell us, then perhaps you should have thought about doing the pricing at that time so people could truly understand the value for their payment, rather than you having to try to convince them of the value that is coming. I am going to hold out for a while because I have tried all the others, and I mean ALL, and I would rather stay with Informant if some of these issues are resolved soon. Thank you.
Bruce,
uh oh… I’m a bit nervous that Alex is going to take me out to the woodshed and give me a whipping. (No sarcasm intended there)…
I suppose I need to apologize if I have offended you (or anyone else for that matter).
I care deeply about this business, the products, the staff, and especially the customers. If my comments have been communicated in any other way then I do owe you (and others) an apology.
If my comments were taken as abrasive it might have been because I have seen how hard Alex, Chris, Wes, and Tabetha have been working and I get at least a little bit offended when people are (overly) critical of the product, or policies. Everyone here (not including myself on this part) has done heroic work to get this app and this business to where it is. I have a ton of respect for what they have accomplished and I want it to be known that I trust them, and the decisions they have made. I am new here and I certainly don’t want to offend anyone but it really pushes my buttons to read about people who have been with Informant for 10+ years who are ready to jump ship just because of a (relatively small) price increase. Informant provides a TON of value… way more than $25/year and it takes a 2 way relationship with the community to make that happen.
Of course there are things we can do better. All of us are in that boat. I guess my point is that it is a lot more fun to work with people (as a vendor or as a customer) who are willing to help us get better and not just throw stones or complain without offering solutions.
Ultimately, we (staff and customers) as the Informant community need to work together to make each other better. If you guys have a better idea, then we WANT… (strike that)… we NEED you to tell us and if we don’t listen the first time… keep telling us. We’ll get it eventually.
On a personal note, I appreciate your assertive feedback to me. I’m a big boy & I can handle it. I am a bit curious about which of my reply’s led you to make this comment to begin with.
Thanks,
Keith
Peace & Love,
Keith
Keith is learning the best way to talk to our customers – its takes time 🙂 Our customers are unique! Also, I have a fairly particular way of writing to our customers and Keith is just trying to match that…I’m a hard act to follow 🙂
Bruce, history suggests its much harder to increase the price as times goes on, and I suggest that instead of being a good thing, it would just be a constant source of consternation and its a whole lot easier to change prices in one direction than the other, or to offer discounts from time to time.
Are we going to be stubborn and put our heads in the sand and pretend that everyone is 100% happy with the pricing? No, but I also won’t pretend that the old pricing was supportive of future innovation, not to say just staying afloat.
We’re only a few days into the Informant 5 launch – and its actually going relatively well all things considering. Our primary focus and goal is to fulfill the promise of a constant Informant 5 improvements. And yes, there are specific things I cannot talk about because of a partnership that we’ll talk about some point in the near-ish future (Holidays are a bear to schedule stuff).
Keith,
thanks for the response, so while there are a few threads going on here, I will try to respond briefly for everyones benefit 🙂
1) Remember the woodshed isn’t necessarily a bad place, been there many times myself in my professional career, the real question is, does one come out of it learning anything or just destined to go back for the same thing?
2) You didn’t actually offend me with any of your replies as my inputs were quite limited, but it was rather responses to others that I was referring to. I can call them out, but I think others have, and honestly I think if you take a step back, take a deep breath, FORGET about the $25 or the pricing plan debates, and read the comments for what they are, passionate users expressing their feelings, I think you will figure out where the “not so great” responses were all on your own. (if you need me to I can, but I am confident you won’t need me to)
3) You talked about how you care deeply about the business, the product, the staff and the customers, that’s passion and it is an incredibly powerful force. Passion is one of the most powerful forces in life, and if harnessed and directed correctly, it is unstoppable. Unfortunately, if not harnessed or directed correctly, it is still unstoppable but with potentially disastrous results. I tell everyone that works for me, I would rather have the challenge of directing and harnessing the passion, than having to try to get someone to have any, so don’t apologize for being passionate, just breathe deeply and work on directing it in the most powerful ways.
4) You said it really pushes your buttons to read about people who have been with Informant for 10+ years who are ready to jump ship just because of a (relatively small) price increase( hint: here’s the passion thing again). My suggestion is go back and read the reviews and also think about this, Informant is a productivity tool, not the next Angry Birds or Slither.io or some other “this week’s fad” game. This means that most of the people using the tool are professionals by nature, so while they may talk about the $25, what they’re really saying is “do I see the value for the money spent” and it’s not about the $25. That is chump change, it is less than most users will spend on coffee in a month, not a year, but they appreciate the value the coffee provides them and they may not understand the difference in value between PI4 and Informant 5. While I know there is a lot of work that has been done behind the scenes for the future, you can’t think about what is behind the curtain, you have to remember what people see is in front of the curtain, and other than a refreshed UI which many don’t like, right now there isn’t much change, so in their mind this isn’t a small increase, it could be a 10x increase depending on what they have paid for and signed up for.
5) My final comment, assuming you haven’t fallen asleep yet or stuck a pencil through your eye 🙂 (please don’t do that) is that please don’t lose sight of brand loyalty and it’s power. You guys changed your name to Fanatic and I think it is great based on Alex’s vision and passion, and honestly, the passion of many of the users. Don’t take the 119 (last time I checked) comments in the other thread as bad, take it as good, take it as people who care about the product, people who care about the company, those of us that believe. There will always be the whiners, the complainers, the people you can’t please, but in general, remember this is a productivity tool, so based on that, everyone that engages with you has a busy life, time is money, and they are spending THEIR (time) money to give you feedback, which probably means they care, they want this to work, and all they want to know is that people are listening. Hear what they have to say, listen deeply to their wants and cries, not necessarily exactly what they are saying, and deliver a product that exceeds their expectations and the $25 won’t even be a discussion.
6) Finally, it is clear you have many passionate and loyal users, so I am not sure how large the beta test group is, but I am guessing if you wanted to expand the TestFlight group, you would have no shortage of volunteers, myself included.
At this point I am climbing off my soapbox, assuming I haven’t already fallen off it, and all I can say is breathe deeply, listen (meaning hear, don’t just read), and try to understand. If you want more, we should probably continue this offline, I am guessing based on my login you can figure out how to contact me 🙂
Thanks,
Bruce
Hi Tab – that would be a huge bug – and I believe Chris has fixed it. I can’t be sure because he did fix a very specific bug that could occur with the date picker, but its not one that affected most people and only reproducible in a very specific set of circumstances and your description isn’t specific enough for me to know if his fix covers your situation.
Any tiny/minor bug can be a major bug if it affects you 100% of the time. I get that, but at the same time its not a bug that was affecting the majority of users and therefore my comment that it was a minor bug.
Concerned as a long-term (since Palm OS days) user that the minimalist Jony Ivesque UI (which makes things more complicated) combined with the relatively high price will drive experienced customers away. $25 a year seems a bit steep at first but considering that I use it every day and throughout the day, I think it is worth it (and already purchased it) but many won’t see it that way. New customers will only see the price and not understand the functionality. For myself, I am assured the functionality is buried under the UI somewhere and hopeful about the upgrades Alex has hinted at. It’s just going to take some time to get used to it. For now, it is crashing my iPad Air, so I may need to wait until 5.0.1.
There is a 5.01 that is coming in just a few days. It has been uploaded to apple and beta group has access.
I also agree that $25/yr for something you use everyday is actually a VERY good value. Bridging the gap from people used to $0.99 for apps is a bit of a challenge and we have work to do to communicate the value…
We are a small team (of humans), and are mistakes are on public view (in a big way sometimes), but we are working on all the problems you identified and with this new pricing model we should be able to keep working on them for the foreseeable future.
We do welcome your feedback and appreciate your willingness to stick with us.
In fact, “people used to $0.99 for apps” actually paid these much for informant 4 :
Informant Premium$14.99
Weather$0.99
Informant Sync 1 Year$14.99
Holidays United States$0.99
Premium Pack + Informant Sync$24.99
Premium Pack + Informant Sync$2.99
Power Feature Pack$4.99
Moon Phases calendar$0.99
Informant Sync 1 Month$4.99
Tasks Pack$4.99
Please make sure to send us a support request so we can make sure to fix whatever that crash is. As a x.00 release, we find that once in the wild, we find new bugs that we never saw during beta or we saw it once, but was never reproducible.
I understand that there are questions on pricing and value – ones that we can only show through following through on our promises.
I agree with SJU87 that with a $25 a year price point, you are not likely to attract many new customers. As for “owning the App” after 1-year, what one is left with, unless the subscription, is continued, is a hobbled App.
Concurrent to bug fixes that are critical in retaining your existing customers, you should reconsider your pricing strategy to bring in new users. I have already provided my feedback on this subject via SurveyMonkey. In another post, I mentioned that you should think about Less (price for a fully functional App) being More (users, hence earnings for Fanatic software).
I think calendar users will love the new magic bar, but it is a burden for task focused users. There are plenty of calendar apps in the app store, I understand you want their users to switch to PI, so your competitive advantage is additional task management, and comparing to other task focused apps, such as Omnifocus, your competitive advantage is customization. So your ultimate competitive advantage is highly customizable task + calendar management.
Keith,
You didn’t offend me in any way and I’m not looking for an apology, but in the spirit of communication I’d like to tell you something. I read ALL comments on the last couple threads and while many people complained about the cost, especially in the thread where the pricing was announced, MOST of the comments were about difficulties USING the app. People asking how to do things, people commenting on it crashing, people offering suggestions and you didn’t respond to many of them. You mostly seemed to respond to people you took issue with. Almost universally people have said this release is not as good as the previous version. Don’t you agree that if you, as a customer, are asked to pay more for something that it should be better?
Perhaps you should read the comments again with an open mind and listen to your customers concerns. Some of them, including me, we’re trying to be helpful.
@Keith,
You asked…
In the thread>
Informant 5 is Now Available in iTunes…
txsulley (wrote) on November 30, 2016 at 5:05 pm
(See his comments)
Then you replied…
on November 30, 2016 at 5:40 pm
tx,
Have you ever seen that movie that starts out with Chicken Little running around saying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling….”… Just curious…
To which he replied…
on December 1, 2016 at 12:38 am
Keith, I love the movie, but I hate to say it, making fun of customer concerns is not a great approach…
Keith, in the costumer support role you MUST have thicker skin than those you’re dealing with. Don’t forget they are the ones expending the money and you (your company) are receiving that money. Be it 99¢ or $25… You have to remember which direction the dollars are following.
Our customers are great customers – they really are and we appreciate them all. I’ve tried hard to have a relatively easy-going, open, and honest conversation with all of our customers. Its not common in the software world, and one of the hardest things to communicate sometimes is tone. Keith was trying to be somewhat playful on some of the comments – so he was displaying thick skin, but I think it could be read in different ways.
Keith (posted) on November 28, 2016 at 9:51 pm
Progress can be painful sometimes… Paying for this iOS upgrade will definitely help us get the Android update out sooner. We do appreciate you and customers like you who are willing to go along with us through this adventure…
Keith,
Can you tell us why this position should be okay for Apple users?
The droid platform is on a gaggle of devices compared to the number of Apple products. The cost of writing software and testing of such products must be high. Why not allow the offerings to be self supportive? Just charge the droid users $40 then test an unknown product on their devices. How would that work out?
Fanatic is a whole company – its not separate product divisions. Every dollar supports the whole company. There are many fixed costs that affect the entire PI ecosystem: weather, support, marketing, website, and servers.
Either way, there is value in us having an eco-system – not just one product for one platform. Having Android benefits iOS users because it helps create a full eco-system that is better for everyone.
Imagine buying the latest model of your favorite (current) car. Keep your old one as a daily driver, you didn’t pay us enough for it back then, so we can’t work on it in the future. But you hop in the new one because it feels and looks good. You don’t know why the radio is in the passenger door. The engine starts, you reach into the trunk to put it into gear. Oops you shift the gear handle and the engine shuts down. You call the company and they say you’ll get used to the position of the gear shifter and don’t worry about the engine shutting down, that’s why you paid more for this car than your older one. We need the money you have given us to work on it. The company also says your neighbors are rich and they like the look of your car, you shouldn’t be upset. Stop complaining and tell us what’s wrong.
if i buy the full package will i loose the ability to sync google calendars , tasks and evernote after the 12 moths or it is just the inormant sync that stops ?
You loose all sync functions. You will also no longer have email integration & the weather function (if the latter is something you find useful!).
As I have pointed out in a different post, unless you fork over another $25, you are left with a crippled App. Alex & Keith, please correct me if what I have written is incorrect.
Congratulations to the Fanatic team. I just downloaded PI5 onto my iPhone 5S and I am impressed. A better design than even the well-designed PI4. I haven’t hit a glitch yet, but it is possible that I will since this is a .0 version. The previous version looked “old” when I went back to check some things. I have moved PI5 to my dock (or home row or whatever it is called) replacing the old version. I LIVE in this app, and it is my most used app on my iPhone (and I have the desktop version too), so I’ll be giving it a good workout during the next few days.
For those complaining that PI4 should have just had the new features added, remember that PI5 was re-written to use the latest developer tools, not just some new features tacked on. It will be a better foundation for the ongoing development.
Thanks Mike. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Thank you Mike! I appreciate that. Informant 5 is a new app for a reason – we wanted the freedom to try new things and see how well they worked long-term, take user feedback and adjust. Almost 100% of Informant 4 was rewritten to some degree (most of it pretty majorly) to take advantage of iOS 10 functionality, methodology, and all the newest ways of doing things.
We knew that not every decision we made would be loved, but we had to try it or just get stuck in the same old rut. We’ll see what works and what doesn’t and adjust. We appreciate that you can see that 🙂
Thanks m_g , wow , this really has to be one of the worse thought out app releases in history !!!
haribofan,
Is there something in particular that you don’t like. If there is something specific, we would like to address it.
Thanks,
Another longtime (at least back to my 2005 Pocket PC) user here. I don’t mind the subscription per se (I’ve been paying for sync the last couple of years), though if I remember correctly, I only paid about $15 for the the last time I renewed. $25 is a pretty big jump. Plus we are two sync account household. I’ll cross that bridge when the renewals come up.
The bigger (and immediate) issue is just the functionality of choosing dates and time when creating an event. The endless scrolling (and additional taps to get 5 min and 1 min intervals) instead of being able to tap a date on a calendar and type in the 4 digit time is truly awful. And slow. And it is worse that the scrolling is left to right and the reading is top to bottom. I read left to right. The more I use it, the more I hate it. Dreadful. Plus, it keeps crashing when I try to use the triggers that ported over from the old templates. Do I need to create new triggers?
The date picker has been an item with mixed feedback. Some have liked it, although many have been frustrated by it. It is an area we are listening closely too.
Lets get your triggers question into the support team via in app help. They can help you sort that out and might have some questions about the details of the triggers, etc.
Keith: I have a lot of templates that were converted over to PI5 and I have issues which I reported to support. What I am looking for is a better explanation on how they work and how to make my converted templates work in the new environment. I was told that many of my issues will be addressed in the next release, but since this is a new concept, some more detailed information on triggers is needed.
I almost never post or comment on blogs/forums/products/etc but I just wanted to say thank you for a great product. I am a long time user of Informant (since the PPC days) and it saves me a ridiculous amount of time and money in helping me keep my life organized. For me Informant is irreplaceable. There is not another app that does everything Informant does for my needs. I, like others, am not a huge fan of subscription based products but I also understand the reasoning behind it and don’t have a problem with it when it has value. Part of the reason I bought the subscription was to support a product that has been invaluable to me throughout the years and I have no problem paying a yearly fee to support you guys. So far I love what you guys have done with Informant 5. Thanks for all the hard work. I look forward to new releases, bug fixes, and new features and enhancements. 🙂
Craig,
Thank you for taking the time to post. Many times it seems that only people who are frustrated are the ones who spend time posting, it is actually quite good to hear from folks who are pleased because we know there are really quite a few of them.
Don’t get me wrong, we NEED to hear the critiques, but as humans (yes we are humans over here, not robots)… We do love compliments too.
Thanks a bunch!
-Keith
Intro to Marketing; day 1…When a customer is satisfied with a product or service he will tell one person. When he is dissatisfied he will tell 20-25 people.
One shouldn’t be surprised my the negative blowback here and in iTunes ratings.
This might be off-topic, but to me the pricing model of PI 1.0 macOS in relation to PI 5.0 iOS now has become really confusing.
Early backers like me paid a fixed price for PI macOS which still has to be released after being in development for more than 20 months. It feels more and more I have been helping funding PI 5 iOS, the app that is not of my taste anymore. Jeez, this sucks.
Hi Michiel.
Let me put another way – Informant for MacOS is released. Its not beta. Its been released for many many months. For *marketing* reasons alone, we call it 0.97 instead of 1.0 – but we consider it completely released. So why marketing is it 0.97? Because we felt that people would consider PI “unfinished” until it offered all the features of the iOS version.
In reality, PI for Mac is more like at version 1.01 right now and will be going to a 1.1 soon (if I was using our normal version numbering scheme).
As for Informant 5 not being your taste anymore, I am sorry to hear that. I would probably read Chris’ comment http://staging.pocketinformant.com/ios-10-rich-notifications/ and see if that helps.
I was in a meeting recently and had to pull up an important date. Checked PI – the date was no where to be seen. Later, discovered that this was because gSyncit had once again changed the parameters of syncing, which it seems to do every time I update it or it crashes. This is just one of the many issues using PI presents.
I read a lot of productivity literature and am part of several productivity forums. Apps like Todoist, Nozbe, Asana, Omnifocus, Evernote, Trello, 2Do, etc. come up frequently in discussions – but not PI. How does this square with the “wow” response to Informant 5 documented here, as this seems incongruous?
I believe that the reviews in the iTunes store tells the tale. There are a core group of PI fanbois, there are another ring of customers who use PI due to inertia, and then there are those who are stuck using it for whatever reason. With the release of Informant 5, people in the outer rings are reconsidering their involvement with the product.
The shift to a subscription based model makes sense financially. Interestingly, there is a similar movement in medicine, called “direct primary care” or concierge practice. Patients pay a fee to get all of their annual healthcare, which is basically a membership or subscription model. In looking at practitioners who have made the shift, they mention that you have to be prepared to lose 90% of your current patient base. For some, this is still financially feasible, due to the subscription price and drawing in new patients who like the membership model.
I believe the same is happening here. I think Fanatic will lose a significant number of customers but will still be able to navigate this financially. The problem with this, however, is that unlike medicine, apps like PI need to be in the public eye. They require people to not only use them but to talk about them and share them. In other words, PI risks becoming irrelevant as less and less people talk about it.
As a CEO who made a critical error in marketing some time ago, I can say that there are some decisions that you cannot take back and that the general public is not only not forgiving, they are highly distracted. Once you are off their radar, except of course for the negative experience they had with you, they do not tend to give you a second chance.
In addition, PI is not just competing with many other products, some of which are superior. In a recent interview, David Allen noted that many people in his circle are returning to pen and paper. It is not just that the new incarnation of PI is disappointing – it is also that it contributes to a general cynicism about the lack of benefits from these kind of apps generally. Shifting to a subscription model in many cases only intensifies this perception.
Perhaps all of this why Alex has gone from the pragmatic, engaging, straightforward spokesperson from the days of yore, to an excited, ecstatic, somewhat self-involved cheerleader. I am pleased he is happy with his labor of love. It is clear that many of his soon to be former customers are not.
Greg – I urge you to read Chris’s response to Niklas on this post:
http://staging.pocketinformant.com/ios-10-rich-notifications/
I’d rather point you to that response than write a new one. As for “excited, ecstatic, somewhat self-involved cheerleader” – well, to be frank I’m just responding to how some people told me I was being too corporate and so I’m trying to be a little more peppy. I consider it still down-to-earth, but you know – I also *am* extremely excited about Informant 5.
Keith,
You are correct. Critical comments outnumber glowing reviews on this blog. Perhaps, this is because you have loyal users who care & are concerned about the path Fanatic is taking. We are taking time to post since we continue to hope that you will pause to assimilate the common themes of the blog critiques & negative App Store reviews.
A few suggestions:
1. Make a fully functional version of Informant 5 free, for a limited period (say 1-month) AFTER Chris fixes the bugs that are plaguing the release candidate.
2. After that offer more pricing choices – not everyone needs all the features you are offering. As I have previous written, this is a case of “Less is More”.
I hope that you will read this post in the spirit in which it is written.
Thank you.
Always! We did try offering choices in PI 4.9 and the fact was that almost everyone paid for the full version. We’ve tried three times now to offer limited, or purchase packs and nobody ever really seems to go for it. The vast majority go for the full app.
As for a fully functional version – you can get that now. If you sign up with an Informant Sync account you can get 2 weeks free. Same if you do a monthly subscription – you get a week or two free trial (not sure which).
Alex, The difference, as I understand, between PI 4 & I5 is that after paying $14.99 for the Premium Pack with PI 4 (as I did), I can continue to use a fully functional App, until it is no longer compatible with the iOS. With I5, unless I continue to pay the annual fee, I will be left owning a crippled App at the end of a year.
From the feedback on this forum & on the App Store, it looks like many users prefer pick & choose options, rather than have the whole deal forced upon them. From your comments it appears that you are set in your business model and not inclined to be flexible.
I do not see anything about a “free” trial option with either Informant Sync or the I5 purchase options. Having to pay to try it out and offering an additional 2 or 4 weeks of service is rather different from a free trial.
I don’t think we are inflexible, but we aren’t going to be changing things on a whim, or based on a few comments only. If we do change something, it will be after a lot of discussion, real sales info, surveys, and so on.
I can say that our current direction already comes from many months of real discussion, sales info, and surveys – so its not like we just tried something and want to see if it works.
The facts are:
If you do a monthly subscription, Apple gives you a free trial option.
I wish you good luck. Once the horse is out of the barn & the dust has settled down, it is too late………
Another suggestion, please consider recruiting a broader cross-section of users, to beta test v5.01, using TestFlight.
I volunteer.
My calendar is everything and I have always relied on PI. I waited to migrate from Palm OS to iPhone until PI was available for iOS. I have very simple needs. Just syncing with the iOS calendar and Reminders and a better/faster interface than the stock iOS apps. Until now I have been using PI4 with the Power Feature Pack.
PI5 looks great and I’d love to jump on board. However, PI5 only comes as a free app with in app purchases. This means that me, my wife and daughter all have to pay €26,45 to move to the new version. I did this with PI4 which was 3x €7 or so. 3x €26,45 is just too much.
Please consider releasing a separate pay-to-own version so the purchase can be shared with family. Or reintroduce the Power Feature Pack to unlock tasks. I don’t care for sync/weather/E-mail/etc.
I have been a devoted user since the palm days and have always loved it. This relEase is real nice, took a bit of time getting around but well worth it.
I purchased the 3 month sub but I will gladly be renewing.
Only thing is the email integration needs work. I would like to see all my mail boxes. I keep everything organized in folders so right now I’m not really using that feature.
Other then that Great job, and I look forward to seeing more releases.
Thank you. This is of course a 5.0 (with emphasis on the .0) release, meaning we will be adding to it with a 5.01 & 5.02 pretty quickly. We intend to improve the email integration feature & have already received some pretty good ideas.
In many ways this is a whole new Era for Informant, so thanks for being understanding of the few things that might be just a bit off. We did take a few chances with some changes and are adapting to the feedback.
Here is a list of the 5.01 fixes
I just noticed everything is scrambled on the widget. Not sure is this is your issue or apples.
Hi Joe. We did have reports of that during beta and we’ve seen it once. My gut is that its an Apple bug where the widget “saved state image” that iOS does for us automatically is not getting cleared by iOS. Based on my own debugging of that issue, when I look at the debug “image” of what we are drawing – its perfect – but on screen its not, so I think what you’re seeing is iOS drawing that on top of what we’re drawing.
To piggyback on what Alex said, though, this is on my radar to try to pin it down further. If I jump through a bunch of hoops, I can trigger the condition myself. Since it’s not reproducible on demand, it’s a tricky one to try to debug – but I definitely plan to look into this one more.