Pocket Informant free for the first time but...

Discussion in 'iOS Apps' started by riChchestMat, Jan 27, 2014.

  1. Yeah, this should be moved.
     
  2. chrismc

    chrismc Member

    Jan 30, 2014
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    Hey everyone

    I'm with WebIS (we make Pocket Informant). I happened to stumble onto this thread and there are some legitimate concerns/questions being asked here, so I wanted to help clear up any confusion surrounding our latest update.

    First, I want to reassure all existing Pocket Informant Pro customers - you do not need to pay anything as part of this upgrade. The update should automatically detect your previous purchase and keep you running with the "full / premium" version of PI (including all the new features that we added to version 3.5 like Printing and AirDrop support). If, for whatever reason, that doesn't happen for you - hit "Restore Purchases" in Settings->Informant Store and if that doesn't work, please contact our support team.

    So, here's one of the primary things we've been struggling with for the last couple years: the App Store has absolutely no built-in mechanism to handle free trials of apps. Basically, all "paid" apps require that customers take a leap of faith just by looking at a few screenshots and a description. Some people are willing to do this, a lot of people aren't. So in a nutshell, that was probably the biggest catalyst for us transitioning to this new model - we simply want to let people try PI out before they buy it. This is a really good thing for EVERYONE. Obviously, we're pretty fond of our app (I personally live on it daily), but you might not be. If we're not a good fit for you, you can now discover that without having to spend a dime...but if you think we might be a good fit and you just weren't will to pay in order to find out - now you can try it before you buy it. Our general concept of pricing hasn't changed at all - if you'll notice, it's a single in-app purchase that gives you all same "Premium" features that you got prior to this change - the only thing that really changed is when/if you pay.

    A few people on here referenced that we're trying to get more money out of people (claiming, for instance, that if you change devices you'll have to re-buy the in-app purchase). Nothing could be further from the truth. First (as I mentioned above), existing Pro customers automatically get the "Premium" in-app purchase. Second, the in-app purchase for PI Premium is not a "consumable" item (like you find in a lot of games), it's a "non-consumable" one. Which means the iTunes App Store does keep a record of the purchase and you can restore that purchase onto any device you own (just like you can with paid apps). Quite frankly, we're hoping with this new model that we can broaden our base of customers because that will allow us to deliver even more free updates to existing customers for longer periods of time. We've been on the App Store since the beginning and in that entire time, there has only been one instance where people had to make a "paid upgrade" to keep getting new updates (it was when we consolidated our apps from separate iPhone & iPad apps to a single universal app). But even looking at that transition - the original customers of our iPhone app received free updates for 4 years. We think that's pretty darn good when you stack it up against the norm of paid upgrades every year.

    So here's the deal - I get that people are naturally skeptical when companies make changes like this. And I get that there are a lot of less-than-reputable companies looking to make a quick buck and run. Our company has been around for 14+ years (back to the Pocket PC days) - we really love what we do and we just want to keep on doing it. We're not perfect by any means, and a lot of times we have to work within the confines of the App Store, but we're always going to try to make the right decision as best we can. Our reputation means a lot to us - so if you ever have any questions about a change we've made, feel free to contact us. At the end of the day, we're customers of other apps too - and we ALWAYS filter our decisions through the grid of how we'd feel if one of the apps we've purchased made the same decision.

    I hope this helps - let us know if you have any other concerns.
     
  3. soup

    soup Well-Known Member

    Feb 5, 2009
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    @chrismc
    i think most people have got that, this thread unfortunately started in the "free offers, price drops" category, which is why it starts with a lot of negativity.
    As i said before, i had PI 1, did not make the jump to 2, but am happy again to try out 3.5.

    And i think that most people realize, that apple is making a huge amount of money from the app store, and has as such no major incentive to change anything.
    There is without doubt, missing
    1. Free trials
    2. Some sort of update / upgrade policy - where people who bought the previous version get a discount. I like free updates, but quite understand that as a company no-one can live from a one-off payment, with upgrades(= work) for ever more
     
  4. dclose

    dclose Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2011
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    No, what people were stating is that if you already own Pocket Informant Pro, and you change devices, when you put Pocket Informant on your new device it will no longer have the capability of detecting that you were an existing, longtime user so you'll get the crippled version until you purchase the full version (again) through IAP. Since you are an original user of the program, before the insertion of the current IAP, there is no way to "restore purchases" should you change devices, as there is no record at Apple that you previously purchased that IAP because you did not. You purchased the whole program, which is now changed to free with additional IAP. You can only do a restore purchases if you have purchased an IAP!
     
  5. dclose

    dclose Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2011
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    I was your customer from the Pocket PC days through the demand I buy the iPhone (now universal) app again, at which point I switched to WeekCal because you had taken quite enough of my money. I am currently purchasing an Android device, and I was toying with the idea of buying Pocket Informant for Android, but seeing what you did with this iOS release has put that thought firmly out of my mind.
     
  6. iPadisGreat

    iPadisGreat Well-Known Member

    Dec 10, 2012
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    Have you come across any good replacements for Pocket Informant? In particular, multiple Google Calendar support with each calendar showing up in a different colour, and ability to see time of appointments on month view as Pocket Informant currently allows.
     
  7. chrismc

    chrismc Member

    Jan 30, 2014
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    I am happy to say (with all due respect) that this is also absolutely incorrect. If that were true, we most certainly wouldn't have made this transition. Again - please remember that we are customers of other apps...and as you might imagine, being in this business, we tend upgrade our devices a lot. We definitely wouldn't be happy if the apps that we bought suddenly lost functionality simply because we moved to a new device, so there's certainly no way we'd inflict that experience on all of our customers.

    Starting with iOS 7, Apple has given developers a way of having an app validate when it was purchased from the App Store. At WWDC last year, Apple promoted this to all developers saying we that could now safely move our apps to being free in iOS 7 because they have provided a method where an app could validate its own purchase regardless of device (the only thing that matters is that you are still using the same App Store account as when you originally purchased PI Pro). This is the reason that Pocket Informant 3.5 is iOS 7 only. Being almost a week into this transition now, I can confirm that Apple's validation method is working very smoothly.

    And finally, just to reassure everyone, we have been communicating through every form possible (our "What's New" blurb, our support site, our CEO's blog, our forums, etc) - if you are an existing PI Pro customer and for whatever reason you aren't automatically upgraded to the Premium experience, please contact our support team so we can isolate what happened and get you taken care of.
     
  8. dclose

    dclose Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2011
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    #28 dclose, Jan 31, 2014
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2014
    I appreciate the information but it doesn't appear to be working that way for all users. There are a number of one star reviews on the app store, for the current version, that specifically mention that they owned the full version but now are being asked to IAP to get back functionality. One in particular mentions that he didn't have his fully-purchased Pocket Informant Pro installed on his iPad through the past couple updates, and when he put it back on after this update to see if his problem had been fixed, he was asked to buy it again. So what's he doing wrong?

    Wasn't Pocket Informant Go supposed to have been the "lite" version? Why didn't you just freemium-ize that? Instead, you pulled it, like you pulled the original iPhone version. That's what I don't like. As a consumer I shouldn't have to second guess which of your products are going to stick around and be supported, and which you're going to pull on a whim, leaving me in the lurch.
     
  9. chrismc

    chrismc Member

    Jan 30, 2014
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    Great questions. To offer some perspective, we have had literally tens of thousands of existing customers install the update since Monday and for nearly all of them, the process was perfectly smooth. Of course we'd love to say that everything always works 100% perfectly the first time for every customer, but as I'm sure you know - there's not a company on the planet that can claim that (just watch the message boards after Apple does an iOS update, for instance). The reality is that when you are dealing with that many people using that many devices in that many languages and configurations, etc, some small percentage of them will require manual intervention. For this upgrade, my calculations show that less 1/2 of 1% of everyone who updated had to contact our support team with upgrade issues. That's not too shabby.

    I'm also pleased to say that every single one of those customers who contacted support have been taken care of and are happily using PI Premium again. And based on some of what we found in those cases, we already made a couple fixes to the upgrade process and we'll be rolling that out in version 3.51. But as we mentioned in our What's New section (and here and everywhere else) - if ANY existing Pro customer has ANY problem updating to Premium - simply contact our support team and we'll get you taken care of as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to communicate this message to everyone, sometimes people miss it and they prefer to write a bad review rather than contacting us...and sadly there's nothing we can do about that. We have no access to customer information nor can we contact you based on a review (I wish we could - we'd love to get those people taken care of!)

    As for Pocket Informant Go - this transition is GREAT for our Go customers! All PI Go customers can download the new single version Pocket Informant on the App Store (for free) and it should recognize their PI Go purchase and restore the exact same level of functionality they've always had. And as a bonus, they now get the same great icon as our Pro customers (something we heard a lot about) AND (since it's now the same app) they get app updates at the same exact time our Pro customers do. Why did we go through the trouble of merging PI Go and PI Premium into a single app? Well, we've had several talks with Apple directly (both at WWDC and for several months after that over email). Apple doesn't love the "dual app" strategy. We heard multiple times from multiple people within Apple that the single app strategy is far better for customers (less confusing about what to buy, etc), and if we really wanted to have multiple levels of features, that should be handled that with in-app purchases. We gave it a lot of thought, and at the end of the day, we agreed with them - so we followed their advice. And again, if you have PI Go and for any reason the upgrade process doesn't work - please let our support team know.

    And finally, you referenced our original PI for iPhone app. Trust me - there was nothing "whimsical" about that decision. We spent hours upon hours working through every option and detail for that transition. Like I mentioned in my very first response, we provided free updates to PI iPhone for over 4 years before phasing it out in favor of PI Pro (the current universal app that works on both iPhone + iPad). And that didn't leave anyone "in the lurch" - plenty of people continue to use the original PI iPhone release today (the app didn't suddenly stop working, it just meant that all future updates were being done to PI Pro). As for why we consolidated to PI Pro - we covered that pretty thoroughly in this article last year:

    http://webis.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/124/0/pocket-informant-for-iphone---where-is-it

    That article explains (among other things) the limitations we had to work within in the App Store at the time (being a paid app and not having the tools that we now have in iOS 7, we had very few options)...and making both apps universal wasn't an option (Apple wouldn't allow us to have two identical apps on the store). We ran multiple "really good" sales to give people the best way possible to move over to PI Pro (keep in mind, the App Store doesn't let us target those sales to existing customers - we had to drop our price for EVERYONE worldwide in order to help our iPhone customers move to Pro). But ultimately, I guess where I still land is this: we've now been on the iTunes App Store for nearly 5 years - and in all that time, the transition to Pro last year was the one and only "paid upgrade" we've done (and if you originally purchased PI Pro, you've been receiving free updates for over 3 years now). How does that translate to "a bad thing" and how does that leave people "in the lurch"?

    Just so I can understand your position better - may I ask what your expectation is when you purchase an app? Is the expectation free updates for life? I truly wish we could promise that, but honestly, I haven't seen a company that can survive on that model yet. I've seen the annual subscription model, the annual paid-upgrade model, the every-upgrade-is-a-brand-new-app-for-full-price model, and the "freemium" model with lots of consumable in-app purchases to keep you going. A competitor of ours (whom I have a lot of respect for) has separate iPhone and iPad apps. Compared to PI (since we're a single universal app), their combined cost is 4x more than us. They recently did full "new app" paid upgrades on both apps. I'm not knocking them - they make a great product...but frankly - I think our value and our track record is pretty amazing when you consider the landscape. We're a relatively small company, and because we don't do annual paid upgrades, we largely survive off of slow-and-not-always-steady one time app purchases. I'm honestly not trying to be snarky here, but if 4 years of free (and significant) upgrades aren't enough, what do you consider fair?
     
  10. iPadisGreat

    iPadisGreat Well-Known Member

    Dec 10, 2012
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    I have Pocket Informant, the original iPhone release and the iPad version. My only concern is that syncing does not work properly. I am running it across my iPhones and iPad 2, and each of them shows me a different subset of my calendars from my original iPhone Pocket Informant.

    As a result, I have returned to using it on only one iPhone, and hoping that I will not have to restore my calendars, because it just does not work. Calendar entries are either duplicated or missing altogether and some of my calendars are mssing on my other devices' Pocket Informant (iPhone or Pro).

    Just get syncing to work properly. I don't care if you charge $9.99 per update for iOS compatibility, but calendars must be rock solid reliable.
     
  11. chrismc

    chrismc Member

    Jan 30, 2014
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    There shouldn't be a problem with that setup, but if you own the iPad version (aka PI Pro), then you can upgrade that to the very latest version of PI (version 3.5) for free and you can install that on your both your iPhone and iPad (since it's a universal app). That way you'll be running the latest version on both devices. Once you get that installed and set up sync - if you're still having any issues at all getting sync to work properly, you can go to the feedback tab within Pocket Informant and tap "Open Support Ticket".
     
  12. dclose

    dclose Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2011
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    #32 dclose, Feb 1, 2014
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2014
    I didn't own my iPhone version of PI for four years, so I failed to see the "benefit" you so love touting. Instead, I found the version I bought pulled from the app store shortly after I purchased it. At the time support was dropped for the iPhone version, I had reported an issue with sync to you, including log files and calendar data, but you never did fix that bug, not in the iPhone version. And sure, I could continue to use a buggy, unsupported version, or I could give you more money for the "new" version (with no guarantees my problem would be fixed), or I could buy a competitor's product. I chose the latter and I've been very happy with it.

    I think PI is a good choice for some people. I said in my original post on the first page of this thread that it's a great product for the power user. Had you addressed my sync issue properly, and had you not pulled the iPhone version so soon after I purchased it, I might still be your customer. But you didn't, so I'm not.
     
  13. chrismc

    chrismc Member

    Jan 30, 2014
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    Thanks for the honest feedback - I absolutely appreciate it. And I totally get that you're frustrated with us if you didn't get much use out of the original iPhone release and then you got stuck with an issue that we didn't resolve.

    I hate that this was your experience with us - that's certainly not what we're about. I would love a very brief chance to make it right. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind taking 2-3 minutes to send me a ticket? I'm not going to have you jump through a bunch of hoops or anything. Simply go to the below website and in your ticket, mention a few quick things:

    -Mention that you are dclose on Touch Arcade and that you were chatting with me (Chris McSorley).

    -Mention that I asked for your ticket to be assigned straight to me.

    -If you happen to have your original support case number laying around somewhere - let me know what that was, or just give me a brief synopsis of the sync issue that you were dealing with.

    http://webis.kayako.com/Tickets/Submit

    I'll look into it and take care of everything from there.
     

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