Friday, December 21, 2012

Omni’s Plans for 2013

Ken Case:

Automatic document syncing is almost here! We call it “OmniPresence”: your documents, synced everywhere you want them to be.

We’ve designed OmniPresence around open web protocols, so you’re welcome to use our free Omni Sync Server or to host your own cloud server. We think that the option to host your own cloud is important—not just because of concerns with respect to privacy and security (though that’s key for many businesses), but because it means you can keep that cloud running as long as you want to keep using it. As we saw with MobileMe shutting down earlier this year, individual cloud services can easily disappear as business models change. Building a solution around open standards means that our customers have a choice of hosting providers rather than being tied to a single ephemeral cloud solution.

Sounds great. They’re even going to publish some of their source code for OmniPresence so that other developers can add it to their apps. Not mentioned: iCloud.

And regarding Mac App Store upgrades:

As always, we plan to offer discounted upgrade pricing on our own online store, but unfortunately we don’t have that flexibility in the Mac App Store. We’ve decided to treat the Mac App Store the same way as we treat retail stores: it’s a great way to discover our software, and can give you confidence that it’s been vetted by a third party. And, just as you wouldn’t get a discount from a retail store if you purchase OmniGraffle 5 while owning OmniGraffle 4, you won’t get a discount if you purchase OmniFocus 2 from the Mac App Store. But we’re in the process of updating our store so that you’ll be able to register your Mac App Store apps to get a discounted upgrade price when you buy an update directly from us.

This is the approach that I’ve been planning to take as well.

3 Comments RSS · Twitter

Ken Case is God.

We’ve designed OmniPresence around open web protocols, so you’re welcome to use our free Omni Sync Server or to host your own cloud server. We think that the option to host your own cloud is important—not just because of concerns with respect to privacy and security (though that’s key for many businesses), but because it means you can keep that cloud running as long as you want to keep using it.

Very bold move. It's indeed "just" a WebDAV server where one can move their files into. It was weird using again the menu item 'Connect to Server...' after so many years without using it.

[...] problems with iCloud. I’m sure this is the right thing for Panic’s customers, just like Omni Sync Server was for Omni’s. But it’s sad that this sort of thing is [...]

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