Friday, July 17, 2020

Omni Group’s New Licensing

Ken Case (tweet):

With sign-in licensing (coming very soon), you will no longer have to keep track of license codes: to access purchases, you can simply log into our apps using your Omni Account. A single Omni Account can be used across all devices and platforms: with an OmniFocus subscription, for example, the same sign-in will unlock OmniFocus on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Web.

We launched team subscriptions in March, and will be launching personal subscriptions at the same time as sign-in licensing. Subscriptions give you the latest version of our apps, enabling every feature on every platform (including Pro features)—with a lower cost up front and predictable spending in the future. But knowing that subscriptions aren’t the best choice for everyone, we continue to offer traditional licenses as well: traditional licenses are investments which may cost more up front, but save money in the long run.

Previously, OmniFocus 3 for Mac was $40 ($80 Pro) and for iOS was $40 ($60 Pro). Now, for Mac it’s $50 ($100 Pro) and for iOS it’s $50 ($75 Pro). Or you can subscribe to all platforms for $10/month or $100/year. So, the prices have increased, but you still have the flexibility to choose which platforms you want and whether to pay via subscription. (The long-term plan, though, is for all purchases to be universal.) If you do buy the subscription, you can either get it via In-App Purchase or direct from Omni, sending them a higher percentage of the price of the iOS app than was possible before.

Accounts seem more convenient than serial numbers in some ways, and may help reduce piracy, but presumably the apps will now require online activation. So, if you need to reinstall but the server is down, you may not be able to access your documents.

With frameworks like SwiftUI, it’s easier than ever to design and build an app which behaves consistently across all of Apple’s platforms, while adapting behavior to leverage the strengths of each platform. The combination of new designs and new cross-platform technologies is a perfect fit with our roadmap for improving the flow of using our apps. […] But when it comes to drawing content on the screen, processing input and commands, adapting to screen changes and so on, we’re going to take a fresh look at today’s technologies to see what we can best leverage as we redesign our apps.

Once again, there doesn’t seem to be much on the roadmap for OmniOutliner. It already does almost everything I want, but I would love to see some performance improvements. Typing in a large outline—ever since the engine was brought back from iOS—currently takes about one second per keystroke.

Ken Case:

With yesterday’s @OmniGroup app updates, all our Mac App Store apps once again have support for family sharing! You can use a shared Omni Account to license each family member’s devices (while continuing to use independent Omni Accounts for syncing).

Previously:

3 Comments RSS · Twitter

Ryan Collins

I don't understand their pricing. If you buy it outright, you're already ahead before the end of your second year. Why would you subscribe when you could buy it every other year and save $25?

@Ryan Less money up front if you aren’t sure, and maybe if you’re at a business it’s easier to authorize a subscription once instead of getting approval for each upgrade? I’d be really interested to see what percentage of people choose subscriptions.

I hope Omni is doing it the smart way, where you log in once and you're good to go for every subsequent launch (including if your Mac is offline). If they're doing it for every app launch or it doesn't work offline, that's idiotic. Autodesk makes me log into their apps at every launch and it's infuriating.

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