The EnshAIttification of Day One
I’ve used Day One for more than a decade. It was an excellent journalling app. Private, minimal, easy to use, with excellent features such as geolocation, weather, ‘On this Day’, and book printing. Features that got out of the way and either worked quietly in the background or appeared only when you summoned them. That’s changed.
Now there are new subscription tiers. Previously, the tiers were Free and Premium. Simple. Premium included sync and a few other things that I can’t remember, but it was compelling enough that I’ve been a Premium subscriber from the beginning. Now, without consultation, I’m Silver (not Premium), and there’s a new, more expensive AI-driven tier, Gold. I don’t object solely on that basis. You would think I could just choose to remain on ‘Silver’ and all would be well. But no. Even with these features turned off in settings, I’m visually prompted in the app to upgrade to Gold and use the Daily Chat (with AI), which I’ve turned off and can only use if I upgrade. And yet, there it is, taunting me.
Via Eric Schwarz:
Even Apple is guilty of doing this in the Settings app and the former iWork apps.
Previously:
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I had written about this before but pulled it down. Tired of the folks who will not only ditch something good they've been using for a decade, but who are willing to cobble together some inferior Frankenstein App, simply because there is some minor change they don't like. The Daily Chat button is annoying. I expect it will probably disappear. But nothing else about the app has changed and nobody is forcing this guy to upgrade. He complained about the name change of the pricing tier for gods sake.
With JK on this one. Stuff like On This Day is one of the main reasons I stick with Day One. It's such a nice feature, and 90% of the app remains nice to use. Giving that up and just shoving everything into a Notes app seems like a far worse hassle than just ignoring the upsell on the AI junk.
I despise it too, and I definitely am wary of what comes next, but I've already stopped noticing the Daily Chat prompt since early on in its lifespan, and I would constantly notice the headache of having to search a folder of loose notes (or even one gigantic note) to see what I wrote on this day X years ago.
