App Store purchase now, or after iCloud update?

[Laura]

I'm a longtime user of Yojimbo. Many years now. And I'm unhappily resigned to the fact that I'll have to re-purchase my seat in the App Store in order to use the iCloud sync, once that is working properly and the release is made available.

But I see that Yojimbo is in the App Store now, and I'm wondering: 

• Would there be a price advantage to buy now and get the upgrade, or will it make no difference? 
  
• Will the iCloud update to the App Store version be a free update, or in-app purchase?
  
• Will any discount vouchers be available for current license holders?
  

I've waited a long time to get back to Yojimbo. Evernote has been a poor substitute. I've waited this long, I don't mind so much the extra few days and weeks for BBS to get it right. I'm just wondering how the upgrade process will go pricing-wise and if there's any best route for those of us who are loyal Yojimbo licenseholders. 

Thx.

[Terje Bless]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Laura <la...@rarepattern.com> wrote:
> But I see that Yojimbo is in the App Store now, and I'm wondering:
>
> Would there be a price advantage to buy now and get the upgrade, or will it
> make no difference?

Apple doesn't, as yet, offer developers any way to provide discounted
upgrade pricing, or even just paid upgrades of the same app in the Mac
App Store. As such, so long as we're talking about the Mac App Store
there can never be a price advantage in connection with this like
we're used to with apps outside the Mac App Store.

> Will the iCloud update to the App Store version be a free update, or in-app
> purchase?

The description for the current version in the Mac App Store says that
"Support for iCloud […] will be available as a paid upgrade." As far
as I know that means one of two options: either a new "Yojimbo 4" app
separate from "Yojimbo" and which must be purchased separately, or the
iCloud support will be available as an in-app purchase. Or possibly
they're trying to communicate that users of the non-Mac App Store
version will have to get the Mac App Store version (which means
purchasing it again) in order to get iCloud sync (since iCloud use
requires Mac App Store distribution).

Bare Bones have historically been extremely good about providing
upgrades and additional features for free, and offering steeply
discounted pricing when paid upgrades have been necessary, but the
combination of requirements for iCloud and the Mac App Store leaves
very little latitude for developers in this regard. The most they can
do within Apple's restrictions is to discount the price of Yojimbo in
the Mac App Store for everyone for a time; and that would quite
possibly be too costly for a small privately held company.

> Will any discount vouchers be available for current license holders?

Based on what little I know about the issues (which may be wrong),
it's effectively impossible for Bare Bones Software to do anything
like that in the Mac App Store. The store itself doesn't support even
concepts such as paid version upgrades, discounted upgrades, or
cross-upgrades; so any app moving to the Mac App Store will
effectively require all its users to purchase it again.


Anyways, based on this and on what I understand to be your situation,
I would suggest waiting until the version with iCloud support is
available before moving to the Mac App Store version; not because I
expect it to make a while lot of difference whether you do it now or
wait, but because it also doesn't provide any big benefit to do it now
and by waiting you'll have all the facts available to evaluate when
making the decision.

Cheers,
Terje

[Terje Bless]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Terje Bless <li...@pobox.com> wrote:
> The most they can
> do within Apple's restrictions is to discount the price of Yojimbo in
> the Mac App Store for everyone for a time; and that would quite
> possibly be too costly for a small privately held company.

Actually, I was being too cautious in this regard; BBSW's iCloud
Transition Status support page

http://www.barebones.com/support/yojimbo/icloud.html

spells this out: «[…] we plan to offer Yojimbo at a deeply discounted
rate to accommodate customers who will be inconvenienced by this
change.»

I would thus interpret this to mean that once the version of Yojimbo
with iCloud support is eventually released, they will reduce the price
for a time so that existing users that have to purchase it again will
effectively get an "upgrade discount". And that means you should
definitely wait until the new version (and the discounted price) is
available.

Cheers,
Terje

[Bill Cohen]

Can some Yojimbo-ites recap for me key drawbacks
of Evernote vs. Yojimbo, if any?

Sorry if this is old hat, but it would be awfully useful for
me and appreciated.

[Phillip Walker]

I can' speak for anyone else, but here are some of the key things that I don't like about evernote -

Interface - kind of kludge feeling. Some of it is that as a cross platform app, the interface is dumbed down to something that will run on all platforms. Yojimbo's interface is, IMPO, far superior to Evernote.

Sync - can only sync with website. Don't like having my data living on the cloud. Others may feel differently. My real preference is to have a master copy on my desktop, and sync the other copies (notebook, iPad) to that. I can more or less make that work with Yojimbo.

Encryption - Yojimbo's encryption just works and works well. I feel very comfortable putting things like passwords and credit card info in Yojimbo. Evernote has encryption, but once again, it feels kludge and once I had a page become unexpectently unencrypted. It happened right after an upgrade, so I'm not sure if it was something I did, or a problem with an upgrade.

I'm sure there are a lot of features that yojimbo supports that evernote doesn't, but I tend not to use them.

On the yojimbo side -
read only iPad version - this is a biggie for me. Evernote lets me add and modify notes even if I'm off line. It really is the only reason that I still use evernote.

iPhone version - this is the other big thing that evernote has that yojimbo doesn't, support for the iPhone.

syncing via MobileMe and iCloud - this seems to be an issue for a number of people, but I really don't care that much about it since I don't use it.

[Laura]

Thanks, Terje. I agree, I think I'll wait and see what happens.