Good points. But in terms of companies estimating what their users are willing to pay, there is a problem. What if the company finds out that the bulk of users is willing to pay less than what it takes to maintain and improve the app? Reduce costs, lay off employees, do “more with less”? I have the impression that the iOS side of DevonTech is essentially Eric. And he’s working 24/7 on this (see the recent flurry of activity concerning the ghosts). The introduction of a subscription scheme (even if it ended up as an option) tells me then that DT would like/needs to bump revenue. Of course, it could be that they already swim in money, and Eric and friends just want to buy a few additional Lambos. I doubt it. This is an outstanding product, and I want it to stay viable. That’s all.
There could be a double-peaked distribution in the “willing to pay” curve. A lower one for the casual user and the complainers and those that truly have budget problems, and then heavy users to whom to cost of such software is small compared to their productivity gains. I argue for giving the latter a possibility to make an additional contribution that does not leave the former group in the cold.
Personally I think the regular price of DTTG3 is correctly valued in comparison to what it can do in comparison to DT.
That’s a good point, but remember that DTTG will lose 30% to Apple, a direct purchase of DT for Mac does not. Feature richness is not the only metric. Another one is how intensely one uses a product. In the end I use DTTG at least as much as DT, and the features it misses relative to the desktop version dont’ matter in the context. I do reading/markup/browsing with DTTG and the Apple Pencil, so the “creative” part happens overwhelmingly there, whereas the desktop side is largely for organizing things. If DTTG vanished, i.e. if I cannot access my desktop DBs on iOS, the value of desktop DT itself would massively reduce for me.
I can also compare to other professional apps, e.g. OmniFocus, which is relatively speaking a one-trick pony. DTTG is a steal in comparison in my book.
