'Fantastical 2' Launches for Mac With Yosemite-Style Redesign, Full Calendar Window

[Nuvi]

I'm using Fantastical 2 both on iPhone and iPad but won't be using it on my Macs. The price is just insane if you compare it something like Office 365 which is very similarly priced but comes with all the MS Office apps + infinite cloud storage. Sure, Office is subscription but if Fantastical is updated once a year the cost ends up being almost the same.

It's realy sad indeed. I realy like Fantastical but I won't be paying this much for an app that should be in $10 range.

 

[philipmv]

Couldn't they have just updated the existing menubar window to Yosemite and kept the price at $20 (or better yet, given it to existing users for free?) I liked Fantastical for Mac because it worked with OS X's built-in apps, not because it replaced them.

They sure reinvented Fantasical. Reinvented the price and reinvented bloat.

 

[SeeHole]

Talk about overpriced...

And not even a discount for previous users :/ Their line is they are giving a $20 discount to "everyone" right now. Lame and I will not be buying it again...

 

[iSee]

Color me unsuprised.

It has become very clear that developer is very greedy for a couple of years. This is just another piece of evidence. Honestly it is not worth the price. iCal can do natural language parsing already.

It's not greedy for them to charge for the fruits of their hard work -- even if you don't want to pay that much.

Professional developers have to try to stay in business. Software takes a lot of time and money to create and that's whether they sell one copy or a million.

Apps with a smaller market, like this one, *have* to be priced higher than an app with a larger market. Otherwise there'd be no way to pay for the cost of developing it. (This is a small market product specifically *because* the built-in option is pretty good. There aren't a lot of people that need something more bad enough to pay anything.

 

[Nuvi]

Pirates, Cheapskates and people that only buy mobile apps who don't understand economies of scale.

they should look at the cost of some of my software...

Smoke - £1,300
Cinema 4D - £3,120
Maya Suite - £4.800
Nuke Studio - £5,600
Adobe CC - £50 a month.

I sure do understand the cost of professional software but this not the app which will be putting food on the table. Anyway, compare Fantastical 2 pricing to Office 365 pricing and you see what I'm saying. This app is overpriced by huge margin when comparing it with competition.

 

[HenryDJP]

I understand that. That's why I kicked off the post with "imagine". IMO, it would be nice to have a bunch of higher quality apps than the stock set, endorsed & integrated by Apple. Mail still seems somewhat flaky to me. Fantastical is better than the stock calendar. Font Book is pretty weak vs. a number of other font managers. Etc.

Apple has had 10 iterations of OS X to dramatically improve the stock apps (more if you'll count the Next OS as OS X before 10.0). Instead, while there's been incremental improvements, some of these third party apps seem "what Apple's should be" IMO. I'd love to see the M.O. change for an OS X iteration and buy the best of what's out there that challenges the stock apps, enhance/integrate them like the stock apps and then roll that out.

But alas, since that's not their M.O., I guess we should be happy with tremendous innovations like slightly more transparent windows (which I still can't believe was so heavily touted and repeated at last year's WWDC).

I certainly don't disagree with your concerns, because you're right. The stock apps have been either incremental over the years or untouched. Actually upon reading your post I realized a lot of the stock apps have barely been touched such as the apps in the Utilities folder like Grapher, Automator, Image Capture and the MIDI app. I guess Apple feels nobody uses them so they just leave them be.

Here's the thing though. In a way I'm glad Apple doesn't try and take over every 3rd party app and refine it. It puts the Developers out of business for sure and then we have to be subject to how Apple designs the software.
For example, I use PixelMator. It's such a steal against that over-bloated Adobe PS Elements. The UI is black and I love the design. For some reason I feel if Apple bought PixelMator it would have a white UI, some dumbed-down features and possibly some bugs.

I've actually had more success and enjoyment with 3rd party apps.

 

[ckoerner]

However Flexibits wants to dress it up, it is just a calendar app...no more!

"Just a calendar app" makes it sound like programming dates is trivial. It is most definitely not.

http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

http://benramsey.com/blog/2014/02/dates-are-hard/

 

[Crazy John]

It crashes during the set up.

Mine also crashes during setup, when it gets to adding icloud/google accounts. I've tried a dozen times, and it's crashed every attempt.

 

[xero9]

Couple of thoughts:

1) The price is high but would be okay for a quality product. The problem I have with this company is that they haven't been very good about updates.

This company feels a lot like Coradine Aviation. They basically come out with a new version periodically that you need to essentially pay full price for (and their software isn't cheap). Sure in the case of this calendar app one could bite the bullet and pay the $40 for it, but be prepared to pay another $40 when they release the next version.

2) This is clearly another infomercial from MacRumors! The CEO told us "while the original Fantastical app reinvented calendar apps, the new update reinvents Fantastical". That's their advertising headline. Why am I coming back to this crappy site!?

I get that vibe too..

 

[cocky jeremy]

Couldn't they just send out codes?

EDIT: Oh I guess it's free or nothing with promo codes.

You could probably pay them for a promo code and the code given would be free. Pretty sure it's limited how many they get per month though.

 

[praetorian909]

wow, it's currently $50AUD and that's with the 20% off?!

What were they thinking when they priced this? Yes it's probably a very nice calendar app - but it's just a calendar app!

Such a shame it's so badly overpriced. I guarantee they'd more than quadruple their market if they make it a flat $10.

Yes but that would net them less money, 4x$10x4 is still less than $50. Just sayin'

 

[nutmac]

While this looks great for those who need all these features, all I really wanted was a Yosemite update for the existing menu bar app. They should rename it Fantastical Lite and bring this UI to it--I'd pay 5 or 10 bucks for the upgrade. At $40 for this I think I'll pass.

Right. I can't help but think that Fantastical 2 should have priced at the same price level as Fantastical 1, at $19.99. I know many people poo poo In App Purchase here, but I think IAP is a perfect model for Fantastical. $19.99 full calendar window and $19.99 for multiple calendar sets and other business oriented features, and $29.99 for both.

 

[DanGoh]

Right. I can't help but think that Fantastical 2 should have priced at the same price level as Fantastical 1, at $19.99. I know many people poo poo In App Purchase here, but I think IAP is a perfect model for Fantastical. $19.99 full calendar window and $19.99 for multiple calendar sets and other business oriented features, and $29.99 for both.

OR.........just $20 one time purchase for it all.

 

[iChrist]

Question.

How much does MR charge for these advertisements, as opposed to the side bar ads?

 

[John.B]

Still no support for Travel Time? The native Apple calendar has had this since the early iOS 8 betas. Pass.

 

[shartypants]

The price is way to high, can't justify the little extra features over the stock calendar app.

 

[Lost Hills]

Mine also crashes during setup, when it gets to adding icloud/google accounts. I've tried a dozen times, and it's crashed every attempt.

I solved the crash on start up issue, I installed the trial, set that up, then installed the App Store version on top of the trial version. Works fine now.

 

[Asthmatic Kitty]

Have a question about the iOS app, which I'd appreciate if someone could answer:

Do Fantastical 2 and the stock calendar app play nicely together? If I create an event in fantastical does it sync across to the calendar app? I'm going to buy an Apple Watch, so the stock calendar integration is important to me, and won't bother buying Fantastical for iOS if it's a separate entity altogether.

 

[iMcLovin]

been looking forward to this, I always felt Fantastical was the best calendar - and Fantastical 1 just looked outdated. With the new look and new features I gladly pay 40$. If you use your calendar every day on a regular basis and will enjoy it for years, I dont understand why paying 40$ is a problem. Most people dont have problems paying twice as much for a game you finish within a short amount of time or a few beers at the pub. Consider it the best calendar app available without question -the price is fair.

 

[kuwxman]

Fantastical is my favorite calendar app by far, but $40 is ridiculous. I caved and spent the $20 on the Fantastical 2 for iPhone app while back to go alongside my original Fantastical for Mac app. I simply can not justify another $40 for a fresh coat of paint. Hopefully they lower the price sometime in the future. If so, I'll pick it up. Until then, the original Fantastical will do.

 

[John.B]

Have a question about the iOS app, which I'd appreciate if someone could answer:

Do Fantastical 2 and the stock calendar app play nicely together? If I create an event in fantastical does it sync across to the calendar app? I'm going to buy an Apple Watch, so the stock calendar integration is important to me, and won't bother buying Fantastical for iOS if it's a separate entity altogether.

They share the same calendar, stored in iCloud.

Fantastical supports features like duplicating events and up to five alerts, while the stock iOS Calendar app supports Travel Time and has proper location integration with your contacts, Apple maps, etc.

 

[497902]

Fantastical 2 seems to have many advantages over Apple Calendar, but here's the deal:

Apple: Calendar + an entire operating system including many other apps (Free)
Flexibits: Fantastical 2 ($39.99) (Oh, but you can get the same thing for just $2.99 on your iPhone)

Flexibitis really needs to reconsider its pricing policy, otherwise many people aren't going to be interested.

 

[mw360]

I owned Coda 1. When Coda 2 got out, I had the choice of getting upgrade price, not full price. And Coda 2 was even cheaper (if my memory serves me) when it was released compared to fantastical 2.

And one more thing, Panic makes really great software. But not only that, try opening up a support ticket for one of their products. Pretty soon you will get a response. Now try doing that with flexibits. A greedy developer is a greedy developer.

Pay for it, but dont get ur hopes up for an upgrade, or even for some support. Want an upgrade? Please pay 50$

If my memory serves Coda2 didn't have an upgrade price for existing users. It was the same price for everyone but discounted temporarily, I think from $99 to about $70. I'm pretty sure that's because MAS rules prevent offering upgrade pricing even to direct customers.

 

[Northgrove]

I must really be behind the times, I find the default OS X Calendar application sufficient :/

Comes with cool new OS X Yosemite design too!

Yes, I agree. The only thing I'm really lusting for is convenient new events using natural language but they're still very conservative there with the international support. I'd like Swedish support and you'd think they'd at least cover Europe by now. We use something like.. a combination of say five words when telling dates and times?

Yes yes, whiny perhaps but this is a $50 app and that's one of its main features. Going from 5 supported languages to 6 in a major update demanding repayment doesn't cut it, sorry.

 

[macUser2007]

Why is this on the front page?