DEVONthink 4 -- now in public beta

Posted by satis
Apr 4, 2025 at 12:38 PM

The license model is pretty simple. You ‘own’ the features at the time of purchase and up to a year after purchase, and get updates for a year. If you never renew your subscription ever again you can still use the app with those features even though new features and bug fixes will have been released.

With Agenda a year you can still use the the newest app versions without resubscribing, but the features that were introduced after your sub ends will have been paywalled. I don’t think Devon made clear if that is the case but it makes sense: this way they only maintain one updated codebase and make it a low friction, one-click purchase from unlocking the full app.

> My ten year old Macs can’t run recent versions of MacOS. ….What happens with the usual annual operating system update from Apple? Will these versions still be supported by the old version of DEVONthink?

I doubt you’ll see any updates for DT3 that aren’t important bugfixes. If an OS update breaks a discontinued app version most devs don’t spend the time/money to get it working for users who choose not to upgrade. There is a lot of good software that won’t run on your Macs, and a lot of apps that haven’t been updated for your old Macs after updating to new versions.