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Day One gives itself a "Premium" service
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Posted by nblaz
Jul 1, 2017 at 12:18 AM
I’m a long-time lurker here on the forum; hi everyone!
I can’t say enough good things about 1Writer as a DayOne alternative on iOS; though not branded as a journaling app, it is an elegant text and markdown editor that allows you to sync text files over Dropbox. I understand that some here are disinclined to use cloud services for sensitive or personal content, so that would be a drawback for some (though for the technically inclined, you could set up a private Git server and use Working Copy in conjunction with 1Writer). There is also no companion app on macOS, though the portability of text files allows for use in your favorite text editor of choice. In general, I find this to be very pragmatic for avoiding vendor lock-in; if 1Writer were to ever migrate to subscription pricing, I could easily switch over to another text editor. It feels good to be able to trust that I will have access to my data even if my toolset has to change from time to time.
I use TextExpander snippets to create timestamped journal entries; if you’re a fan of DayOne’s journaling prompts, a comparable experience could probably be implemented in TextExpander.
Posted by Dellu
Jul 2, 2017 at 05:21 PM
A hazel rule to transform the in text tags to finder tags:
https://wordpress.com/post/dellu.wordpress.com/1039
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 2, 2017 at 10:58 PM
Thanks for pointing out that Bear imports JSON exported from Day One—it’s an easy process.
Not sure I’ll take the extra step to move from Bear to MacJournal.
(Sorry, the link below doesn’t open a page with the Hazel rule, should it?)
Dellu wrote:
A hazel rule to transform the in text tags to finder tags:
>
>https://wordpress.com/post/dellu.wordpress.com/1039
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 3, 2017 at 08:17 AM
I’ve been disappointed by DayOne’s synching behaviour recently (I cannot bring my iOS and Mac versions into 100% congruency), so have taken to writing my journal entries in Outlinely. But I hadn’t considered the encryption issue. Hm. Have to look at that.
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 3, 2017 at 06:17 PM
The blogger at MacDrifter.com wrote a little piece about the Day One situation here:
Gabe Weatherhead wrote:
>I have greater concerns about Day One’s ability to survive as a business. My impression is that the subscription model is a move to stay profitable. I don’t think this will be a magic bullet. Customers simply don’t want to pay the price for top-tier self sustaining apps on iOS, especially when the full annual cost of $50 is spelled out in black and white. As the reviews for Day One show, this change will forever sink their ratings in the App Store. Ratings matter even when the reviews are nonsense (which all of the new Day One reviews are).
A bit of a cheap shot to declare all reviews nonsense—seeing as there are (today) 96 negative ratings since the new pricing was announced, for an app that before that announcement received five star ratings almost universally. The reviews might not be elegant, but their sentiment seems universal.
I think the blogger missed the point. It’s not that “customers simply don’t want to pay the price for top-tier self sustaining app”. That sentence is hard to parse for sense. The real point, I think, is that customers don’t want to pay the **same** price year after year just to retain access to their own data, with only minimal improvements to functionality. The promised Android version, for example, is not likely to entice a lot of iOS users.
I don’t think the discomfort expressed by the negative ratings, and elsewhere, can be laid up to annoyance about paying subscription fees. Instead, I think it is annoyance about essentially buying the same app year after year for the same price. Customers aren’t chumps—and, worse, they despise being treated as chumps. Customers know that once development is complete on a core product, it normally doesn’t cost the same to maintain the product and even expand it year to year. And they know if the developer does nothing but collect fees and produce little in return, the developer is merely grabbing economic rents. That’s why the reaction is negative, in my opinion.