Drafts has been a sort of mainstay iOS app for people who like plain text editors (markdown mainly). The app included some interesting automation, though It hasn't received a lot of attention in recent years.

Now, there is a new version -- Drafts 5. The release notes / what's new can be found at the link below. Two things worth noting: there is a hint at a future Mac version. (Sorry, this developer doesn't do Windows). Second -- the custom actions (i.e., macro-like workflows) from Drafts 4 are put behind a paywall in Drafts 5 -- $19.99/year or $1.99/month. The website says Drafts 4 will be "supported but not in active development". Meaning, some version of iOS can come along and break it. At least for now the custom actions are still available cheaply in Drafts 4. Since most of the other features in Drafts 5 seems minimal (tags) or cosmetic (themes), it doesn't seem like a compelling purchase to me. I'll wait for the technical reviews before deciding.

What's new:

http://getdrafts.com/gettingstarted/overview

I 'preordered' - a slightly strange thing, since it's a free download, so that just means it will auto-download to my iPhone on tomorrow. (A week or so ago the dev asked on Twitter whether he should so that and everyone basically responded Why Not.)

The app does some whizzy coding to bypass iOS's 45-second limit on recording/transcribing voice dictation. The editor in v.5 is customizable, with themes and light threshold adjustments based on light in room. v.5 has tags, a robust tag editor and filtering by tag, and the custom keyboard lets you tap tags on active docs.

Fonts! Spacing! One thing I *really* like is the Focus Mode option, which disables the creation of new drafts, so going back to the app won't hide the previously edited document.

Since I have v.4 I'm not in too much of a rush to go for the v.5 subscription, but there is a (7-day?) free trial of those features.

I use Drafts mainly for quick notes that go into other apps (or, just as often, to compose text to send into Messages). Not sure if I need to spend $20/yr on the Pro features, but the idea of getting rid of that bright white background and using my own fonts is appealing....

Could you say a little more about how this feature works? I've looked at various options for online transcription of multiple very long recordings (think hours, not minutes), and even the Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure pricing models are prohibitive. I wish there was some way to reliably leverage iOS's voice transcription, or the built-in local transcription on MacOS. Even if it isn't great quality, it would be great. I've even thought of buying a used Android phone just to be able to use the local Android transcription features (apparently there are two modes, one that operates locally and one that sends things to Google to be transcribed), but that seems like such a rabbit hole. If Drafts could actually reliably transcribe long recordings, I would subscribe immediately.

--Chris

satis wrote:

The app does some whizzy coding to bypass iOS's 45-second limit on
recording/transcribing voice dictation.

Drafts 5 uses iOS voice-to-text recognition. Drafts 5 is modified to record more-than-45 second chunks. Hours long? You’re best off asking the developer on that instead of us users.

FWIW, I record long sessions using the Dictate app on iOS. I import those to Dragon (from Nuance) for post-recording recognition and auto transcription.

Thanks. Maybe it's time for me to invest in Dragon.

--Chris

Paul Korm wrote:

Drafts 5 uses iOS voice-to-text recognition. Drafts 5 is modified to
record more-than-45 second chunks. Hours long? You’re best off
asking the developer on that instead of us users.

FWIW, I record long sessions using the Dictate app on iOS. I import
those to Dragon (from Nuance) for post-recording recognition and auto
transcription.

Drafts 5 in-depth review

https://www.macstories.net/reviews/drafts-5-the-macstories-review/

I loathe subscriptions. Utterly loathe them. If you think this used to cost $5 every 3 years for a new app version. It is now $20 a year. I work that out to be a 1200 percent increase in price..hidden in the obfuscation of a subscription. I refuse to subscribe for apps because recurring expenditure is for utilities, bills,mortgages etc.I have ditched for this reason Textexpander/Evernote/1Password/Ulysses/Dayone.. I just don't see the cost benefit value.I dont mind buying an app though.

These companies are short sighted. They think it strengthens their business model but it actually weakens it considerably. Developers are blind to this. Because there is a 1200% increase in price, Drafts 5 can afford to loose 90% of their customers and still make more money. However people will cancel the subscription when times get tough (who is going to pay for a service of a notes app for years and years) and each one of those subscribers will be worth 10 of the old customers who bought the app, so loosing them will be 10 times the loss. (i.e more vulnerable company).

However Drafts is a very good app.Very good indeed and I am intrigued by the unlimited dictation feature. This actually is massive. Why buy dragon dictation when you have this. I will try it out..and report back...I am tempted....

I’m all for subscription pricing, for a number of reasons. For devs, there's no longer any need to hold off on update features on the old sales model (where they’re stockpiling new features so as to sell upgrades). This cannot be underplayed - I can't tell you how many devs I've spoken with over the years who held back on releasing feature updates because they were banking them to make appealing the sale of the next upgrade. With subscriptions devs can roll out updates to users regularly and add support new standards and features outside of the confines of a standard product cycle, and by doing so they’ll know they’re bringing all their users with them (which also reduces support costs otherwise spent on old versions).

The subscription model can fund more r&d with a predictable and constant revenue stream. And that revenue stream can grow as pirates start to buy subscriptions: in areas like Poland where piracy is historically extremely high, Adobe has found that the percentage of Creative Cloud subscribers is significantly higher than average. Why? Because offering a monthly plan makes it easier for individuals to buy products that they may have not been able to afford with an up-front perpetual license.

Ultimately for devs successful subscriptions result in a steadier, less volatile income stream so they can better plan projects and updates while having a good idea of what can be budgeted based on predicted income streams. And ultimately that’s all good for customers, who get more regular updates/bugfixes of their apps, and less of a chance the dev will stop supporting the app.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with monthly fees. We don’t bat an eye when we write checks for cable TV, Internet, phone, gas, electric, magazines, mortgage, MMORPGs, and so on. We don’t even object to paying monthly fees for digital services. Netflix, after all, has 44 million people worldwide paying monthly, and Spotify/Apple_Music have 100 million subscribers between them. And there's still room for more, with everything from Audible to Setapp to Texture, all of which are actually gaining in popularity.

Obviously subscription fatigue can set in, and that's where (popular) products like Setapp come in, essentially offering one-stop, all-you-can-eat app subscriptions. It's anything but short-sighted - it's a way to go forward with quality apps that makes continued development sustainable when it otherwise might not.

Would I pay a low monthly fee for something I use every day? Of course I would.

Workflowy Pro costs $5/month. I've been paying that for quite awhile - two years? That's $120 in Workflowy's pocket, and I don't even notice a fiver out the door every thirty days. Would I have bought Workflowy Pro if it cost $120 for a license? Nope. $60? Nope. (And we'll ignore the additional cost of upgrades.) So, without the monthly subscription, Workflowy would have made exactly zilch from me. With the subscription, they get a reliable monthly cash flow. Everybody wins. What's to "loathe"?

I’ve ended up subscribing to a lot of applications I swore I wouldn’t subscribe to, mainly because I wanted to use them and so I ignored my dislike of the fees.

I’ve seen the “it’s good for devs” argument before, but I’ve never seen any independent reporting with analysis of whether that sort of claim is actually borne out in practice. I certainly haven’t noticed that the subscription apps are making improvements and upgrading with new features more frequently. Some developers charging the subscriptions for Bear, Day One, etc., haven’t done anything more than bug fixing since they introduced subscriptions.

That’s just my impression — I’d rather see an industry-wide empiracal study of the effect of subscriptions.

I like the Agenda model — it’s a subscription but if you stop the subscription you get to keep all the releases given to you while you subscribed. That sort of approach seems very fair to the customer as well as the developer. Customer gets new features, developer gets an income stream.

For or against subscriptions, I think it's important to compare like with like and to recognise that there are variations on this particular theme. A subscription for a continuous service, such as for an internet connection or for cloud synchronisation; or one where you get a new product every n time periods, such as a magazine subscription, aren't really comparable to subscriptions to working products that may, or may not, be updated during the subscription period. I'll pay for the first two types. The latter type I now avoid.

It is oft quoted that subscriptions provide the financial foundation for developers to produce better software and more updates. There's a flip side: when the money is already there the developers don't have the motivation or requirement any longer to produce new versions.

Obviously it depends on the developer, so it's always a risk, but, like Paul, my experience has universally been that development stops when software (without extra services such as cloud synchronisation) moves to a subscription basis. In all cases they have been mature applications. One, which used to produce updates every few months, didn't produce a single update during the year I subscribed to it, or since. Another promised a new version 2 months into the subscription. 18 months later we're all still waiting.

I stick to the old adage - buy software for what it does now, not for what is claims it will do in the future.

Subscriptions are popular because they are good for Apple. Don’t blame developers for fighting to survive in the Apple created ecosystem.

I’ve paid for the Drafts 5 subscription and am really liking it. I wish automation wasn’t so JavaScript dependent, as I’m a lousy programmer, but people are helpful on the forums.

Paul Korm wrote:

Some developers charging the subscriptions for Bear, Day One, etc.,
haven’t done anything more than bug fixing since they introduced
subscriptions.

That's not fair. I don't know about Bear (don't use it) but since Day One went free/subscription last June, in addition to considerable bug and stability fixes, for the iOS app alone they: added Facebook to the Activity Feed, added shake-to-undo in edit mode, added 1st frame of videos in Activity Feed, redesigned the app widgets, eliminated the 10-photo share extension limit, added new widgets (Nearby, Activity Feed, On This Day), implemented drag and drop for adding and arranging photos, added Face ID support, added ability to sign in with keychain credentials, optimized storage (thumbnails saved, full-size images download when entry is opened), updated Watch app and complication, revamped search and journal-switching via picker drawer, added journal colors.