A pity you feel that way, but best of luck to you Alexander.
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Just to clarify, our decision to make the badge more prominent actually came from discussions we had with friends using the app. They said things like “I’m never reminded to renew”. So even though they wanted to help us as a company, they realized they weren’t seeing the reminders to motivate them to do so.
In any case, the intention is to remind, not badger, so we will see if we can find a nice middle ground. Occasional gentle reminders.
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I guess I will just share this very simple product management book reference here: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U and this google query next to it.
Thank you for sharing!
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There might be other ways to remind users to renew.
But if you are getting distracted by the banner, it doesn’t make the change a major violation of the ideology. There are limitations because of the App Store and therefore I consider your statement unfair. You cannot expect a version to be maintained forever. But here you still get updates with bug fixes or changes to run it on a new macOS or iOS after years and still you can use the premium features you have paid for, even though you don’t pay for the app anymore. And you can use new features, which aren’t premium, for free!
There is one change and there will be changes, which you don’t like.
But in the end it is your decision to update the app, even though you have been satisfied by an older version.
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Note by the way that we have taken the feedback on board and starting in version 17.0.1 instead of showing it permanently we will only show the badge every 10 days, for at most 5 minutes or until you click/tap the badge to visit the premium features window, whichever comes first. In the end it’s not our intention to harass our users, we just want to remind them.
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In the end it’s not our intention to harass our users, we just want to remind them.
Probably, I’m from the other age group - luckily, don’t have memory problems yet =)
But if you are getting distracted by the banner, it doesn’t make the change a major violation of the ideology.
It is. It’s the first sign of the change. The original promise was - it’s not a subscription. Pay for what you need.
You cannot expect a version to be maintained forever.
Nothing is forever. Obviously.
But here you still get updates with bug fixes or changes to run it on a new macOS or iOS after years and still you can use the premium features you have paid for, even though you don’t pay for the app anymore.
Argh… That’s too complicated a sentence for me to process, but no - my two bug reports were hanging for a couple of years.
And you can use new features, which aren’t premium, for free!
Don’t need them. Really. Paid once to get one and to support the product. Managed not to forget somehow, btw.
There is one change and there will be changes, which you don’t like.
Didn’t expect a philosophical debate here, but thank you, I do know. And it’s my decision to go away as well as to notify others, that exit will be a pain.
Notion.so dump is a beautiful standard markdown files and attachments next to it. All lniks preserved. Very easy to migrate there and forward.
I recommend Notion, despite we go our separate ways for one project.
Agenda export? Or, you go and figure it out by yourself. You get either Markdown files, or TextBundle… bundle, that you have to process manually. And, anyway, you have to export all folders inside your Agenda. Manually, again.
But in the end it is your decision to update the app, even though you have been satisfied by an older version.
Oh, really? You are the person, who doesn’t use auto-updates?
I used to trust people and let them do their job, while I’m doing mine. Don’t do manual updates of the apps on my desktop, nor on most of the servers.
Anyway, I understand you have the right to share your thoughts, but my question was to the app developers. And I didn’t like the way it was handled, not I could be sure next release won’t start showing a little ad somewhere at the useless top space of the app… You know, cause you might forget to check the ad somewhere else?
No you can’t be sure, but isn’t that true for any other app? Especially for heavily VC funded apps like the one you recommend that’s very likely to be acquired by a big-co at some point in order for those VCs to make their money back? In other words, as with so many things, only time will tell…
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I understand that you don’t need new features and I understand your expectation for a distraction free app.
But you benefit of a great feature for free:
You get an app with the premium features you paid for, which will still work on new Macs, iPhones and iPads each with a new OS as long as the developers keep maintaining it.
That way you are able to use everything you want and need for a much longer period of time for free compared with other apps. In other apps you need to renew a subscription every year or pay for a new version for a new OS.
In my opinion, the change isn’t a major violation of the ideology, because you are still able to use everything you have paid for. Being nit-pick, I could say, you didn’t pay for a distraction free app. You expect it to be and it is fair to ask, if that change can get an overhaul. However, in my opinion it is unfair to say, the developers violate their ideology by this change, because of the described feature above.
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Well… you know how much time I spend extracting data and moving into two other editors to try? It was like ~30 minutes.
How many bugs they didn’t fix, that I reported? Only one. And I understand it was difficult to troubleshoot it and there was a practical work-around.
Is it perfect? No. But very easy to use and very easy to migrate. And no broken promises, because it’s just an editor, with no promises to build something different from others, with no subscription or something.
Thanks for that
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Thanks for sharing, and I believe that this:
So embrace the conflict of an angry customer as a rare gift of feedback. Remove your ego from the response. Extract the maximum amount of information to feed back into the offering.
That’s how you win. By building better rather than defending worse.
is precisely what we have done with the changes we’ve made from 17.0 to 17.0.1, based on your feedback, and in that sense we’re definitely grateful you took the time to tell us rather than walk away in silence. 
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You see things in a way, that you made it good, after making it bad.
I see things in a way, that you made bad less obviously bad.
I’m sorry I haven’t been heard. And I’m sorry you changed your approach. I really liked the app.
Indeed sorry you feel this way and that we see things differently, pity to see you go, good luck.
So I’ve had this thought on the back of my head for a while now and I think a solution would be to notify users to upgrade simply whenever there is an update to an existing feature or a new one is released.
I see that as the right moment to grab your users’ attention and nudge them to upgrade instead of a persistent banner that can make it look like they didn’t pay at all - or at least that’s how it may feel, at least to some people.
But most importantly, make informed decisions through activities like usability studies and surveys and understand you can’t indulge everyone. Hear out everybody, but learn to filter out the noise.
To conclude, you guys do great. Agenda is a rare gem that can help people stay organised, focused and creative. It helped me 
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To support this, as per my perception, it’s the way it was: there was a banner about a new features. It was of the different kind of annoyance (more so in the latest versions), but! It was my favorite reading… I was waiting to see what the guys will do next!
It still does work this way, I believe. If there is a new release, there will be a badge saying “Two new features” or something.
This badge will keep jumping at you, even after you closed a window that stops me from immediate work and shows all the new features + the app has more and more UI elements that you can easily click onto and get ‘ha! pay!’