Ulysses, infected by a trendy virus, changes to all-Subscription model

Posted by Slartibartfarst
Aug 12, 2017 at 03:44 AM

That’s about 30 posts on this Ulyssees thread so far. Curious.
Yup, it’s apparently rent-seeking by the Ulysses developers, alright - as someone has already pointed out - but then, so what?

I have been involved in software beta-testing and software selection for corporate and personal use for years now.
I generally advocate using a PIM that meets most of the user’s peculiar requirements for a PIM (whatever they may be at the time).
In my case, if my requirements change, or if I subsequently don’t like (say) the general development direction, or if I don’t like the new pricing or a new pricing model applied by the developers, for a piece of software that I use, then I would generally gradually retire it in whatever version I had last retained/purchased, whilst I looked for a better (for my purposes) alternative. I would then progressively migrate to the better alternative - e.g., that’s what I did with EverNote and InfoSelect, settling so far on what I called a “21st-century Zettelkasten PIM” in the shape of Microsoft OneNote (still in a now 9-year long experimental trial, for me).

But I don’t really look back (excepting, perhaps, with a sense of disappointment in the case of InfoSelect) and I probably wouldn’t invest further cognitive surplus in flogging those dead horses, however good they may have been or however bad they may have become, unless I thought it might be useful in (say) encouraging the developers to get back on what I thought was the “right” development track, or get back to a “better” (e.g., less greedy) pricing model.
At the same time, I keep checking those other PIMs out there, in the hope of finding something that overcomes the limitations that I perceive in OneNote. I maintain notes on a list of “also-rans” - PIMs that had potential, but just never seem to make the grade (for my requirements), and a list of “potential candidates” - PIMs that, frustratingly, could probably meet or even exceed my requirements, if only they would get out of their development rut and expand their relatively constrained/narrow or “specialised” development focus (e.g., including, Zoot, ConnectedText, Wezinc, Zotero, WizNote).
Ulyssees isn’t on either list, though it looks like an interesting product.