Neal (I hope you are reading this),
I have some thoughts on your latest comments regarding the Schedule Importer:
I completely understand that this is a business you are running and appreciate that the Schedule Importer is an excellent tool that requires skills and funds to maintain. However, once again, you show your bias by suggesting that the only free option in the future will be for customers of your next Logbook Pro. You make no secret of your disdain for Macintosh but many of your users are Mac users and this will adversely effect us.
Since you have no intention of making a Logbook Pro for Mac users which means we will not have the embedded schedule importer feature available to our PC brothers, I respectfully request that you rethink this plan for the future of the online Schedule Importer. Might I suggest that you offer a combination subscription option where we could pay for, perhaps, a 3 year subscription which would include unlimited use of the Schedule Importer as well as a reduced or free update/transfer to either a different version (palm to PC or vice versa, or another device should that happen) or the next release of APDL during that time. That way, you would still be able to charge non-APDL/Logbook Pro customers while both providing an incentive for those people to purchase the products and keeping non-PC/Logbook Pro customers (don't forget the people who just prefer your online Schedule Importer) satisfied and loyal.
It is not really our fault that you have decided to rest on your APDL laurels (I realize you feel it is a feature rich product that does what is required even though there have been several requests for additional features) rather than offer updates requiring additional purchases. We do appreciate the fact that you haven't felt it necessary to make minor updates only to change the version number so you could charge us and lock old users out of the Scheduling Importer. That being said, if you are truly hurting for money and need to build income, please don't do it at the expense of loyal customers. Remember us when you are developing your pricing plan and, please, remember that, even though you don't like the OS yourself, many of your loyal customers are Mac users and will be very bitter if you treat us like outsiders.
You have every right to charge for your services but we ask that you do not punish your current customers through future plans.
Thank you
I have some thoughts on your latest comments regarding the Schedule Importer:
You may have noticed a message at the bottom of the Schedule Importer site about the consideration of a small subscription fee for use of the schedule importer system. Please do not be concerned, again, we are only considering it at this time. I realize no one wants to pay money for anything they can avoid paying for. We've provided this service free for years but it is not free to develop, maintain, or keep online for you. We have to stay in business to provide you services such as this. We pay programmers to keep the filters updated, we have to update the software on the site, we have to have a server, and of course hosting to provide this service to you. Just like anything, it costs money to keep running and your APDL purchase of $59.95 years ago isn't going to cover it. With that said, we also have users of this system that are not APDL or Logbook Pro customers, we are aware of this. So our plan down the road is to provide this service FREE for our customers with the built in schedule importer features embedded in the next version of Logbook Pro and for those that want to use the web portal will be required to pay a subscription fee.
I completely understand that this is a business you are running and appreciate that the Schedule Importer is an excellent tool that requires skills and funds to maintain. However, once again, you show your bias by suggesting that the only free option in the future will be for customers of your next Logbook Pro. You make no secret of your disdain for Macintosh but many of your users are Mac users and this will adversely effect us.
Since you have no intention of making a Logbook Pro for Mac users which means we will not have the embedded schedule importer feature available to our PC brothers, I respectfully request that you rethink this plan for the future of the online Schedule Importer. Might I suggest that you offer a combination subscription option where we could pay for, perhaps, a 3 year subscription which would include unlimited use of the Schedule Importer as well as a reduced or free update/transfer to either a different version (palm to PC or vice versa, or another device should that happen) or the next release of APDL during that time. That way, you would still be able to charge non-APDL/Logbook Pro customers while both providing an incentive for those people to purchase the products and keeping non-PC/Logbook Pro customers (don't forget the people who just prefer your online Schedule Importer) satisfied and loyal.
It is not really our fault that you have decided to rest on your APDL laurels (I realize you feel it is a feature rich product that does what is required even though there have been several requests for additional features) rather than offer updates requiring additional purchases. We do appreciate the fact that you haven't felt it necessary to make minor updates only to change the version number so you could charge us and lock old users out of the Scheduling Importer. That being said, if you are truly hurting for money and need to build income, please don't do it at the expense of loyal customers. Remember us when you are developing your pricing plan and, please, remember that, even though you don't like the OS yourself, many of your loyal customers are Mac users and will be very bitter if you treat us like outsiders.
You have every right to charge for your services but we ask that you do not punish your current customers through future plans.
Thank you