Notability Users Frustrated By Switch to Subscription Model Merits Violation of App Shop Guidelines

Notability users have been left frustrated and annoyed afterward the developer of the popular Mac and iOS note-taking app revealed on Monday that it has switched to a subscription-based model, and that key features included in original app purchases will stop functioning after i year.

Notability Feature
Previously bachelor as a one-off $eight.99 buy, Notability for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is at present free to download on the App Store, simply not all the features are available in the "freemium" version, and those that are included take editing limitations.

To get "the total Notability experience" offered by version 11.0 of the app now requires an annual $14.99 subscription, which includes unlimited annotation taking and access to additional features that are otherwise available as in-app purchases.

Every bit far every bit information technology affects current users who purchased the full app, key features will get not-functional afterwards one yr, after which they will have to subscribe to retain the feature fix they originally paid for. In other words, no grandfathering scheme is currently beingness offered. Addressed to those users, a Medium mail service from the Notability Blog explains:

Cheers for your back up all these years. You volition exist able to continue using Notability equally you exercise now for the side by side year for free. You will proceed to have access to any items or engineering you previously purchased. If you lot would similar access to more than premium content or engineering science like MyScript's Handwriting Recognition and Math Conversion, you may choose to subscribe at any indicate. After the year is up, you can cull to become an annual subscriber or use the free version of Notability.

Thousands of Notability users have taken to Twitter and Reddit to limited their frustration with the unexpected change.

Every bit many users have pointed out, on the face of information technology, the change appears to violate Apple tree's App Store Review Guidelines, which state "if you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you lot should not have away the chief functionality existing users have already paid for." Nosotros've reached out to both Notability and Apple for comment.

Notability has garnered an Apple Editors' Choice spot and is regularly a summit-ranked app worldwide on the App Store. The app has gained widespread popularity with students and teachers alike, equally it includes a variety of note-taking, journaling, and cartoon tools, and can be used to mark up imported documents.

The other popular note-taking app for iOS and Mac that Notability is often compared to is GoodNotes, which remains bachelor as a one-off $7.99 purchase on the App Store.

Several popular apps accept switched to subscription models in recent years as a style to stave off dwindling income later years of gratuitous updates, but some developers have taken a different and less divisive approach.

For instance, just over a year ago the developers of pop paid-for camera app Halide released Halide Marking 2 equally a whole new app, and gave it to all users of the original app for free, with all the new features and updates costless for a year. Subsequently the year is upwardly, the app continues to work, but to become additional features requires an optional subscription or a ane-time purchase.

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