[ksala_]

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You can’t be expected to get a subscription, but you also can’t be expected to charge for an upgrade.

Now, I hate subscriptions as much as the next person, but I can’t leave this blog without feeling that the op is a bit entitled.

For what it matters, my opinion is that GoodNotes is doing everything correctly. If you bought a 5 lifetime, you can still use it. It’s the same app (that’s interesting, there is a toggle to go between 5 and 6) so I’m assuming it’s still getting bug fixes for new os releases and similar. 5 was a free update to 4, and 6 was released in 2023 (!) so that license was good for a while. They offer discounts if you bought 5, so op point of it being cheaper on a subscription might be wrong. And according to their website they still offer lifetime licenses for 6, bar the AI stuff (which is probably an ongoing cost for them? No idea if it’s local or not).

Plenty of scammy apps and it would be nice to go back to owning things, but this is the same experience if not better to when you could buy software on a cd and keep it a couple decades ago.

[raincole]

> but I can’t leave this blog without feeling that the op is a bit entitled

Not a bit. Extremely entitled. The OP even believes that if they bought a permanent license, they should be entitled to upgrades forever. I really wonder what the mental model of business looks like in their head.

[getpokedagain]

Maybe a basic note app does not require an account and subscription. Maybe it does not mandate an entire organization and marketing team to deal with security updates. The economy around marketing these types of basic apps is crazy.

I think the op is likely poorly wording their feeling or perhaps are early in exploring their frustrations. They may sound entitled because of this. Their intuition does ring true however. Its 2025 and we are talking a notes app. Handheld pdas had notes applications in the 80s why on earth would we need a subscription let alone dozens of competing subscriptions to take notes. OP will probably find they can get what they need from copy left software and happily ignore this noise in time.

[poncho_romero]

As someone who has used Goodnotes 5 for years, my experience is that it’s getting new bugs—not new bug fixes. Anecdotal of course, but since Goodnotes 6 released, I’ve started seeing frequent issues with erased text not disappearing and menus behaving poorly. This is on a brand new iPad Air.