We really fucked up not communicating this to you in advance properly. That said will try to explain at least how this happened:
• Clear 1.x was a ticking time bomb on two fronts – in the red as a business for most of the decade and ancient code that is getting more and more behind annually rising standards. A challenge to build with every year’s new Xcode, App Store update requirements etc. Not good, and destined to disappear without a huge swing.
• I think I mentioned elsewhere but Clear 1.x has always had a very iPhone dominant base, like 90%+ of its usage. I think this is because it has a more unique take vs. the other todo apps more directly competing between themselves. And also because Clear is nicer to use on phone comparatively, where most other todo apps are more complicated and easier to manage on Mac etc.
• Native Clear Mac, Clear iPad, sync, was tackled too early in the 1.x roadmap in the first place, burned the original team out, and never recouped costs, because Clear literally made most of its lifetime paid app revenue in its first year, and each of these native apps + sync added on much ongoing design/engineering/support costs. E.g. Clear Mac’s 1.0 development alone took over 10 months of the team’s effort.
In the pretty brutal perspective of like, ‘how do we save Clear from death’, it felt necessary for us to focus our limited indie resources on the iPhone foundation first, and build out from there.
All of this sucks… of course I miss it myself as a user, and it makes me miserable disappointing you all here. We messed up big with this release on both some of the big migration bugs we’ve been patching up, and also properly communicating it ahead of time.
The hope is that Clear comes through this alive, and set up for the next ten years properly. Sync will not be back in a matter of weeks or even months, so we will lose you and others. Just hope we can welcome some of you back in the future.
There are some encouraging early signs this might actually happen vs. Clear just fading out forever. I realize not the answer you’re looking for but, I hope it at least helps paint in some crucial missing parts of the picture.