I am certainly not a hater of the new Clear, but had I known that we were losing the ability to sync to iCloud, I too, would have figured out how NOT TO update to the new clear. Is there a way to go back to the old version and turn off updates for just this app?
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I understand that it’s a long story with lots of technical hurdles that you and your team are working hard to overcome, I truly am so sorry.
Just don’t forget that even though people here are complaining, none of them asked to have this update pushed to their devices that ultimately lowered functionality of the app.
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We failed to properly communicate this to you all ahead of time and we owed that to you. No question there.
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I’ve been using Clear since the very beginning of its existence. I have recommended the app to countless people. I use it daily across multiple devices.
How Clear could implement a new version without iCloud sync is absolutely absurd. I can just imagine engineers and designers sitting in a room with no windows and saying “ah, that’s not that important.” And you blew it up for what, some different visual themes? Who cares.
Did you talk to a single user before doing this? I am beside myself.
Ok, now that I’m done with my rant the question is this:
When do you plan to address the issue? Are we talking days, weeks, months or more? I could deal with a few days or even a few weeks, but if this is something that is going to take longer, I’m out.
Please be kind enough to be more transparent with the community so we can all make choices. Unfortunately, I suspect your user base is going to go to near zero.
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There were thousands upon thousands of folks testing through the betas of this app and followed every change, gave advice, pointed out bugs, and requested features, etc. All of those testers were aware of icloud sync coming later. I doubt highly their user base will go to zero.
The app hasn’t had a true update in years. I’m surprised it worked at all and the sync with iCloud was always a bit buggy.
iOS has changed considerably in 10 years and the legacy app was going to fall apart without a major update. I certainly understand people’s need for sync and how much of a shock it was to find out you no longer could. That could’ve been stated better in the release notes I suppose (it was stated) but likely 99% of iOS users don’t bother to read release notes anyway. Worse, many people set their phones to auto update apps as well which is an accident waiting to happen.
I’ve used clear since day one and beta tested the new version this whole time. I’ll stick with it. I love the app and new features and old will come in time.
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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.
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@phillryu thanks so much for the response. You’re right, not what I wanted to hear and I definitely don’t wish the company any bad will. But I truly appreciated that you responded and were honest in what you shared.
I ran a pretty large consulting practice for several years (over 1,000 people) and highly recommended Clear. I bet a few hundred used it…and almost every one I knew of used sync.
I wish you guys luck and maybe we’ll see each other online in the future.
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Omg that’s a lot of people you recommended it to, and with that syncing too. Agggh we really did let you down on an extra level there.
I will say to you and others in this thread, if anyone bought Clear Mac let’s say within the past 4 years for syncing purposes, forward me your email receipt to phill@impending.com and I will send you a refund towards a replacement.
In my experience trying to explain things after the fact (so much messier/harder than having done it ahead of time properly, gah) I do find most of you are while still rightfully disappointed, much more understanding with filled in context. Genuinely appreciate that kind of grace given the situation and our big mistakes here.
End of the day, we do all share the same basic hope of Clear thriving for the next ten+ years and out, and we’ll keep working at getting it to that place step by step.
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I switched to ToDoist when my old Clear stopped working (sync issues). I hoped there would be some sort of import / porting tool to get my lists back to clear, but there doesn’t seem to be an option. If there was a Mac Clear app, I could probably copy/paste easily, but with just an iPhone app that wouldn’t be doable. So I’m sticking with ToDoist but I still hope someday I can go back to Clear as it’s really the best list app I ever had. Pity the launch of the new app took so long and there’s not a Mac app.
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If ToDoist supports sharing a list as plain text, you could copy that into Clear. (It will input as list rows.) You could also copy on your Mac and use iCloud pasteboard to then paste it into Clear iPhone.
Does ToDoist offer some standard data export options? I honestly wasn’t aware of something like that, so maybe it’s something we could look into for the future.
Thank you for your suggestions Phill! There is an option to export from ToDoist to Google Spreadsheets.
I think a native Mac client for Clear would be enough for me, I don’t have hundreds of lists, just being able to copy/paste would be enough for me to migrate my data by hand.