Is it posible to downgrate to the previous version?
Im using Clear everyday for many years… im attached to it… this update is no upgrade for me… the animations ar making me sea sick and it is just not as minimalistic as the previous version. I dont want to search for alternatives and rather want the old clear app back… is it posible to downgrade?
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no, it’s not possible
Are you someone who generally finds whooshy animations motion sickness inducing? Like do you turn on the Reduce Motions iOS setting? Wondering if Apple lets apps pick up on that setting too.
No I never disabled animations befor on apps or on my mac. I think alot when im using clear and i find the animations very distracted and the feel like the ugly cheap transitions when you make a slide show with pictures… I feld in love with clear becous of the simplicity and “less is more” look and feel… a powerfull minimalist app…
Mabey there is a way of choosing the previous animations…
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It’s not trivial to make and support a different set of animations entirely. But we will be first taking a look at making it feel snappier.
I don’t know if you all are old enough Apple fans to remember the Mac OS 9 > Mac OS X transition but I get some of those vibes. Like Mac OS X at the very start was probably a little too overly exuberant in some of its colorful design/animations, and missing some things, and a little slow. But we will refine it in updates. (It was a similar evolution for Clear 1.0 and early updates.)
I do think you should find the core still simple and pristine. The rewards/shop may seem like a lot, but it’s honestly an experimental business model that we hope enables free to play, no subscriptions, and recurring revenue that is not tied to feature creep, and designed to be largely ignorable if you aren’t into it – so in the end, trying to shield that simplicity too.
And in general, the lean into personalization, I hope will mean we can accommodate more and more of all of your taste preferences over time.
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Thank you for the replay! Sorry but I use Clear for I think about 10 years now… i cant get use to this. Is there a way to also upload the other clear to the app store? The previous version? I will pay for it!
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That is not a real option for us moving forward. It had been getting more and more difficult to build and submit the ancient codebase with ever changing Xcode, iOS updates, App Store requirements etc. and it was a matter of time until we could be dealing with some worst case scenario.
I am sorry about the whole situation that resulted in so many years of zero change, and then all this change overnight.
I wish we could’ve been more generally accommodating but if it helps explain, we have limited indie resources, and Clear for many years has been a business under water and needing some serious rescuing / recoding of foundations etc. So there is some desperation built into some of the big cuts we made etc. and a lot of ‘we need to rescue a future for Clear’ energy going behind this big last ditch swing.
For what it’s worth, in some ways it might be deceptively different feeling overnight. In that the core of it, its bones, should be feel securely simple and the Clear you know if you spend some time with it even if there’s kind of an overwhelming sense of everything being different. (I think!)
But yeah it’s a lot of change, like a room in your house was remodeled overnight. Even if it’s a good remodel… there is some built-in anti-coziness to the surprise of it and magnitude of the change. I definitely regret not smoothing that over more somehow and better communicating. But I do have some conviction that it’s the good kind of remodel (work in progress) rather than the botched kind.
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I am not only super disappointed in this whole situation
I’m actually furious that the app auto updated to the new version and I can’t downgrade
Clear was an excellent app that I used daily on iOS and Mac
I tried the beta and eventually deleted it and went back to the old one
The cartoony interface is bad enough but the lack of iCloud support is the real deal breaker
That and no reminders either
The least you could do is put the original version back up on the App Store and keep them seperate
We paid for the original app and now it’s been stolen from us and replaced with a toy
The new “clear” should perhaps have been given a new name and the old clear just left alone
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What I mean by rescue situation is if we didn’t work on the new Clear with totally new foundations like this and were invested in it having a future at all, the original would’ve simply disappeared off the App Store sooner than later. Actually most likely, years ago, since it has been running in the red for much longer than that, and because if we had no new Clear planned for it, we would not want to be bringing any new users into an app that is going to disappear forever.
I feel like many of you are under the impression that it’s been making decent money all these years and merrily humming along but that is not the case. We just simply poured years of our lives into trying to save Clear because we love it, we think there’s something special to it that can and should connect with a new generation. That’s all. Had to make hard choices like this because we had to, not because we like to be controversial or disappoint.
There is reminders btw, it was moved to swiping right past checking off an item.
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I did some research and it seems that installing the old version is posible if someone has the older original app… and you can place it into itunes and than sync with iphone… im not sure but there might be a way… if this is posible it would be an idea to sell the previous Clear app on your website (for all the people who want there app back…
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If you are able to find this you’re welcome to try, I’m not familiar with the method and we wouldn’t want to sell it because we can’t promise basic support, like will this app still work next iOS.
I guess there are two things i don’t quite get
One is how making an app less functional would increase revenues, but I don’t know anything about the app business
The other is: would it cost you money to just leave the old app sitting in the App Store so as can continue to use it? Again I know nothing about the App Store.
Quite frankly I would pay for the original app again in order to keep it. I have no interest whatsoever in the new app
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Perhaps you could provide us with a version of the old app to install ourselves
It’s easy enough to side load an app. Especially if it’s already signed
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True! We can install the app via another way… that would be great!
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Sure I will try to explain using sync as an example.
Clear had its best sales in year 1 when it was iPhone only. The paid upfront model (and a lot of hype for the original release!) resulted in a crazy debut spike and a huge flood of initial customers. Believe it or not, back in 2012, Clear 1.0 debuted at #1 top grossing position in the entire US App Store, because people found its design very pioneering and interesting. But, the nature of most paid apps and models like this is an initial big spike, and then decline and difficult to sustain.
The #1 request was sync. So we dove into it. iCloud sync engine by itself took almost a year to develop. Clear Mac native version took 10 months to develop the original version. Clear iPad took its own time. Every piece of this now required ongoing engineering and design and maintenance.
Around this point, we burned out. Clear’s ongoing revenue while not nothing at that point, was also not enough to sustain that level of ongoing development. We had largely burned through the first year spike by now.
And then over many years, the App Store also changed quite a lot, and customer expectations. I would not be surprised if MOST App Store users today have never bought a single paid app upfront.
I think with Clear, sync is a great improvement, but also because Clear has such distinct and unique strengths compared to the competition, we felt this time around we should lean into this side first before hopefully more efficiently and sustainably tackling sync this time around piece by piece again.
Think of Clear a little bit like the Nintendo Switch of todo apps, not as powerful/featured and possibly missing some ‘basic’ expectations but also has a real niche to itself.
Anyways, how we hope to make more revenue with this reboot, is by re-centering it to recurring revenue from people who love and get the most out of Clear over time vs. one time up front for all. And we also hope this is more generous (enabling free to try, no subscription, no functionality gated) and also actually is healthy for Clear’s simplicity by not tying revenue to feature creep.
It probably will make less than $5 per person downloading it. But I think we will also have about 100x the people trying it every day now vs. before even conservatively.
Well that was the revenue question… your other question is simpler. It’s mainly that it would be a ticking time bomb because of the ancient code / continuously rising standards, and this also makes it disproportionately costly to make even simple fixes/patches when required. So it would be splitting our engineering, support and focus while also having this ‘project mold’ problem where it’s just degrading over time towards a terrible situation.
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Ahhh for the reasons I just posted about I’m not really interested in officially endorsing/opening this can of worms… again, if you guys somehow figure it out, I won’t censor it. But we just have a LOT on our todo list and that would be a mini project in itself that feels like it has repercussions/responsibilities moving forward.
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Repeatedly over the last two weeks, you’ve answered design feedback with business model and coding explanations.
What many of this feedback is getting at, but you’re ignoring, is that even if you had to recode, why did you change the design at all?
If there were issues with the business model, and the code base, sure - but there was nothing wrong with the design.
You did not need to change the design (look, feel) to add the weird business model antics (rewards, etc).
It’s a really simple question. It seems like you chose ugly and are oblivious to the impact. It is not logical from the outside.
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Honestly when I look at the Clear design frozen in time from almost ten years ago from like the iOS 7 days, while I agree its design holds up WAY better than most other 10+ year old apps and has some timeless quality to its core, it looks and feels dusty and dated, and not inviting to today’s market. There were total design compromises and crutches we shipped in the 1.0 that I have always wanted to fix, and many more ideas for improving/evolving it accumulating over the years.
You’re probably reading this and thinking ‘this guy is addicted to novelty and change’ and this might be somewhat true. I guess the thing I will note is it’s the same person/personality that looked at the other todo apps 12 years ago and was like, these suck, we have some better interesting ideas, and shipped Clear 1.0.
That said… one of the themes in the new version is a higher degree of personalization, and being able to tune Clear to be extra cozy to you. So I’m kind of hoping as we expand on that through the year this new design will be able to meet your tastes a lot better. (Specific feedback helps so I’ve been digesting them as they come up on the forums, reviews, emails etc.)
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I am a designer myself and I can tell you, that at first, I did not liked the change, but now after getting used to it, I wouldn’t go back to old one. I think they made really great job of making the app up to date.
The only thing I feel like it need’s to be iterated is reminder’s, mainly the way how you activate it, as threshold is currently so far, that it’s difficult to do it comfortably with one hand in most cases. I think the old way of having them in edit mode was honestly just perfect.
I love, that we have this app still, because my reason to get beta was actually bug on the old one, which proves the point of Phil - old app was not sustainable without revenue. And fixing all those bugs coming with new iOS updates is expensive, when you realite how much average iOS developer rate is.
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Good to hear. I do feel for most upset about the aesthetic/design changes, they will come around after some time to adjust + a couple targeted refinements etc. + personalization + finding new things they love about it.
And I am waiting for some more time on the shop sales so far (because what’s really important is if it can sustain longterm or not) to more officially report back to you all, but so far, very good signs. At least on iPhone I think we are on a good new foundation overall. Modern code, design and business model, check check check.
Reminders yes hoping to improve on that side. I really feel it’s key it doesn’t ask every time you make an item like before. (Consider that they were a setting in 1.x, because some people rightfully hated how it added screen clutter or diluted that side of Clear.) But hoping we can improve on some of the issues with this version.
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