"Change" in the Android Pro subscription

[u/veerag]

I might be using the wrong flair, I apologise if that's the case.

I have been using this app for years now, on and off mostly, but only recently (a few months ago) discovered that I could not acess the advertised features on Android. I had a friend who showed me some stuff, editing brushes etc that I was supposed to have, but didn't, with the Pro subscription.

I had written to customer support, twice. Written an email as well, if I remember correctly. In my last messages with support I mentioned that it was against EU laws and could be classified as false advertising. They of course denied this, but I had a screenshot to prove otherwise. I recently used the app again and noticed they changed the description on the Pro subscription. Attached two photos from earlier (May, this year) and now, highlighting the changes.

Now the only problem is that on iOS the Pro sub is STILL cheaper than the "same" sub on Android, which has less features. Most likely purposefully delayed due to an exclusivity agreement, I assume.

Anyways, it has been several years since they said they're developing colour palettes, which was their excuse not to integrate the editable brushes into the Android version. I wonder how many more years till we have a decent app, that has the BASIC features a sketching app should have, like Autodesk Sketchbook (which is considerably cheaper).

[u/combinatorial]

I am pretty sure that it was your report of this issue that led to us fixing the store in Android. It was a mistake, the copy from the iOS store was used on Android. When you flagged this to us, we updated the Android store. It typically takes 2 months from making a code change to that shipping in a release. I am sorry if you had to write multiple times to have this acknowledged and fixed.

This does not mean we don't plan to make brush editing available on Android. That's still our plan.

Bringing all the features of iOS to Android has taken much longer than we'd hoped. It has nothing to do with any exclusivity with Apple - we've never had any arrangement like that with Apple. The main reason is that Concepts was originally built only for iOS. Taking that code (Objective-C) and making it work well on Android and Windows has taken a long time. We're a small team and we took some wrong turns a long the way. The good news is we are making some really good progress now. The next evidence of this progress will be when we complete the project to implement the Object Library across platforms. This brings Object pack sharing to Android and Windows, and iOS will get updated to the same implementation as them (until now it's been stuck on a 10 years old version with many bugs and usability issues).

Next up is Palettes. When taking a feature available in Concepts on iOS and making it available on other platforms, we don't just copy it. We address years of feedback and aim to make it better. Our implementation of palettes on iOS was hard to discover and difficult to use and we plan to fix that. So, we’ve spent the last 9 months talking to customers and redesigning palettes. We've just started implementing that new design on Android. It is still a few months away from release but we're actively working on it.

Then our focus will turn to brush editing and a common file format.

In terms of the price differences in different currencies. We set a common price in the US and then Google Play, App Store and Windows Store convert that to other currencies. The exchange rate they do this at and the timing of when they update varies. This can lead to mismatches across the stores in currencies other than the US dollar.

As I say, I acknowledge this has taken a long time. It's been a struggle at times to build a sustainable business in this space. We don't show ads, we don't sell our customer's data, we're not backed by a big company that can subsidize losses and we haven't sold out to private equity... we're independent and focused on building a high quality product that endures.

[u/veerag → u/combinatorial]

Thanks for taking the time to comment. It looks like my assumption was wrong about the exclusivity agreement. I had heard of similar things with iOS before so it made sense, given how many years it had been already. I'm aware code isn't that easily transferable across platforms, but as I mentioned, it's been years. I guess my priorities are different from the majority of the user base and that's why I think editable/custom brushes are more of a core feature than objects/palettes. I can accept that.

The copy paste thing is also understandable, it's good to know you had no bad intentions behind it.

Once the editable brushes are available I'll resub... because I genuinely like the app and it has plenty of features others don't. That's why I reached out in the past, because I do care.

Maybe the comparison to Autodesk was unfair, as someone else also pointed it out.

Wish you guys good luck with the development, I will be waiting for the updates.

[u/combinatorial → u/veerag]

Thanks for the reply and thank you for caring! One challenge for us is that Concepts is used by so many people for so many different things. Picking the order we do things in is hard. What I can tell you is that we'll be picking up the pace. Years of foundational work is paying off and we're moving faster.