
Sunrise is shutting down - Remiii
http://blog.sunrise.am/post/144196642739/its-almost-time-to-say-goodbye
======
eterm
From their announcement of acqusition:
[http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise-
microsoft](http://blog.sunrise.am/post/110577824529/sunrise-microsoft)

> Today, we’re excited to announce that Sunrise is joining Microsoft. For
> Sunrise, this is just the beginning.

> Sunrise will remain free and available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and
> Desktop – we’re not going anywhere.

~~~
DKnoll
It was amusing that Sunrise was bought by Microsoft, but still could not
connect to either of the Exchange servers I threw at it. Support basically
just shrugged at me via email, rough translation being 'it works on my
machine.'

Sort of unrelated, but Outlook for Android also still cannot handle recurring
all-day events. They will appear in the calendar on incorrect days. Also
tested this across multiple servers.

I use Nine for email, which blows Outlook for Android out of the water.
Business Calendar 3 is the only Outlook (Desktop) equivalent calendar I've
found for Android.

------
willwhitney
Once a startup gets bought, I look for alternatives.

If they don't shut down, I still learned something new! But usually they do.

In this case, I landed on Fantastical [1] — it's a little pricy but completely
worth it. (Mac/iOS only.)

[1]: [https://flexibits.com/fantastical](https://flexibits.com/fantastical)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> it's a little pricy

We should appreciate when its pricey. That's motivation for the product to
continue to exist. Otherwise, "OurIncredibleJourney".

~~~
toyg
I agree but the current model is broken. I buy FantastiCal, don't like it,
I've just thrown money down the toilet. Yeah yeah you can go through iTunes
and get it back but that feels like a dick move, and how many actually know
the procedure anyway? It's not exactly advertised.

I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver or
a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different (or
not, but hey, that's what it feels like).

I wish Apple would start allowing time-limited trialware. The IAP machinery is
already there, they just have to allow apps that stop working after 30 days if
there is no payment. After 30 days, I have a pretty good idea whether an app
is worth £1, £10, £50 or 0.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I throw a quid down the toilet? That's fine, I don't mind. I throw a fiver
> or a tenner? Woah dude, that's like, a Starbucks latte! Totally different
> (or not, but hey, that's what it feels like).

[http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps](http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps)

~~~
toyg
Well spotted. Note how that strip is from 2011, it was a bit of an old joke at
the time already, and nothing has changed. Or rather: app-developers now route
around this perception with IAP-whaling, which makes everyone sad and doesn't
really map to "real" apps anyway. A trialware model would be better for
everyone.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> A trialware model would be better for everyone.

I agree.

------
reustle
The overarching lesson I'm slowly learning is to not get too comfy with any
saas products. Who knows how long they'll stick around, regardless of if
they're great / popular / profitable.

~~~
jerf
I still prefer to use desktop-based products that I own as much as possible
for this reason. Rather than think of it as being behind this swing of the
pendulum, I prefer to think of it as being ahead of the next one.

------
cperciva
They must have had amazing self-control to restrain themselves from titling
this "Sunrise is sunsetting".

~~~
jgill
Ha, our inner pun masters are in alignment.

------
johnatwork
This is becoming a tiring pattern.

I've just gotten used to the UI.

Can anyone commit to building a proper business? Is Sustainability no longer a
virtue of creating a service/application?

~~~
zeveb
> Can anyone commit to building a proper business?

How about we users commit to building the tools we need, and forget about
relying on businesses to do it for us?

That's what free software is all about — head on over to the Free Software
Foundation and pitch in today!

~~~
clickbyclick
Another angle...

It's sad when we pay $5 for a coffee made in 5 minutes that we'll drink in
3... but not $5 for an app that took 5 months that we'd use daily for a year.

~~~
vectorpush
Well, if coffee shops started offering up free coffee with ads on the cup,
people wouldn't pay $5 for coffee either.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Most coffee cups already do have ads on them. They have you paying $5 for
coffee, AND running around with free ads for them in your hands. And you don't
even notice you're a walking billboard for them! Not to mention all that juicy
data you're giving them with every CC purchase, or loyalty card swipe...

------
emdd
Well, this is disappointing. I was late to the Sunrise party, so I've barely
been able to use it. I'm not thrilled about heavily integrating Outlook into
my future work, so I guess it's off to find another solution.

~~~
harlanlewis
It's a bit unexpected, but I've found Outlook to be the best iOS email client
these days. It's bloated and has quite a few rendering bugs, but for the basic
email-as-task-list workflow pioneered by Mailbox et al I haven't come across
any current players that are better.

Kind of sad that the explosion of clever email and calendar apps a few years
ago has collapsed into a handful that aren't as good as we used to have.

~~~
Randuin
I wish there was something like it just for Calendaring though. Especially on
the desktop. For email I'm already using Polymail full time and it's a hassle
to have two email clients just for calendar.

~~~
grinich
What do you use for calendaring right now?

What do you wish it did?

~~~
brerlapn
Not the OP, but on my Android device I have an easier time of calendaring
since basically any app I choose will show all of the calendars I want
(personal, my work calendar, my manager's calendar, my team's calendar) in the
same space. For desktop, I did have Sunrise's desktop app until I noticed I
wasn't getting a proper sync of some (apparently random) appointments from
desktop to cloud/mobile, and even more so because I accepted an appointment
via Sunrise and it changed my email alias in the response from my actual
address to Sunrise's generic "invitation@email.sunrise.am" so that people then
started emailing me at the generic email rather than my actual address.

Most of my calendars are Google Apps. Outlook was my backup for the work
calendar using the Google Apps Outlook Sync app (although I've noticed a few
sync failures there, too), and just adding additional calendars to Outlook
without having all of my email there too looks like it requires some kind of
arcane magick. Thunderbird+Lightning got rotated out of the mix quickly due to
a lot of issues syncing and getting multiple calendars into it.

Probably because everyone we're communicating with is mixing between Google
Apps/webview calendar and Outlook or Office 365, I also find that I regularly
can't see an appointment that is emailed to me in my email client as it shows
up as an .ics file attachment instead.

So featurewise:

\- Most important for me: Easy addition of multiple calendars, where I can
just select which calendar a new appt should be added, as easily as I can in
my Android clients- I hate using web clients for calendaring, and they never
really show multiple calendars well. NOTE: I mean that the calendar has a
direct sync to each of the calendars online, not having one main account to
which I have to share all of my other calendars. I want one place where I can
go to view and create appointments and then have them also show up in their
respective accounts. \- Supports open standards like CalDAV/CardDAV as well as
syncs to Google or Office 365 (I can select a provider like Fastmail that uses
CalDAV for my personal calendar, but I'm stuck with Google or O365 for work)
\- Desktop client, multiple views (agenda, today, week, month) \- drag-and-
drop of items into the calendar to create a new appointment \- "Send to
calendar" from an email as an option \- Categorization/tagging on an
appointment would be nice - Outlook allows this but Google doesn't seem to
allow tagging appointments like you can email

A bit of a data dump, but a desktop client that handles multiple calendars
well is surprisingly difficult to find in Windows. I happily pay for a number
of otherwise free services (Pandora, Evernote, Pocket, Lastpass, etc.), but
there really isn't even a pay option.

~~~
tdkl
Did you try eMClient? One of the rare clients that does *DAV on Windows.

~~~
brerlapn
Thanks, I hadn't heard of it but I'll see how it works.

------
cheshire137
I hope this ends up on Our Incredible Journey:
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
colinbartlett
The best part about Sunrise was Meet, its quick little method of booking
meetings with someone: [https://sunrise.am/meet](https://sunrise.am/meet)

You'd choose some available times, it gives you a link which you send to
whoever you want to meet with, and the recipient books a time slot with a
couple of clicks. It updates in real time so if you book something new, the
slot disappears. It even has a little iOS keyboard to generate these links.

Does anyone know a similar replacement service? Nothing beats just pasting
someone a link and letting them pick one of three times you chose.

~~~
ericcholis
I've used calendly.com with some success.

~~~
colinbartlett
Nice, thanks! And I can pay for it, that's a comforting change.

------
stephenr
> On August 31st, we’ll officially shut down the app and it will stop working
> all together.

So based on this, I assume that all access to your calendar server (iCloud,
Exchange, Google Apps, etc) was managed through a centralised server(s) that
Sunrise used... for something.

Maybe the next time someone claims to be a funky new take on <boring office
task> just do a little checking. We've had desktop and mobile device clients
for mail, calendaring, contacts etc for literally decades. Why _now_ , when we
have more computing power available to us than ever before, do we need
_another_ server (operated by a company that's more likely to disappear than
not) between us and our mail/calendar/contacts?

------
tdkl
That's why paying for mail, calendar and contacts hosting is worth it in the
long run.

------
throwanem
Sunrise, sunset?

------
rosstex
This is lame, Sunrise has been awesome for me over the years.

------
kin
Super bummed by this. The integrations were priceless. Taking recs on any
alternative.

------
reiichiroh
Will Wunderlist shut down too, I wonder?

~~~
tasnent
Were they bought?

~~~
emgeee
Yes, by Microsoft

------
educar
This is getting ridiculous. We need like n founder manifesto canary before we
start using the products of all these startups. The canary should contain:

1\. Their business plan

2\. Long term vision for the company

3\. How they plan to sustain themselves in the short run (1-2 years with
no/little revenue).

4\. What they would do if they get acquisition offers.

etc.

The startup can remove the canary once they decide to change their direction.

~~~
bentlegen
Or you could consider purchasing from open source businesses. Like Nylas,
GitLab, Sentry, and others.

~~~
kennydude
Sentry is absolutely fantastic. Use it daily at work and it's really good

------
Danilka
I'd like to say THANK YOU to the Sunrise team for the incredible work you've
put into the app! You've made my calendar experience very enjoyable and I know
that you got a proper reward for that as part of the acquisition. It's great
that there are people like you, working on software these days.

~~~
Mithaldu
They don't deserve any thanks for remorselessly fucking over their users.

~~~
untog
Their users don't deserve anything as they were enjoying the use of a free
product. They've given everyone a good amount of notice to move on.

~~~
Mithaldu
Without their users they wouldn't have gotten this nice cushy acquihire.

~~~
untog
So, everybody wins. The users got a free product for a few years, Sunrise got
acquihired.

~~~
Mithaldu
"Everybody wins" would involve everyone walking away with equal or more than
they had at the time of parting, which could be done by opening the source of
the product instead of letting it die of bitrot.

~~~
untog
Sunrise walked away with an acquihire, users walked away with several years of
free service of an app they liked.

I get what you're saying here, but the Sunrise team owe their users nothing.

~~~
Mithaldu
They owed them the honesty of saying at the start:

"We never intend to make this an actual product. This is only here to get us
attention and hired. If you use this, be aware we'll kill it as soon as anyone
hires us."

~~~
untog
But who's to say that's what they intended at the start? They may well have
entirely expected to make it a successful startup, only to find themselves
unable to make the profit required to do so, so they got acquihired.

If you wanted to use an app with open source and a permanent future you should
have installed an open source app. Installing a closed source app created by a
business and depending on them open sourcing it when the business closes is
folly.

~~~
Mithaldu
I don't even use it and keep away from software like this. I just recognize
the morality involved. But hey, thanks for going the expected route. :)

~~~
untog
> I don't even use it

Ah OK, so you don't have any skin in the game, you're just here to argue on
the internet. Makes sense.

> thanks for going the expected route. :)

Which is to say that you're aware of viewpoints alternative to your own, but
you have no interest in hearing them out, you just want to shout until you
win.

If that's what you need to get through your day, congratulations on your great
victory.

~~~
Mithaldu
> Which is to say

Nope, i expected you to attempt victim blaming. But hey, jumping to more
conclusions is not unexpected either.

------
lowpro
Sunrise is the only calendar app that has ever worked for me. I tried others
like Google and the integrated outlook calendar, this is sad news.

Is it impossible to have apps that don't go either Microsoft or google? I
don't want to be locked in an ecosystem.

------
asdfaccount
Well this sucks. anyone found a good alternative?

~~~
ghostly_s
They're not being dishonest in characterizing this as more than a simple
acqui-hire; most of the functionality of Sunrise is faithfully replicated in
Outlook for iOS now (which, if you're not aware, was actually itself born out
of the acquisition of a multi-protocol email app called Accompli, and still
includes support for a variety of non-Exchange mail services). Unfortunately,
missing features include the long-press natural language "quick-add" input
box, and setting multiple reminders on events.

------
pbowyer
Drat, the best calendar app I've used on Android (except for the 46
notifications it gave for Easter Monday, and 58 for the last English Bank
Holiday).

I will miss it.

------
jakegarelick
Just saw the notification on my app this morning. Very unfortunate - I've been
using it for as long as I remember, it was my favorite calendar app.

Any alternatives?

~~~
sumitgt
Well, Outlook on Android/iOS has most of Sunrise built in.

------
PascalsMugger
I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but why do companies acquire
startups just to shut their product down within a year so often? Is this just
an acquihire? Or do big tech companies just play whack-a-mole with startups,
buying any out with interesting products just to make sure they don't one day
turn into competition?

~~~
pedalpete
For the $100+ millions Microsoft payed,they got the team, the tech and the
opportunity to move the sunrise users to use their products.

Sunrise best capabilities are likely being built into outlook, they have a
team that they know can execute and a percentage of sunrise users will move to
outlook.

I only installed sunrise last week (when I moved to Android) but I found it a
bit odd that I was using a different calendar app. I came from Windows Phone
where messaging and calendar was baked in really nicely. So far my Android
experience isn't as good but maybe outlook with sunrise will complete this
circle for me.

------
tertius
Great time for competitors to get users me thinks. I'm ready to jump ship,
where to?

------
bnt
As good as Outlook is on iOS, the calendar portion doesn't work well. It
constantly misses timezones.

------
chunkiestbacon
Just when I finally was happy with calendaring and got organised. So annoying

------
zarvox
Submitted this to Our Incredible Journey [1] which documents a long string of
services shut down post-acquisition.

[1]:
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
edwinjm
Why is this site so hard to read?

~~~
Animats
Because some of the screenshots are JPEG format. JPEG compression has trouble
with sharp edges.

