That was confusing. When I saw the app and that it offers in-app purchases, I thought something minimal would be possible without a purchase. But after downloading and launching it, I see the prompt to buy the subscription or the one time purchase, and nothing more. The app description on the store doesn’t make this — that a purchase must be made to use it — clear either.
Edit: An observation I’ve had is that third party camera apps on iOS have a niche audience because they cannot be the default app. If you swipe left on the Lock Screen or tap on the camera icon on the Lock Screen, only Apple’s stock camera will open. I hope Apple adds more app types to have defaults set to third party apps. I know Apple cares about camera launch time and how quickly photos can be taken. There could be a minimum performance threshold set for that. It’s high time!
Halide author here. Previously, you would pay-once at the time of download, so this isn't much different than what we had before.
That said, we wish the App Store offered a better solution than what we had to settle with; we'd much rather people know up-front the business model than download the app, be surprised, and possibly leave a negative review.
As far as replacing the first party camera, it's by far our top user request. Some users have come up with interesting hacks via shortcuts or the back-tap gesture, but we'd much rather the user be able to customize it similar to how iOS now lets you set a different default browser. Hopefully someday!
Random Halide user here. (I haven't upgraded the app because I'd rather any bugs be ironed out first.)
I think there should be more details on what customers get with either Pay-Once (which all existing purchasers get), and/or the Membership.
If I were a new user, I would think that Pay-Once means that I'm set for life(time of the product) (seeing as how it's equivalent to slightly under 3 years of membership payments), but the comments here sound like there's a basic feature set that new users would have to pay ~$30 for at first, and newer features would be restricted to people who commit additional regular annual payments.
I hate apps that you download and the first thing you have to do is to pay.
It is a dark pattern as far as I am concerned.
Peple have invest a little more In an when they dowloaded it to their phones so it might possibly get a better conversion rate.
What is even more annoying in this pattern is that you have to fill out all sorts of data and configuration and once yo are done with all that and the app owner has collected all that nice data, you are prompted to pay and no other action is possible.
Further it hides the true cost of the app, unless you go to the app page on the app store scroll al the way down the page and click on the little arrow to see what the in app prices are.
I strongly prefer pricing up front.
It is easy to understand, honest, and clear.
So, genuine question-- why did Apple allow Mk II into the App Store if the first screen is a "you must make a purchase", which is exactly what they rejected Hey for? Is there a trial of some sort to satisfy the requirement that your app has to "work" on download (edit: or are Apple IAP paywalls ok and I am just misunderstanding the App Store rules, which is very easy to do...)?
The problem with Hey is that they were directing you to their website, circumventing apple's payment mechanisms. If you're using their stuff and giving them their cut you're gucci.
Now, he does follow with (quoting the TechCrunch article):
> This, he says, is why Apple requires in-app purchases to offer the same purchasing functionality as they would have elsewhere.
So, even though I, as a user, may consider the app to "not work" if it just asks me for a purchase immediately, Apple appears to consider an IAP prompt to be ok.
Anyways, I am an Halide v1 user so I have access to Mk II and love the app, but I'm just curious about how Apple makes these decisions.
He was certainly being disingenuous about that. Whether or not an app requires a payment to do anything is entirely orthogonal to its method of accepting the payment. Hey was rejected because they didn't use in-app purchases, no question about it.
IAP increases their valuation because it is categorized as recurrent revenue? Is this some kind of accounting hack? Or is it just that they get a bigger percentage of IAP?
Just so you know, I tried to open the app for 3 minutes or so before realizing I'm getting nowhere without paying. At that point I was so pissed off I uninstalled the app thinking to myself: scam attempt.
Make it clear you have to pay to even launch your app. I don't believe this dark pattern is the way forward. It's just dirty.
> That said, we wish the App Store offered a better solution than what we had to settle with; we'd much rather people know up-front the business model than download the app, be surprised, and possibly leave a negative review.
GP here. I was indeed surprised after downloading the app because the business model was not known (I didn't leave any reviews though). I haven't purchased the previous version and have no experience with the app.
My issue is not about your business model in that comment, but with the App Store description not saying that the application is usable only by an in-app purchase. I wouldn't even have downloaded it if that were clear. You should update the description to make it clear that the app is completely useless without buying an in-app purchase.
I agree with other posters - the issue isn't that Apple doesn't better support your business model, it's that you aren't honest about it in the app description.
Also, even in the app you don't have a clear statement saying that you must purchase a subscription to use it. I spent 5 minutes thinking I was missing an "X" in the top corner or some kind of "dismiss" action that would let me use basic functionality before buying.
I'm so tired of everything becoming a subscription. The worst part is, in-app purchases don't translate to family accounts, so we're back to the Bad Old Days of buying apps multiple times for multiple devices. And that's even worse when it's a subscription.
It’s weird because apple recently added IAP family sharing but I’ve yet to see an app add support for it (I can see why though, it’s easy to get people to double dip when they’re in a family and can’t share it)
I had the same problem. An automatic upgrade rendered my previously functional app unusable. After tapping around for a minute in frustration to try to find some way to dismiss the new subscription screen I deleted the app.
I really do sympathize with the plight of indie developers on the app store but this is too much.
This was fixed in the 2.0.1 update. It came out pretty quick after the initial release, but looks like you hit the unlucky window of having 2.0? If you had Halide previously and download it again it will upgrade you for free.
Good on the Lux team for making it optional, but this is yet another app that wouldn’t have needed to introduce a subscription model if Apple would just relent on its unbending services push and add a mechanism for paid upgrades to the App Store.
Upgrades should already be possible, using bundles and the Complete My Bundle functionality. It's not terribly user-friendly perhaps, but should (in theory) work.
Halide dev here. We _might_ write more about our upgrade strategy in the future, but we did explore app bundles. There were a number of concerns. For example, many blog posts out there point to the old version of our app in the App Store, and App Store Search is non-deterministic, so it's way less confusing to replace the existing SKU than have folks buy the wrong version.
How so? The only way in which the App Store doesn't support paid upgrades is that you can't offer a discount for existing users, and the new version needs to be a separate app. But Halide 2 isn't any cheaper for existing customers anyway (there's just a launch discount).
I wonder if Apple is pushing this because subscription models potentially provide more long term value? Apple apps tend to need regular updates to stay valid/relevant over long periods of time and early on Apple had a lot of "abandoned" apps in the app store - subscriptions 1) keep the app developer funded/engaged 2) keep the user hooked / showing explicit value or bailing.
Fwiw, I agree, I am getting tired of the pervasiveness of subscription models, but I assume they are making good sense business wise.
Great app, but an FYI for previous purchasers - you're supposed to be able to hit "Restore purchase" and get access to the new version without doing the new in-app purchase. It's currently bugged and will lock you out of the app, so hold off on updating.
Sorry about the v1 upgrade experience. Sadly, it's hard to predict how long it takes the App Store CDN to propagate. A few years ago we had a launch that took 11 hours(!) before people started seeing it. Luckily we did not hit that snag this time, so hopefully you'll see it in the next few hours.
The free upgrade worked for me, but trying to sort out how to actually go back and pay (app + new stuff looked good, no reason not to pay for it) and I have to say, figuring out how to do that (and how to get back to the settings in general) was more than $10 worth of frustration.
By my calculations, you now owe me $2.71828 and I was trying to give you money!
As a v1 user, I’m confused about the payment options. From reading the blog post, it seems a new user could choose to either pay once for lifetime access, or pay yearly. However, since I’ve been given the upgrade and 1 year of membership for free, I don’t see the lifetime option. Presumably the discounted lifetime price will no longer be available by the time my 1 year runs out. How can I lock in the discounted price now?
I wish trials didn't require me signing up for a subscription. I have a bad habit of doing a trial and then life happens and suddenly I'm charged for something I forgot to cancel and can't get a refund. I might give this a go for a trial but I'm always so hesitant.
Subscriptions of this sort are done that way on purpose, because lots of people forget to cancel. And if you have to call a human to do the cancellation, well, that's the beauty of doing an ad campaign. Most of the people who need to cancel will try to do it at the last minute and find out that the phone lines are tied up with other people who signed up on the same couple of days they did.
The App Store definitely has its capital-I Issues, but the way it handles subscriptions really isn't one of them -- you can cancel online with no hassle, and you're sent an email reminder before you're charged or your subscription renews. (This is at least true with annual subscriptions; I don't know about monthly offhand.) And you can always check what you're subscribed to, when things will renew, and for how much.
FYI you can go into the subscription settings on the app store right after starting the trial and cancel it. It will still run for the same duration and it‘s easy to resubscribe again when the trial runs out.
Sorry. You should have gotten the upgrade for free. There was a bug checking the receipt for who qualifies for the free upgrade, due to differences between the App Store's sandbox and production receipts.
We rushed out a fix as quickly as possible, and this should now be fixed. If you contact support, we'll make things right.
But I'm also confused about the pricing model. What is the benefit of buying the $9.99 subscription if the $29.99 purchase covers everything (or does it?), and you keep the app for more than 3 years?
You bought it while its price was temporarily inflated before the launch of Mk II. This was a move to push users to wait. You should probably ask for a refund then get it again
I love Halide on my iPhone. Having a great UI for your camera makes such a big difference. My big camera still takes better images, though. I wish it were possible to use a great interface like Halide but acquire the image from another device. There should be a protocol or something.
I bought Halide when it first came out. As a photography enthusiast, having trying out the app for a bit, I came to the conclusion that phone photography should be kept as simple as possible. While having advance options is great, the reason I carry a phone and not a camera on that certain occasion is because of its simplicity. I don't want to mess with aperture, exposure or focusing, etc. while on the go. If I wanted to do that I would bring my camera. So, yet I think there will be people who's excited for this kind of app, I see it has no use for me personally. It's a nice app though, and no doubt there will be people enjoying it, but the default iOS app does a good job for what I want.
The only reason I like Halide is because I loathe Apple's noise reduction in their photo processing. Shooting RAW is the only way to avoid it.
Every other aspect of computational photography is amazing, but when shooting photos I often intend to print, the photos just look so much nicer without noise reduction in my opinion. Everything close up becomes a smudgy mess.
Instant RAW is a fascinating feature. If you normally shoot RAW, they'll be a bit "flat" since no post-processing is done, but Halide will post-process them to make them similar to jpg output (while retaining the editing flexibility that RAW gives).
What I can't figure out...are the Instant RAW settings baked into the file as it is captured? Basically, if I open up a Halide RAW in Lightroom or DXO, will they be able to see the edits?
Yup. We save DNGs, but aside from attaching your geo tag (if you have it enabled), we don't touch the DNG at all.
DNGs support XMP, which is an XML based way of describing edits. However, we're doing post processing that can't really be described in XMP.
We're launching Instant RAW as an MVP to see how people use it, so to that end we've only focused on "I want amazing details from RAW but I have no idea how to use Lightroom. Just let me share it on Instagram." For now.
Even someone like me, a VFX professional who does a lot of RAW processing, dealing with RAW is sometimes such a chore. There are plenty of times where I want to use Halide and I want to shoot RAW but I also want to easily share a photo (without going through the laborious processing thing). So I'm really looking forward to that.
I'm curious in what way you believe your processing pipeline for "getting to jpg" (RAW -> Instant Raw Processing -> JPEG) is superior to Apple's (capture -> Apple's Processing -> JPEG). Does it just come down to different aesthetic preferences and one-frame-per-image? Or is there something else to it?
I'm a little confused as to the use case here. If I want to post a photo on the internet without knowledge of how to perform color processing, instant RAW is basically an alternative to however Apple would normally process images in their own camera app right?
Halide developer here. Since we're in the middle of a launch, I don't have time to dig super detailed into that article you posted, but from a quick skim it doesn't appear to be particularly well-researched.
All the goodness of the first party camera's deep fusion, etc, is exposed to third-party developers. So if you're using a third party app (that knows what they're doing) then at worst you get the same results as the first party camera.
Here are some things off the top of my head that you don't get with the first party camera, excluding RAW:
Manual focus, Control over ISO vs duration, Manual white balance, Explicit control over which lens is being used (the first party camera switches without telling you), tell what parts are clipping or hitting your noise floor (histogram, waveform, and zebras), focus loupe and focus peaking that tell you exactly what is in focus (rather than tapping and hoping for the best) a reviewer lets you view the component images that make up the image asset in your library (e.g. depth data on portrait photos)…
With MKII, we're now investing in education to help beginning photographers become better.
That said, writing this out are just the checkboxes on a spreadsheet of features. It's harder to quantify the value of design. While we think the first party camera is great, it's also tasked with doing many, many things, from videos to panoramas.
Halide is designed to only shoot photos. Not even video, just photos. We're aiming to be the absolute best tool to do that one thing.
MkI was the absolute best tool to do that one thing. Respectfully, MkII compromises on manual control to an unacceptable degree for my usage and an investment in education for beginners along with dumbing down the UI with explicit text labels (the font is indeed nice, but why do things with clean and clear iconography need these additional labels?) is not what I'd consider part of "that one thing". Of course, these issues could be fixed in the future, at which point I'd gladly eat my words.
I love Halide but I do wish it could shoot quick videos so I'd stop accidentally opening it and then saying "wait, wrong camera app." As-is I keep Halide on my home screen for pictures, and get to Camera through control center for video. But it's pretty frequent that I forget and tap on Halide thinking I'm going to record a quick video.
I'm not even talking about professional quality video, just "I want to record 5 seconds of my cat being cute." But I guess the reservations are partly that if you added basic video capability, people would expect it to be amazing in the same sorts of ways that it is for stills?
Halide's UI for things like setting exposure is faster for people who want to learn how to use it, versus Apple's stock camera being made for mass markets. And you can set more things, like shutter speed, instead of having it all be automatic.
You also get features like a live histogram and focus peaking that can help when shooting even if you aren't going to edit it afterward.
Can't try the new version yet because of an update bug, but I like the old version a lot.
That article waves away the manual focus, but for me it’s been very useful to manually focus when shooting through some near obstruction (ex: a fence, or low hanging leaves). There are also still situations where HDR falls a bit short and manual exposure results in a better picture (I have an Xs, so it might be better now).
It gives full manual control, live histograms, and a nice one-handed interface. I'm not sure what you get for free, and obviously whether the upgrade is worth it is up to you, but I bought the full unlock when it first came out and haven't regretted it.
"Full manual control" is somewhat crippled in Mk II (it switches back to Auto every time I switch back cameras) as well as removing the ability to pin ISO down when making use of tap autoexposure (there is no option but to have both exposure length and ISO adjusted now). Manually adjusting exposure length also sometimes leads to it getting "stuck" on long values like 1/2 or 1/1 far longer than Mk I ever did. I get that they think their new Auto mode is better, but in general this was a bug-infested and unwelcome surprise update for my usage of the app (getting maximum quality raw images out of my phone mounted to a small tripod.) None of this would be an issue if I had any way of opting out of this generous "upgrade" I couldn't refuse. UI fit and finish has also degraded significantly from my subjective POV and the large potential scope of future feature updates make me pessimistically assume that the app will continue to fail to be particularly well tested. If the devs are still listening I'd gladly pay (again) just to have the MkI app back, if money is what they want.
Browsing the spec sheet, IF it floats your boat, this feels a useful option:
"Halide’s Depth mode lets you capture Portrait mode shots of pets and people — even if Apple’s Camera app can’t. "
That feels it makes it more similar to my Samsung where I can choose what to "Live focus" on and create fake depth (although I feel Apple's people-only system allows them to recognize and transition borders better)
The only real advantage to shooting raw on your phone, is that all the hdr processing tends to flatten out the global contrast between dark and light regions. If you shoot raw, you can get a more natural photo with less processing.
Even shooting raw with this app, I just use the auto exposure and auto focus.
To be fair, Halide is pretty great. I found it through HN. I'm surprised Apple didn't buy them yet, since they don't seem to be at risk of being Sherlocked.
I think Halide is a great name for this app’s target audience: photo nerds.
(I know of which I speak. I carry around a Fuji X100F when I walk the dog.)
This app ain’t no Snapchat clone so you can give yourself cat eyes and freakishly smooth skin. It trying to suck as much data and control as possible out of the iPhone’s camera system. And for the people who are into that, they get the name.
Speaking for myself as a photo nerd, the name annoys me because the app has nothing to do with silver halide. And for my own bona fides, I haul a large format camera out into the world on a regular basis and develop the film in my bathroom.
Wow, a free update... much appreciated. I figured that with a new number, it'd be an upgrade. And a loupe! Thanks so much! That was my number one request (that I never made).
I was never a fan of the first version of this app, despite being a mobile app developer and a photography nerd. I paid for and tried the initial version (Mark I?) a year or two ago, and, aside from a few manual settings and RAW capture it didn't do a whole lot beyond what the stock photo app did, and Halide's UI was a bit worse to boot. But whatever.
Now I re-download Halide (the version I paid for a year or two ago) to see what this new version is all about and I'm presented with a bewildering splash screen, prompting me to subscribe (for what now?) and I do everything I can to not subscribe, and then I'm taken to the permissions screen, and it's asking for camera permissions (totally reasonable), photo library access (ok, but let's hold on for a sec), and location access (no thank you), and I can't get anywhere in the app that I paid for, without granting all three permissions.
Having location access a hard requirement for a photo app is just ridiculous. What product owner made this decision? IMO it's completely out of touch and user hostile.
Edit: turns out the hard constraint was access to the photo library. Which, how was I to know that? The UI seemed to indicate that I couldn't proceed until all the boxes were checked.
Look, I get that this is a specialized app and I understand the complexity and nuance related to app permissions. Which means the app developer has to be super clear about what the requirements are from the start.
Just tested. It let me photograph with the location permission disabled just fine. Maybe you are hitting a bug.
I agree about the subscription annoyance. It tells me I have “Free updates until Oct 23 2021” but still bombarded me with “subscribe” on launch! I find this predatory.
It could be that photo library access was the hard constraint. I wasn't going to allow that until I got to play around with the app. I'll try again and re-assess.
Yes, it’s library access. Just tested. You can, however, on iOS 14, grant it selective access with no selection, which will basically give it a write-only access.
While I disagree with the opinion of the application, and think the response to the gating/requirements for use is unfair, there is good feedback for the developers of Halide, and app developers in general to chew on in this comment.
For an app that wants to save photos for the user, how do you do this permissions gating without irritating the cursory view by skeptical user?
For an app that wants to make sure you don't lose any metadata/exif (including location) how can you do that without raising eyebrows for location permissions.
How can you communicate the value prop to convert a subscription? I think the app does a great job for existing users in providing a 1yr automatic subscription (would have thought parent comment would get this) but I also am confused, and will be confused, when that time is up I think.
--
Halide is a incredible application. One of my favorites. I don't use it as much as I could benefit from it because of the problem of it not having the same immediate access as the native camera app does, but also it does not include Live Photo capture which for me and moments with friends and family is essential. That said, it's the best built app I have on my phone, the best design, provides path to incredible photography results, and I will continue to pay for it.
Developer here. The only time we show you the permission screen is if the two critical permissions, Photo Library and Camera, are not granted. Location is completely optional, but allows you to geo tag photos. If you find that isn't the case, that's absolutely a bug, and we'll look into what's going on.
Sorry, I made an assumption (that all three permissions were necessary) after granting camera permissions but not photo library or location permissions. The UI was not clear about what was actually required, and the "Continue" button was enabled but didn't get me anywhere.
Look, it's 2020 and tech is getting so human-hostile in so many different ways. I think it behooves us to make sure there's always a way our software can be used no matter how restrictive our users are with permissions.
Edit: An observation I’ve had is that third party camera apps on iOS have a niche audience because they cannot be the default app. If you swipe left on the Lock Screen or tap on the camera icon on the Lock Screen, only Apple’s stock camera will open. I hope Apple adds more app types to have defaults set to third party apps. I know Apple cares about camera launch time and how quickly photos can be taken. There could be a minimum performance threshold set for that. It’s high time!