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Deliveries is the best of what an app should be: It does one thing (monitor status of deliveries), does it well (supporting an impossibly long list of couriers and tracking from websites like Apple and Amazon), and puts that information right up front where you want it – on your iPhone or Mac.
A little history
Deliveries began way back in the stone age when Mac came with a thing called Dashboard, and there were micro-apps for it called Widgets. It was so crucial to the Mac experience back then that there was a dedicated Dashboard key on Mac keyboards.
That didn’t last very long, and it was eventually discontinued (although the idea is coming back in iOS14). Deliveries had an iOS app that synced over their own cloud, called Junecloud.
After that, a native Mac app came into being, and used iCloud sync to keep packages in sync between phone and Mac. And it cost $4.99 to buy the app on each, Mac and iOS.
What’s the big news? Subscriptions
Now, in version 9 of the Mac and iOS app, there’s a change: Deliveries is moving to a subscription model, that will cost less than the total of buying both the Mac and iOS versions.
OH NO. Subscriptions. I’m right there with you on subscription fatigue. Except, I’ve been using this app in one form or another since at least 2012, and I want to say even since 2010. I’m just not sure.
The point is, it and a password manager are the two apps I can’t live without. It’s the one app I always keep open on my Mac. And if the developer needs 10 dollars from me to keep going? Yes. I’ve mooched off of him for free for years. Pay the man.
And you know what? Even if I wasn’t going to sign up for his subscription offering, he would still let me keep using it. Here’s what you get if you don’t pay up and have not previously bought the apps.
- View and search past deliveries
- Sync with iCloud
You may notice there’s something very important missing here. You’re right: the ability to add new packages. That takes a subscription.
If you already bought the apps, or you buy them right now, you’ll get a complimentary subscription, anywhere from 3 months to 18 months, based on your purchase date, to enjoy all the features of the app before you need to even consider paying for a subscription.
If you previously bought the apps, you get a different list of capabilities:
- add new deliveries
- search past deliveries
- sync with iCloud
- Sync with Junecloud: forward emails to add shipments and edit your deliveries in any web browser – for up to 18 months
- New features added in the future – for up to 18 months
Conclusion
Making the transition from a single time purchase to a subscription model is not easy. Developers risk annoying their customers. Here, it’s clear to me that Junecloud is making every effort to be generous to previous owners of the app, generous to new-comers, and make this as pain-free as possible, at an affordable price. I can’t say exactly how much, because Junecloud is still working out the details – but I’m telling you now, because I don’t want to live without this app, and you shouldn’t either.
