Filed under: Software, Productivity
Cha-Ching on reverse sale until 1.0 debuts Friday, a new feature announced each day this week
Stay tuned to Midnight Apps all this week to hear more about the great new stuff coming in Cha-Ching 1.0, but if you're on the fence with whether to purchase, you might want to act sooner than later: now that the app is all growed up, it's going on a 'reverse sale' that ends Friday. Through its time in beta, Cha-Ching has cost $20 and is still at that price - but only for today. Each day this week, Cha-Ching's price will be raised by $5 until Friday, where it will take on its full price of $40. If you ask me, a happy user of Cha-Ching since January when I attended the developer's presentation at the Apple Store during Macworld 07, Cha-Ching is a great value even at its full price, so any day you buy this week will be a bargain. But you don't have to take it from me: you can download a demo of Cha-Ching in its current 0.5.2 beta version to get your finance on and decide for yourself.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Matthew Arevalo said 10:23AM on 4-16-2007
I am confident users will really enjoy the new features. We are very excited for this big update and invite any questions/interviews from both reviewers and end users alike. You can contact us at support@chachingapp.com
Let us know what you think. This app is for you :)
Matthew Arevalo
Operations & Support
Midnight Apps
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tom said 10:29AM on 4-16-2007
Why is it is still listed for $14.95 at http://www.midnightapps.com/chaching/ ? I just paid $20 from the link above but on the actual site they have it listed for $14.95.
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tom said 10:36AM on 4-16-2007
I was notified by midnightapps and they are in the process of updating the site. The price is 20$.
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Nathan Adams said 11:07AM on 4-16-2007
I don't know about others, but I'm getting tired of this rediculous trend of hype amongst mac developers.
Now, I've shown interest in Cha-Ching before. The beta has looked nice, but in that state, wasn't really useful for me. So this isn't a complaint about the app itself.
But why is it that so many developers make fools of their potential customers with these silly "buy our app, then we'll tell you the features" deals? Sure some lucky people will be satisfied, but there'll be one batch of people who buy in to the hype only to find that the secret features don't benefit them at all. Then there's the sensible people who make wise purchasing decisions (remember, this is a finace managing app!!) based on what suits there needs, and they get penalised for doing that.
It just seems cheap and shows little respect.
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bryan webster said 11:24AM on 4-16-2007
The annoying thing is i was about to trial and buy this tonight and now it has gone up $5 and will keep going up the longer I trial it.
from what i remember last time i trialled it the software kept crashing so i wanted to give it a good run out to make sure it had improved before laying down any hard cash. and i am being punished for it!
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Elm said 3:25PM on 4-16-2007
i would use it .. but - any chances for a german localization ??
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nick said 11:31AM on 4-16-2007
cha-ching is decent software, but still in beta stage. it would be interesting to see the features they come up with. one thing they have to learn fast or they'll fail, their customer service sucks.
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Hannes said 11:36AM on 4-16-2007
This trick, with charging money for a beta version of an application, is a rather foul technique if you ask me, but still it's a really effective way of achieving your goal: publicity. Apps really get known by people this way, bot if they love it or hate it.
I'm really tired of both this trend in specific, but also the entire trend of inflating the popularity of an application before it's released. In fact, most of the popularity seems to have it's origin not in the Applications usefulness or it's promised features, but in the glossyness of the interface, the design of it's icon, or the number of blue source fields used in it. (Often it seems to have very much to with if the developers are friend with a certain person, who I'm not going to refer to by name here...)
What almost surprises me most, is how the popularity of all those applications is stirred up by various high quality blogs as TUAW... they shouldn't be fooled that easy.
(If it's unclear: notice that this post isn't specifically targeted at Cha-Ching, but the kind of marketing used. Also note that i think TUAW is a great blog in many aspects. Also note that I'm 17 years old, and that English isn't my primary language, so the post might contain several linguistic shortcomings...)
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ME said 11:38AM on 4-16-2007
http://www.midnightapps.com/chaching/purchase.htm
Still $14.95 follow the link.
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rjbs said 5:05PM on 4-16-2007
Agreed, this is just silly and, frankly, rude. Worse, the page is one giant Flash object with no details about the program. The only links I can find on Google to pages about the application end up as 403... so, if you don't know much about the app to begin with, you can't find out.
I guess I'll keep using a calculator. At least I know what it offers by looking at the buttons.
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Jason said 11:44AM on 4-16-2007
Isn't it odd that there's no description, no screenshots, no list of features, nothing at all on the website? It's just a low-to-no info splash page. WTF? Who the heck buys on blind faith? And what company would encourage it's potential customers to buy with no data?
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Dik said 11:59AM on 4-16-2007
I'd like to take a look at the competition.
Honestly, dollar for dollar, iBank (IGG Software) is the obvious Quiken-killer here. (I know most of you are tired of that phrase...but it's true).
As pretty and simple as Cha-Ching is...it's just not enough, EVEN for the $20 price tag. Most of what you're paying for, is time spent on eye-candy. Now, I'm not against an app looking good, but for my money, I want functionality, not glitz. I know not everyone needs much more than balancing a check book, but for that, there are even free apps that can do that.
I've been using iBank for a long time, and it's gonna take a lot more than what Cha-Ching has to offer, to get me to migrate. And even as the new features are announced over the next few days, I feel that my statement will hold true.
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jtcalhoun said 12:25PM on 4-16-2007
#9: "And what company would encourage it's potential customers to buy with no data?"
Answer: A company poised to take your money and run. Once they've got your $14.95, er... $40.00, be prepared to never hear from them again.
MidnightApps has absolutely deplorable customer service. Support emails are not answered timely, if at all. Plus, it seems that they delete support forum posts with legitimate questions that they don't like.
Even now the support forum (1) is littered with users' complaints that not only had they paid their money and not received registration information, but also that their repeated emails to the Cha-Ching support "staff" have gone ignored. [Note: I suspect that it is useless to point this out as I'm sure these posts will be mysteriously deleted before anyone else can see them.]
TUAW has suspiciously and routinely heralded seemingly every .01 increase to this BETA software as a "Quicken killer," even while its users have pointed to other feature-filled and more stable alternatives. One wonders what TUAW, and/or its individual bloggers, has to gain from its unwavering support.
(1) http://midnightapps.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=6&p=1
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Davide said 12:31PM on 4-16-2007
I'm tired too of those marketing techniques. I'm a Budget long time user: http://www.snowmintcs.com/products/budgetmac and I think that Cha-Ching is at the moment overrated, it's really gourgeous with a lot of nice eye-candy but to call it a "Quicken killer" it's too much.
I think that TUAW shold give a bit more attention to the competitors because there are a lot of powerful and not too expensive applications that outperforms Cha-Ching. Just my 2 cents.
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Max Naylor said 12:36PM on 4-16-2007
He he. They spelt ‘Wednesday’ wrong on their website.
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Doodles said 12:45PM on 4-16-2007
I'm sure midnightapps have good intentions to sell a good product. This is a case, however, of the whole "2.0" phenomenon gone bad. They tried too much to hype it up that they've ignored what really matters. Customers want to see more details and less gimmicks. I think it's time to get back to the basics.
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Dave Chartier said 12:59PM on 4-16-2007
#11: We don't get anything out of supporting one app or another. As a matter of fact, it's against a strict Weblogs, Inc. policy to even accept free/complementary licenses for software, whether it's a $15 beta app or $2500 worth of Adobe products.
We're a blog. Each of our bloggers gets to write about what they like, and the other bloggers are free and actually encouraged to pen posts that disagree, put things in context, offer alternatives, etc. It just so happens that I hate Quicken with an absolute passion, and I found Cha-Ching during its early stages and I like where the company is taking the app. That's it. There's nothing extra in it for TUAW as a blog or me personally. In fact, I don't even think we or I have even been quoted on their site with so much as a one-liner.
There's no conspiracy going on here. Just good ol' fashioned blogging (if blogging can even be called 'old' or even 'fashioned.')
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NutMac said 1:14PM on 4-16-2007
Quicken 2007 is easily the ugliest piece of software residing on my hard disk. After trying out Cha-Ching and other personal finance software, I will continue using Quicken. While other software addresses the basic needs, I am just too used to Quicken's wider range of features, such as tighter import for my financial institutions (e.g., American Express, E*TRADE, Vanguard). I am hoping Intuit is listening and bring Universal Binary + new UI to Mac users.
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Nony said 1:15PM on 4-16-2007
Does anyone know if the people who ponied up money for Cha-Ching during its beta status will have to do so again to enjoy version 1.0?
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Mike said 1:33PM on 4-16-2007
I tried cha-ching back in the very early beta stages. I wasn't terribly impressed but I recognized that it was an incredibly early beta.
Now I'd like to see what features it has but the web site has absolutely NOTHING available on it for information other than "it's for sale". I don't have the time to download a demo, check out what's changed and what hasn't, not to mention that I'm not even close to my Mac right now. It's disappointing to see a product potentially as good as cha-ching fall so short on the basics of marketing.
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