Everything I own is Apple and I keep seeing the iOS-exclusive one recommended for its design. I'm suspicious that beautiful is doing a lot of work in those recommendations and that I'd be paying about $95 a year for animations. My partner is on Android and would use it maybe once a month, if at all. What does the platform exclusivity actually get you in practice?
Also think about what happens if you ever get an Android phone or a work laptop that isn't a Mac. Platform lock-in on your financial history is something you feel three years later rather than now.
Design isn't a frivolous criterion here. The failure mode of every budgeting app is that you stop opening it, so an app you enjoy opening is doing the actual job. I take that argument seriously. I just wouldn't take it over cross-platform when there's a second person involved.
Used it for a year solo and it was the best money I've spent on software, then I moved in with someone and had to leave. No complaints about the product at all, it just doesn't model a household the way the cross-platform ones do.
That's a very clear signal from someone who actually liked it, which is the version I wanted. Thank you.
Ran the trial on both. The Apple-only one was noticeably faster to open and faster to categorise, which sounds shallow until you realise that's most of what you actually do with a budgeting app.
@bobbin_bind · 8mo ago · 3 replies
The exclusivity buys native performance and much tighter interaction design, and that genuinely does affect whether you open it. But the partner detail in your post is the deciding factor, not the design. It's around $95 a year and it's a per-person subscription rather than a household one, so an Android partner is either excluded or paying separately on a device that can't run it.
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@row_level_sam · 8mo ago
Worth checking whether their once-a-month use is "I want to see it" or "I'd like to not think about it". If it's the second, a read-only shared view somewhere else is plenty.
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@brinekeeper · 8mo ago
That kills it, then. I'd been treating the partner thing as a nice-to-have rather than a constraint.
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