Arc Timeline - Trips & Places

I used this app for 2 years until the subscription was forced. During that time it worked mostly good. For me, the real value of this app was merely having a reliable history of my location. This app is really good at consistently logging your location and not being killed off in background like some other location trackers. Unfortunately the subscription was forced in order to get any functionality, and the entire app is locked behind a subscription page now. I can't imagine subscribing to a log of my own gps location data, so if you're a user like me who doesn't care about any of the ML and life logging features, I guess it's time to look elsewhere. I did read some confusing details that the author wrote in response to a critical review, but I still don't understand the subscription limitations. Unfortunately the app support link just goes to a marketing page that is devoid of support information. The confusion surrounding the subscription seems like it could be easily solved by putting an actual support page up.

I had to find the reason for suddenly blocking the app until payment in another negative review about the app being blocked by payment. I get it, and wouldn’t want the dev to lose money over a free utility. I was worried that my data was suddenly inaccessible, but the dev answered that I could pick a subscription and cancel during the free trial. Just seems wonky. Also, there’s no mention of the privacy policy of the Foursquare APIs that became abruptly expensive. I hope the reason they’re not mentioned is that they’re not identifying. The tool itself is pretty good. Helps identify places, maps points of interest and walking paths nicely, accurately, and without a huge battery hit. I quite enjoy it for traveling, but unfortunately I don’t do it often enough to justify monthly payment to view my past trips when I want to recommend spots to a friend. I’d probably have to renew my subscription every time I want to see the app, which likely will mean I won’t end up doing so and only subscribe on trips. I wonder if a mode to view past trips without Foursquare APIs could be viable. If you’re checking the app for the first time, like exploring places and tracking where you’ve been, I’d highly recommend subscribing to it.

I really really want to like this product. Full disclosure upfront I have contributed minimally to this project because I’m waiting for it to work correctly. I am a former moves user who appreciated how that product, well just worked. It has gotten better with each release, there are features that moves did not have, also I do believe he’s heading in the right direction. I have read the developers comments saying that version 3 fixes many of the issues, but, new to version 3 I now cannot get any data older than 30 days without paying, I understand point of view and what you use it for changes this sentence, but, $4.99 a month is a lot of money. Also, the app for many many months now has gone to sleep at random times (loosing data at inopportune times) and you have to wake it up by relaunching it, the developer count this as a use and if you use it more than once a day it directs you to the contribution screen and will not let you see your data. I do see your export option but that option only works for the current day, if I wanted to export a larger data set, that option is not available, so I can’t go elsewhere if I want my history , I’m stuck. I want to stay but I can afford that price to see my data. I really want to like this, but when I can’t get to my data it’s very frustrating. The low rating is for both keeping my data away from me and for the app not being stable enough to “set it and forget it”. I can’t give you a lower rating because I can see the amount of work that has gone into it. Cheers