Award-winning iPhone camera app Halide was today updated for iPhone 15 Pro models, and features a set of in-app triggers that work with the devices' new Action button.
With the Halide 2.13 app open on an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, the Action button can be pressed to trigger manual focus, auto/manual exposure, RAW capture, 12/48-megapixel capture, cycle through lenses, take a picture, and more.
To achieve the feat, Halide developers built a custom Shortcut that when selected in iOS Settings ➝ Action Button, automatically triggers a pre-set option in the app's dedicated new Action button menu when the app is active.
During setup, Halide's Action button menu explains to users how to set up custom triggers. Alternatively, users can set the Action button to enable a single-click "Open Halide" shortcut or open a Shortcut Menu with a list of options.
In addition, Halide includes new optimizations for capturing with 5× telephoto on iPhone 15 Pro Max, taking advantage of zero shutter lag for iPhone 15 Pro, and other enhancements.
Halide 2.13 is a free update for existing users. There's a free one-week trial of the app, after which users can choose an annual $11.99 subscription or a $59.99 one-time purchase. The Halide developers have also published their annual deep dive into the new camera enhancements in Apple's latest iPhone 15 series, which can be read on the Halide website.
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Halide looks great, but these App Store pricing structures scare me off. I won't rent a camera app, but I'm afraid the one-time-purchase will only apply to Halide Mark II, and there's no guarantee when Halide Mark XIV will come out and leave Mark II to wither without updates. I don't want a free lunch, but I don't want to be screwed, either. At $60 it becomes a gamble, and right now $12/month is too steep for casual use.
Hey, I make Halide. Well, I wrote the article and I design it, Ben codes it. We're working hard on Mark 3, and that is definitely included in the price. We might have ongoing cost-services at some point, and those would not be in the subscription. Things like Skylight, where we use weather forecast reports to forecast sunset quality for instance.
It's also $12 a year, not per month. I hope that helps a bit :)
I apologize for getting the pricing wrong, I've edited my original post. I appreciate your clarification of the pricing. I remember the original -> Mark II transition, which is to be honest what has kept me away from paying anything for your app. Your comment that Mark III at least will be included is reassuring.
App developers have to be very very careful with pricing models. For example, I no longer use 1Password—an app which I loved—due to their transition to subscription pricing (and forced cloud storage). (I'd spent hundreds of dollars on 1Password.) Same with Adobe, although Adobe has a heavyweight suite of apps targeted at professionals who make money off of their product. (I'd spent thousands of dollars on Adobe products.)
As others have pointed out, Halide seems to be following a similar pro model, possibly at the same cost of alienating more casual users. As a hobby photographer, I'll never make $60 off of my photos to cover the cost of the app, so it's definitely a discretionary / only-for-fun purchase.
I appreciate the frank feedback! It's frustrating, though, because it seems that whatever we do, we can't do anything right.
We have to keep developing Halide, as without updates it will stop working. Cameras change annually and the APIs are very in flux, often changing significantly even within major iOS releases. When we were set to release our big v2.0 a few years ago, we had a choice: either give it away for free, and risk not getting enough cash so we can keep working on the app, or figure out a way to add upgrade pricing.
What we set out to do was to grandfather in every single existing user, even those who had bought Halide years before and upgrade them for free. In addition to that, we decided to add upgrades for a year — which we honored or almost 2 years — and even then keep the app working with all those features for existing users. So you never have to pay again, the app is always yours.
Now, if you're new to Halide, you can do one of two things: you can buy an annual subscription for about a dollar per month, or you can buy it outright for $60. We offer the second option because some people will never buy subscription software, but realistically, we need to keep working on this app indefinitely. We can either keep releasing new versions with a paid upgrade, which means we'd have to abandon the old app and it would stop working for all its user fairly quickly, or we can use subscriptions. The choice was fairly easy for us - but I still read people saying online that it's not fair that they have to pay again.
I'm not sure if we communicated this poorly or if it's a bad deal, but we're really doing our best!
Halide looks great, but these App Store pricing structures scare me off. I won't rent a camera app, but I'm afraid the one-time-purchase will only apply to Halide Mark II, and there's no guarantee when Halide Mark XIV will come out and leave Mark II to wither without updates. I don't want a free lunch, but I don't want to be screwed, either. At $60 it becomes a gamble[S], and right now $12/month is too steep for casual use[/S].
Edit: Sorry! I was mistaken, I misread the price in the App Store: As Cocoi points out, it's $12/year; it's $3/month. (I blame my eyes and Apple's terrible In-App Pricing formatting on the iPhone.) Cocoi assures us that Mark III, at least, barring new costly services, will be included in the $60 one-time-price. I think the $3 is cheap enough as a one-off to get all the features to try out for a month before dropping $60.
Halide app maybe good but not their business model. I was one of the early buyers of the app when it was released as one-time purchase and then they changed to a subscription model for all. And now they charge $59.99 for one-time purchase. What's the guarantee that they won't charge again for the third-time one-time purchase?
If you were an early buyer, we actually set you up with a free upgrade to V2, along with 18 months of updates. And you still get to use and enjoy every feature of that, forever — with just a single purchase or subscription required for the newest features. If you feel like that's unfair, I'd love to chat — we really try to do the best by our users.
Halide looks great, but these App Store pricing structures scare me off. I won't rent a camera app, but I'm afraid the one-time-purchase will only apply to Halide Mark II, and there's no guarantee when Halide Mark XIV will come out and leave Mark II to wither without updates. I don't want a free lunch, but I don't want to be screwed, either. At $60 it becomes a gamble, and right now $12/month is too steep for casual use.
Agreed on the pricing, but having used Halide for 1 month, I can see why it is priced that way.
I don't think the app will be fully appreciated by casual photographers. So it is priced for prosumer and pro photographers (who do not always carry larger cameras but want more out of iPhone).
