Arc Timeline - Trips & Places 12+

Solid app, sudden paywall could be explained better

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.

Was great until the subscription

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.

Developer Response ,

Hi! The free tier was no longer economically viable, due to new excessive expenses. So all users of the app must now have a subscription (or Lifetime purchase).

The pricing of the six monthly, yearly, and Lifetime options are very economical when considered over years of use. However if you're not willing to pay for this kind of functionality, yes, you will need to look elsewhere.

Excellent app to track your whereabouts

Arc is the best app to track where you are. I'm simply the kind of person who likes knowing where I am on a specific date and time, and I like correlating with other sources like my photos. Arc is doing a wonderful job recording my location. For frequently visited locations like workplace, Arc can basically auto-confirm the place, whereas for new places I find it worthwhile to sit down for 10 minutes every day just to record them in the app.

That said the UI sluggishness of the app has been ongoing for quite a while, and that's a reason for taking away a star. Of course I understand that the app is dealing with many gigabytes of data from years of recorded activity, but the iPhone is a powerful smartphone. There shouldn't be sluggishness on the UI.

Developer Response ,

Hi! Thanks again for you review!

For the sluggishness, that shouldn't be happening. The latest version is one of the fastest ever, and should be very responsive. Please post a description of the problem on the support forum (https://support.bigpaua.com) so we can work through the details and find out what's going wrong.

Thanks again!
Matt