Arc App - Location & activity Reviews

Not quite there

mresskay

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

“Control your data”

randybruder

The app touts “Control your data.” Except that’s a lie—the developer changed the app to lock any data older than 30 days behind a paywall, so really they’re the one that controls your data, not you. If you want the data back, you’ll have to pay. Not only that, but there’s no option to export all of your data out of the app, so you’re held hostage to a subscription just to be sold the lie your in “control of your data.” Edit: The restriction hasn’t “existed for the past year” as the developer claims, I was able to view data more than a month old as recently as a few months ago. The restriction was added recently. The developer also says there are “multiple export options” but they clearly indicate they are only for data moving forward, not your past data held hostage (on your own device) by the developer. Any past data you’ve accumulated is held hostage on your own device. The SQLite databases stored on your phone are inaccessible to the user. The “web exporter” mentioned by the developer is no where in the app. Edit2: I used the app as recently as August 1st and was able to view data more than a month old. I visited the Arc app website, there is zero mention of a web exporter. I am not happy to have to repeatedly reply to antagonistic developer replies attempting to frame me as the liar in the conversation. Editing my review doesn't "antagonise and create animosity", it *warns* other potential users.

The best location app ever!

Lugnote

I used to use Moves until Facebook bought it and killed it. I went looking for a replacement and found Arc which is better in every possible way. I quite happily support this app every month. If you like to geek-out about all the places you go, this is the app for you! Seriously though, it’s nice to be able to look back and find places you’ve been to when the name escapes you. I’ve also used it when I was wondering how long I had been waiting at my current location. Arc has a lot of different uses.

Moves Replacement

infdaze

This is the closest I’ve seen to a replacement to the Moves App, which was shut down by Facebook years ago. Arc is more powerful and the data is more portable, although I still prefer the simplicity and design of Moves. I use this app to view a location history map, which can be aggregated to the day, week, month, or year. I can also see, at a glance, my walking, biking, and subway commute times and speed.

Developer threatening me + Developer holding my data hostage + Privacy concerns

Komocode

DEVELOPER IS THREATENING ME OVER EMAIL UPDATE 11/15/19 Less than 24 hours since I updated my review (see below), I received an e-mail from the developer. Here's one line: "Any further false statements in your App Store review will be reported to Apple as defamation." All of my statements are true and other 1-star reviews seem to backup my experience with this app and developer. Stop threatening your customers! I am fully prepared to defend myself in court should it escalate to that but I prefer not to deal with lawyers. I have screenshots of his tweets, his privacy policy, sample of private data being sent to Amplitude (which violates his own privacy policy), and his threatening communication. I have never felt the need to write this much about an app but the developer is extremely hostile with his customers so I need to warn current and potential users of this app. I can't deal with this stress any longer. Please know what you're getting into when you download this app. ============ Update 11/14/19 Here's what happened Developer sent a response saying that he doesn't want me as a customer anymore (he says this to any 1 star reviewer) even though I politely explained my complaints. I checked his Twitter and here is a quote from one of his tweets: "Something that I do at least once a month for Arc App is fire a customer." Interestingly, he tweeted this around the time I updated my 1 star review. This is absolutely not how you do customer service. Go look at any 1 star review for this app and you'll see he'll "fire" any customer for doing so. Regarding my data: I ended up looking through my iPhone backup and extracted the LocoKit.sqlite file which contains my data. That seems to be only way to do it. Regardless, I decided to give the developer a second chance and asked politely for instructions on how to properly export just to see if he would calm down, but so far, no response. I would have changed my star rating had he responded to rectify this whole thing, but he decided to ignore me it seems. To anyone else having trouble exporting the data: just grab an iPhone backup extractor (Google it) and look for "LearnerCoacher" for the SQLite files. Now I dug through the app. I wondered what would happen if I typed a random email in the patreon backer e-mail box. The app will phone home to an "Amplitude" service with details of the attempt (if the email doesn't match a backer on patreon) including the e-mail typed, country, session ID (not sure if this is tied to the data being sent back to Google's Firebase service that the app uses), and phone carrier. So that means if you genuinely mistyped your e-mail (maybe instead of com, you typed con) or you typed in your email and you're not a backer, Amplitude third party service pretty much now has your e-mail. This feels like a violation of the developer's own privacy policy that specifically states "None of your data is shared with those parties, for any purpose". To the developer: please stop getting angry with 1-star reviews. It's not a good look on you or the app. And you should provide a full export function. I find it ironic that Moves was able to export all of my data (which this app built its success on by being able to import it), but this app can't export all of my data (or at least, the developer won't tell me how). Unfortunately, App Store doesn't notify me of any updates on developer response updates, so I won't be able to read your response if any.

Developers need repay.. I get it

Kaikaikaicn

This app is good.. But become a patron for $20 per month or $6/month is TOO MUCH for majority of user as most of us rarely check activity 30 days ago. For us this is a one-time fee, and this “one-time fee” is too much, although it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to buy you a latte. I’m hoping to see developers give us other way to sponsor your work/show our appreciation but please don’t force us to pay or whatever against the original intention. I’m going to downgrade to old version for now...

Insane developers

eahiv

Cute app though!

Outstanding app

Avi Alkalay

Perfect for recording what I did and where I go. It is full featured for my needs, has good design, plays nice with my iPhone 11 Pro battery and exports data perfectly for my backups.

I love it but the auto detected activities are always wrong

theSquashSH

I've been training it for almost 5 months at this point, and I still have regular 600km/hr "car rides" (obviously airplane is the actual activity) and 99+km/hr "bicycle rides" (which should be motorcycle or car). I know the developer wants to keep it using pure ML, but "perfect is the enemy of good" and the usability suffers severely for something that could be fixed with a few simple if statements "if speed >55km/hr: never detect as bicycle", "if speed > 400km/hr: always detect as plane". I stopped bothering to train it a few weeks ago because it didn't seem to be helping at all. I will wait for a future update to make it smarter before I resume.

Good at times

Money Badger

Right now it’s a battery hog. As in 1% per minute while open and “learning” where I’ve been.

Arc App - Location & activity Reviews – Page 3