UKC

Hi,

im trying to download the new crags in Scottish winter, but when I clicked on the ‘?’ Symbol, I sign in and just takes me back to the same page and won’t let me download anything?

Hi Drew,

the wording has to be a bit vague to comply with the App Store rules. 
 

You can take out a subscription to the app at the address below, which will give you access to all packages, including the Scottish Winter ones. 
 

https://rockfax.app

Is paying for a year or a month to access all the content the only way to use this? I'm only interested in the Scottish Winter stuff and call me old fashioned but I'm a fan of paying for something to keep forever.

Hi David,

Yes, we've moved to a subscription model for the app, so there is no way of buying content. We picked our pricing with the aim of making it affordable and good value for our users (rakkup for example charges a similar amount to rent a single guidebook, whereas with Rockfax you get the whole catalogue), but I understand it isn't for everyone, and it makes less sense if you're only interested in a couple of crags for sure.

Thanks Stephen. I can sort of see why you've done that but as a compulsive guidebook reader with  an interest in only one part of the content it doesn't make sense for me. I'd probably pay the £36 fee for Scottish Winter stuff alone if it was mine to keep but I guess you're worried about people then just sharing that info.

We're not really worried about people sharing the information; some determined folks will find ways of doing that no matter what, and trying to prevent them from doing it would inevitably harm our legitimate customers (and probably not actually stop the determined folks anyway).

A big reason we changed to a subscription model was because the buy model was too expensive for most people. Paying £25 for a digital guidebook just seems like too much money in this world of 99p apps, but £3 or £4 a month for access to everything seems like a bargain (unless you're only interested in a small fraction of the content, admittedly).

The ultimate aim was to open the app up to more people. By removing the point where you have to decide to drop £25 on in-app content, we hoped that the app would become more useful as an addition to owning guidebooks, which has a broader appeal, rather than a replacement, which only appeals to a few it turns out.

So far the response has been very positive, and we hope to be able to grow the user base to a sustainable level, but it's clear that subscription does leave people such as yourself out in the cold.

The unfortunate reality is that we don't have the resources to implement a buy model to go alongside the subscription one (like in iTunes). I'm sorry about that.

I suppose that model makes sense for people going on trips but for those that like to peruse guides at various points in the year it doesn't.

What if I just give Rockfax say £25 in a plain brown envelope and you send me the Scottish Winter stuff in any format that makes sense? No questions asked. Promise I won't tell anyone.

Haha. Why not just buy the book from the SMC?

I was assuming the rockfax stuff was more up to date and had more / more recent routes than the current SMC guidebook.

From my perusals so far I think it's more "best of" rather than "fully comp".

I don't actually know if it's more up to date than the SMC books, but the current list of crags covered is detailed in Rob's post here: 

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rockfax/smc_scottish_winter_climbs_releas...

We've released about half of the Scottish Winter data so far. We're processing the next batch now. 

Yes that's correct, in the first instance we are putting our trad, sport and winter national select guides in the app - more may come later as we bring out new books.

Hi Dave,

We have made some minor amendments to the Ben, and obviously the map for that mountain is miles better than the one in the book, but in general we are doing a straight lift from Scottish Winter Climbs (and the other national select guides that we are putting into the app in the first instance). 

As new guides come out, we'll be updating stuff in the app - but for now we just want to get some content on there to some places that people like to visit! We focused on this first batch for winter so that we could get something out before conditions came good.

Rob