Logos 5 is here! That’s nothing new but the upgrade process comes with quite a sticker shock. Today is the last day to get some discounts on the base packages, but users can also move up to Logos 5 with three other less expensive options available either now or very soon.
UPDATE: We can now download the free limited Logos 5 engine for free without paying for a crossgrade or upgrade.
Two Less Expensive Upgrade Paths for Logos 5
Logos offers what they call the Logos 5 Core Datasets for $79.95 or about $21/month for a few months. This set includes the following:
See the “What’s New in Logos Bible Software 5 video below:
Logos 5 Minimal Crossgrade
With the Minimal Crossgrade, the buyer gets more for about twice the price. It costs $159.95 or $21/month. They call it the “bare-bones crossgrade to Logos 5″. This gives the user all the new stuff added for Logos 5. See the above video for details about these new features.
The list above comes with this upgrade. They also add the following:
Ancient Texts and Morphologies from the Lexham Hebrew and Greek tools
Lexham LXX
Faithlife Study Bible Notes
Lexham Bible Dictionary
New Topical Textbook
Animals Mentioned in Bible
Complete Book of When and Where: In the Bible and Throughout History
Plants of the Bible
Connect the Testaments devotional
Faithlife maps, photos and media
Lexham Interlinears
Bible Illustrations
There’s a lot there for just $160.
Free Basic Engine Upgrade
We expect that very sooncan now download the free limited engine of version five of Logos with a basic Logos 5 engine upgrade that doesn’t include many of the above features and content. You’ll have to gamble that you won’t want the new features and only the engine because their discounts will end before the free upgrade shows up on their website. When it shows up they will likely post links to their Support page.
My review of the latest update to Logos 5 came out in Christian Computing Magazine this week. You can read it in PDF format and consider signing up for a free subscription to get my monthly columns.
Next months should cover how to set up a live stream of your worship service using free services and a camera you may already own.
Just a quick quote from the Logos 5 review:
Logos surprised users by dropping version five November 1st. So what’s new in Logos 5. First, a solid edition that hasn’t crashed in the weeks I’ve used it. Also, much better performance gets exhibited in things like the notes editor. There’s no lag. What else is new?
We get a cleaner and more useful user interface. The Logos home page that showed up in version 4 now shows more on a single page. They moved the prayer lists, reading plans and library discovery tool from the top to the left. They also still offer a Home, Library and Search button.
Logos released Logos 5 yesterday and their servers were hit with a ton of people downloading the update. It’s a great update and everyone should grab it as soon as they can. Right now they don’t offer a free crossgrade like they have in the past but it will come soon. Until they do, check out Joe Miller’s nice video showing off the new features.
Unfortunately, Logos chose to use the same bundle names for their packages. I’ll explain why I say “unfortunately” in a bit.
Logos 5 includes the following bundle names:
Starter
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond
Portfolio
To upgrade to the Platinum edition will cost me nearly $485.
Wait!
What?
I owned the Platinum package under Logos 4 and to go from the same package to the new Logos 5 version costs almost $500? The answer is both yes and no.
First, yes it will cost me that much to get the Logos 5 Platinum bundle. However, the Logos 4 Platinum holds the same tools as the Logos 5 Silver package. In other words, Logos actually added more stuff to their packages and thus chose to demote our package names even though we still get the same books. The upgrade page tells me to upgrade from my current Logos package to the new Logos 5 with the same books will not cost me much at all if I pick a lower level package than I did under Logos 4. I will not lose any books I own, but will get some great new tools and features.
If people want to upgrade to Logos 5 without paying much or anything, wait till the crossgrade shows up in the future. Until then Logos will give the people willing to help them keep the lights on, the servers running and their employees paid, will get early access. The rest will have to wait a bit. Not an unfair trade-off.
Right now, many people are posting all kinds of vitriol in the Logos user forums over this method of upgrading using the same names. People feel duped and I understand the confusion. But it’s unfair. In hindsight the solution might have been for Logos to use different package names. Call the old Platinum package the new Logs 5 Black Package and the old Gold the new Red. Maybe numbers like Logos 5 X, Logos 5 XI or something. It would help defray the confusion that’s causing so much consternation.
For an explanation, Bog Pritchett posted in the above linked thread.
When a new movie comes out, I can only take a family of four to watch it at the theater. (3D movie, as much as $12.95 x 4, plus popcorn and snacks we’ll probably buy. Easily $50-60.)
If I wait six months (often less!) I can rent that movie from the DVD kiosk machine for $1, and all four of us can watch it with 25 cents of home-made popcorn.
When you go to the movie theater, are you angry that on opening night there isn’t a kiosk with $1 rental versions of the same film right next to the ticket line? Should it “have been available from the start to allow viewers who decide they can’t afford the theater experience not feel left out”?
- Is this wrong, or just frustrating?
- If the $1 rental was available the first day, do you think the revenue would be enough to cover the cost of making the movie?
That’s an apt analogy and makes perfect sense. I’m fortunate to once again get a free upgrade to the software alone as a reviewer and journalist. However, if I wasn’t I’d likely pay a bit to get the new features on day one. I want Logos and other great Bible software to remain available for years to come and helping Bob and company put food on the table makes that likely.
UPDATE:
Bob Pritchett also explained the situation going forward for those who only want to get the new features of Logos. Essentially, in the linked post at the Logos Forum Bob wrote that Logos 5 will become available as a basic search engine only upgrade for free. All the new features will become available for a small fee at a future unspecified date.
Dan Pritchett, VP of Logos
Dan Pritchett, Vie President of Logos and Bob’s brother, told me that Logos has a challenging task. They must support past buyers while still keeping the lights on at Logos. They struggle to get qualified top-flight programmers who can often make a lot more at places like Microsoft, Google or Apple. So they must pay these people and find ways to fund development of future awesome features that draw users back to Logos, like the great Sermon Starter Guide and the many visual ways they show off Bible content.
I asked Dan about the problem people have with the new names and he explained that rebranding their many packages is a challenge. In the past they called them levels. Today they use package names like Gold, Silver and Platinum. Whatever they call them, there’s confusion so they kept the same names.
Finally, I asked Dan about the trouble balancing their role as a group that seeks to support the church by offering Bible software and working as a for-profit business that seeks to make money. He explained that a lot of Bible software makers went the non-profit route and couldn’t keep going or couldn’t make the incredible products that business like Logos can make. He said that they realize that Logos costs some money and not everyone will want to pay what they charge. That’s okay with them. People can get other programs that cost less. He believes that will not get as much value, but they recognize that “Logos isn’t for everyone.”
I appreciate the way both Dan and Bob interact with their customers. I’m impressed with the candor fo these two men and hope the best for them and Logos just as I do for all the great people who work in the Bible software industry.
Bible students installed e-Sword on millions of computers around the world making it one of the most popular Bible software applications for Windows. Now the popular app brings the popular blend of function and simplicity to the iPad in e-Sword HD. The app’s simplicity of the app makes it a perfect for the iPad, another simple platform.
e-Sword HD User Interface
Users will recognize the format at the outset. The default translation opens, in the case of a newly installed version that’s the KJV+, with the plus standing for Strong’s numbers added to the basic KJV. The numbers function as links that when tapped show a popup definition window.
e-Sword HD on the iPad
Across the top the app shows a toolbar with the following buttons in order:
Search
Bible browsing history
Bookmarks
Settings
Help
Bible view
Interlinear comparison view
Parallel comparison view
LIbrary drop down
Book browsing drop down
e-Sword HD on the Compare screen
Each of the above functions as expected. The comparison views let user see different translations in either an interlinear view with a new translations on each horizontal line. The parallel view offers translations in a table format with each translation in a column. When in one of these two views tapping the settings icon lets the user pick which translations will show up.
e-Sword HD Parallel View
Across the bottom of the screen the user funds tabs for the various kinds of books e-Sword offers. Here’s the list from left the right:
Bible
Commentary
Dictionary
Lexicon
Reference
Today – devotions
Editor – notes editor
Resources – download books
The simple interface makes Bible study easy. I like the popup references and the intuitive interface that makes learning how to use e-Sword HD easy. I’d like to see a dual pane view so that I can open a Bible on one side and a commentary or notes editor on the other side.
Evaluation
For an initial release, e-Sword did a great job of bringing their excellent free desktop program to the iPad. Unfortunately, it’s not free. Users must pay $4.99 for the app, which is expensive compared to other Bible apps that give the basic app to users for free or a buck and then charge for books. e-Sword differs from other free Bible apps because the user already gets a lot of great public domain and copyrighted content for free that other apps charge far more than $5 to use.
UPDATE: I got a response from Bibleworks which you’ll find at the end.
UPDATE 2: This installation process requires an optical disk so if your Mac doesn’t come with one, get one or your left out. I’ve requested information about whether there’s a way to overcome this without buying one, but haven’t heard.
I was excited to learn that one of the best programs for original language study might come to the Mac, my new chosen platform. Bibleworks 9 told us they would offer a Mac version soon. However, an announcement of their “native Mac” version of the software is not at all native. Instead the version they are developing runs using X11 with Codeweavers virtualization tools that let Mac and Linux users run Windows software.
Bibleworks on a Mac using Codeweavers
Don’t get me wrong. The video below looks pretty good. I haven’t installed the public preview yet, but I like what I see so far. However, it’s not “native”.
A version using Codewearvers is better than nothing, if a Bibleworks user wants to switch over to Mac. I’m hoping they’re just a little confused as to what constitutes a “native Mac app” and not being deceptive. WORDsearch made the same mistake advertising a Mac version of their software when it ran using the same strategy.
One of the biggest problems Bibleworks and WORDsearch face is that the underpinnings of their tools have been removed from the most recent versions of Mac OS X 10.8. For that reason, I recommend that users avoid these “Mac versions” and stick with the excellent Windows versions running on Windows installed via something like Parallels, a great tool for installing Windows in a virtual environment on a Mac. Run using their Coherence tool that makes apps run in Windows seem like they are running on Mac without Windows in a much more successful way than using Codeweavers. I use Parallels to run Bibleworks 9 when I use it.
Learn more about the Bibleworks Mac project at their site.
RESPONSE FROM BIBLEWORKS
We’ve tried to be very clear about what the new Mac version is and is not. The BibleWorks 9 executable is running natively. It runs on compatibility libraries. These libraries do not involve virtualization and do not involve bytecode emulation. They truly are running native. The X11 libraries which they use are native code libraries and even shipped with OS X (from Leopard through Lion, I believe). I think in Mountain Lion, Apple chose not to include the X11 libraries, but they should automatically install with the Mac Public Preview installer and were shipped with OS X in Lion. If they are not automatically installed in Mountain Lion, that is an error and we will address it.
I’ve also added this sentence to the Mac page: “The underlying technology uses WINE and xQuartz libraries.”
From our perspective the compatibility libraries could use some optimization to make them faster, and we plan to address that in future updates.
I hope that makes sense. We’re certainly not trying to mislead anyone (that wouldn’t help us or our users). The Mac Public Preview is released at no additional cost as another option for our Mac users to try.
