Barcode scanner

Silentpadna

I have not been counting for awhile, but with new health issues, I will be back to logging, starting today.

I was disappointed to find out that a long-time feature is now considered an improvement worth paying for. Crummy business decision for them. Fortunately, most of my regular foods are easily looked up (and I know most of the info as is). So I'll still use the glorified calculator and spreadsheet and enjoy the communities. I will also take note of the outside advertisers and remind myself to not do commerce with them if possible. No extra revenue from me.

And no, not upset, just a bit disappointed.

Sumo813

jeremywm1977 wrote: »

Ah yes, take the best feature and make it premium. Well, for what I use your app for, it's now on par with Samsung Health. Thanks for saving me the space on my phone as I will be uninstalling well before October 1st.....likely once I finish this post (which I'll be interested to see if the Admins allow it to stay).

Your decision has been made, and so had mine. Best wishes as you venture down this path.

I agree. And based on the number of pages on this post, I'm sure it's already said, but the barcode scanner is the only premium feature I would use. IF somehow the food database were accurate, *MAYBE* it would be worth the cost. But as it stands, much of the time it either brought up the wrong details or didn't scan at all.

MFP's database was great when it first started, but it's grown into an non-manageable monster. It always pains me when searching, the key terms I search aren't the first things that come up. Then there's multiple entries because someone liked the way their entry looked compared to another entry that was accurate. And of course, user entries aren't always correct in the least. I had a former co-worker who was eating a fair amount of fried popcorn chicken from a local grocery's deli because someone had it entered into MFP as 35 cals for a cup. *smh*

If the barcode scanner were offered as an a la carte feature for say, $3-$5 a month, I would likely add it. And I'm sure many others would, too... in spite of knowing it isn't 100% accurate.

Sumo813

jeremywm1977 wrote: »

A little thing about "premium" content is it's usually content that has been developed after the application's inception, functionality that enhances the user experience.

You don't do this with something that's long-established, has always been a part of the free experience.....being blunt, that's called "*kitten* over" your loyal fanbase.

I guess the great minds at MFP can't think of any new functionality to make a premium membership worth it, so next up is systematically stripping away the popular content and making it premium.

You have corporate minds behind them since the buyout by UA. So it's really not surprising. Some genius figured, "hey, this is the most used piece, let's add it to a really high membership that isn't worth the value and see if we can sell more memberships that way!" Meanwhile, they likely don't have a group that is building a better, more accurate food database, including actual barcodes from products. You would think that UA has a pretty large reach and could easily obtain information from the producers of food products. Of course, I know that products vary from location to location, but that's also remedied by listing the city or state as part of the description. The database could be built separately, and then put into production at a specific point when enough information is available. The other piece would be to make all user added nutritional info private to each user so it doesn't muddy the database. It would be a pain for users to manually enter things for themselves, but I feel it would make the database much more accessible with information that is accurate for the area we're in.

Lietchi

Sumo813 wrote: »

jeremywm1977 wrote: »

A little thing about "premium" content is it's usually content that has been developed after the application's inception, functionality that enhances the user experience.

You don't do this with something that's long-established, has always been a part of the free experience.....being blunt, that's called "*kitten* over" your loyal fanbase.

I guess the great minds at MFP can't think of any new functionality to make a premium membership worth it, so next up is systematically stripping away the popular content and making it premium.

You have corporate minds behind them since the buyout by UA. So it's really not surprising. Some genius figured, "hey, this is the most used piece, let's add it to a really high membership that isn't worth the value and see if we can sell more memberships that way!" Meanwhile, they likely don't have a group that is building a better, more accurate food database, including actual barcodes from products. You would think that UA has a pretty large reach and could easily obtain information from the producers of food products. Of course, I know that products vary from location to location, but that's also remedied by listing the city or state as part of the description. The database could be built separately, and then put into production at a specific point when enough information is available. The other piece would be to make all user added nutritional info private to each user so it doesn't muddy the database. It would be a pain for users to manually enter things for themselves, but I feel it would make the database much more accessible with information that is accurate for the area we're in.

UA sold MFP in 2020, it's owned by an investment firm now, intent on making as much money as possible.

Also, I do believe MFP is working on improvements in the food database, but I don't know how precisely, or when.

Knufsed7

This unacceptable. I've been using this app daily for about ten years, logged in everyday. Now greed has caused them to do this, take away a very good feature (bar code scanning function) and try to make us pay for it now. They could have grandfathered all of the current users in, but no they did not. So with that being said, I'm walking away from this app. I don't want to but I am. I've just broken my nearly decade "log in" streak a couple days ago. So sad.

flomic

My issue is that, when MFP ORIGINALLY moved to a paid service, they issued promises to their member base that they wouldn't take away features (the only paid stuff will be new stuff).

This is the most explicit way that they have broken that promise to me.

No bitching, just leaving. Those of you who can't understand the frustration can look at your friends posts and see what kinds of people your community will slowly be left with: those who prefer to make the 3001st entry of an item because they can't find it in a couple clicks . Have fun with that.