Official: You Can Now Get Early Access to the Next Version of Logos
Later this year, we’ll launch the next version of Logos as a subscription. The subscription will have several tiers and eventually replace Preaching Suite, Faithlife Connect, and other Logos feature sets.
We’re living in a period of significant technological change, and only a subscription model enables us to continuously release new features and improvements as soon as they are built. Many of you don’t want to wait up to two years for improvements that could significantly benefit your Bible study. Subscription also allows us to include AI features which we can’t offer with permanent licenses due to the significant ongoing costs and rapidly changing technology.
Subscriptions aren’t required to maintain access to your existing content. They’re for those who want access to new and improved features. With Logos, your content investment is always safe, and you’ll always be able to access it for free. The subscription benefits listed above for features don’t apply to books in the same way, so we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
Can I get these subscriptions today?
One of the tiers of the forthcoming subscription will be called Logos Pro, and it will be aimed specifically at pastors. The full launch of these subscriptions won’t happen until later in the year, but if you own the Logos 10 Full Feature Set or subscribe to Faithlife Connect (excluding Starter and Mobile), you can get early access to Logos Pro today at a very special price.
Logos Pro includes most of the Logos 10 Full Feature Set, a library of more than 400 books to help you experience the power of Logos, and all the new features and improvements we’re developing for Logos 11. If you subscribe today, you’ll get five new features (Smart Search, Search Results Summaries, Summarization Sidebar, Sermon Assistant, and Instant Dark/Light Mode), and approximately once a quarter, we’ll add new and improved features to the subscription—not just this year, but every year.
How much will early access to Logos Pro cost?
Customers who own the Logos 10 Full Feature Set or subscribe to Faithlife Connect (excluding Starter and Mobile) can purchase the subscription for just $9.99/month. When Logos Pro launches in the fall with the other tiers of subscription, you’ll have the option to maintain your subscription to Logos Pro or switch to one of the other subscription tiers at a continued large discount.
How do I get it?
If you qualify, you can get early access to Logos Pro today at www.logos.com/early-access.
What is in Logos Pro?
We, and our beta testers, are excited by the features we’re adding to Logos Pro and later to the other subscription tiers. At the time of writing, Logos Pro includes most of the Logos 10 Full Feature Set, a library of more than 400 books to help you experience the power of Logos, and five new features described below. More features will be added regularly throughout the year and beyond.
Smart Search is a brand-new search engine built right into Logos. Just like the search engines you’re familiar with online, Smart Search doesn’t just search for the words in your query—it uses AI to search for articles that discuss the meaning of those words and then shows the most relevant place in that article in the search snippets. It makes searching your Logos library as easy as you’ve always hoped it would be.
Search Results Summaries allows you, with one click, to turn any brief search snippet into an AI-generated summary of the entire article, allowing you to better understand what each article covers, saving you time and helping you find the best content to dig into.
Summarization Sidebar enables you to use AI to summarize any article or chapter in almost any of your Logos books. The new Summarize tool can help you digest a lengthy article more quickly, simplify a complex article, or determine whether the full article is worth your time reading in full.
Sermon Assistant is an AI-powered tool that helps preachers overcome creative block and makes it easier to create materials to help the congregation better engage with the message. Currently:
- The Illustrations Generator suggests several short sermon illustrations you can use to explain doctrinal or other concepts.
- The Discussion Questions Generator takes a completed sermon and creates a series of discussion questions based on the sermon that could be used in a church bulletin or for small group, family, or personal study.
More than 400 commentaries, dictionaries, systematic theologies, journals, and other books to help you experience the distinctive power of Logos, including:
- 17 volumes of the Lexham Research Commentary series
- 10 volumes of the Spurgeon Commentary series
- 30 volumes of the Bible Study Magazine
- More than 350 additional volumes
Instant Dark/Light Mode allows you to switch between light and dark mode on desktop without requiring you to restart Logos.
And much more still to come!
That’s a lot of AI! Are all the new features going to be AI-powered?
We’re excited by the possibilities that AI—responsibly leveraged—brings to Logos, and we want to make the most of this technology. But we also want to equip you with the best tools for Bible study, using the most suitable technology for the task. So while there are plenty of AI-powered improvements in Logos Pro, and several more coming, we’ll also bring non-AI feature improvements, too.
Does AI really have a place in Bible study?
Christians have always been at the forefront of technology when it comes to accessing and understanding the Bible, whether adopting the codex in the second century or the printing press in the fifteenth. However, AI has limitations, fallibilities, and biases because it mirrors and sometimes amplifies those same weaknesses found in all human authors. That’s why Logos always lets you know when the content you’re reading is generated by AI. In addition, Logos’s AI tools are backed by your Logos library and designed to ensure AI is used responsibly and in a way appropriate for Bible study.
I don’t own the Logos 10 Full Feature Set. When can I subscribe to Logos Pro?
If you don’t own the Logos 10 Full Feature Set, you’ll be able to subscribe later in the year at a higher price. Or, you could purchase the Full Feature Upgrade now and immediately become eligible to subscribe at the discounted price.
Is early access to Logos Pro a beta program?
No. Each feature is beta-tested before it becomes part of Logos Pro. The purpose of early access is not for testing—it’s so that you can enjoy these new and improved features without waiting for the major release in the fall.
Can I cancel at any time?
Yes. Just visit https://www.logos.com/account/subscriptions.
Where does this leave subscriptions like Faithlife Connect and Preaching Suite?
The subscription that will launch later in the year will replace Faithlife Connect and Preaching Suite. The tier we're launching today, Logos Pro, includes exclusive new features, but there are a few tools and datasets in Connect and Preaching Suite that aren’t in Logos Pro but will be in another tier of the subscription. Most of the books in Logos Pro are different from those included in the existing subscriptions.
If you subscribe to those products, we’ll contact you later in the year to explain how you can painlessly switch to the new subscription. Until then, we recommend keeping your existing subscription to ensure you don’t lose any perks, features, or books. In the meantime, you could add Logos Pro to your existing subscription if you’re eligible.
Will I be forced to subscribe to Logos in the future? What about all the books I’ve already bought?
No one will be forced to subscribe to Logos to retain access to their existing content. You will always be able to access all the books you’ve purchased without further payment. Your books are your books. Subscriptions are for those who want access to the latest improvements, which aim to help you uncover deeper insights in less time.
Does this mean Logos will be subscription-only? Will I be able to buy Logos in the future?
Logos subscriptions aren’t new. More than ten thousand people have been subscribing to Logos for nearly a decade. But we’re now embracing subscription for our software because doing so has five distinct advantages.
- New users can have much lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment.
- It allows us to continuously release new features and improvements as soon as they are built, rather than holding them back for a major release every two years. That’s especially important at a time of rapid technological change.
- It allows us to include features like AI, which we can’t offer permanent licenses to because of the significant ongoing costs.
- It’s a sustainable way of ensuring we can keep delivering improvements for decades to come.
- Releasing early and often significantly shortens the feedback loop, enabling us to continually tweak our improvements to ensure they’re really solving the most important things for all our customers.
With books, it’s different. The content of books isn’t continually improved—once they’re published, they’re done. And while we bear small ongoing costs to allow you to download and interact with your books, those costs are orders of magnitude lower than that of AI and similar services. Therefore, you will still be able to buy permanent access to Logos libraries and any other books from our catalog. In the future, we may add rental options for those who want it, but we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
We’re still thinking through what that means for purchasable feature sets, and we’d value your feedback on whether the option to purchase would be important to you, knowing that you’d miss out on all the AI and cloud-backed features along with regular updates.
We’re excited about the benefits of a Logos subscription. We’re already building new features and improvements that will be released in the coming months, and we can’t wait to share them with early access customers soon and the rest of our users in the fall.
If you’re eligible and want to subscribe, visit www.logos.com/early-access.
Comments
- The organizing principle for these libraries (role/function, denomination, theological perspective, interest area)
- How often we update them (e.g., our general libraries annually and the specialist libraries as needed)
- How we expose them in the new customer buying process to ensure we don't overwhelm people
- New users can have much lower upfront costs and try Logos with much less commitment.
- It allows us to continuously release new features and improvements as soon as they are built, rather than holding them back for a major release every two years. That’s especially important at a time of rapid technological change.
- It allows us to include features like AI, which we can’t offer permanent licenses to because of the significant ongoing costs.
- It’s a sustainable way of ensuring we can keep delivering improvements for decades to come.
- Releasing early and often significantly shortens the feedback loop, enabling us to continually tweak our improvements to ensure they’re really solving the most important things for all our customers.
Sorry, I understood you to be wanting to discuss low-level details about the search, not just sharing feedback. I apologise for overstepping and chiming in with irrelevant technical details.
We do genuinely value user feedback about these new features. In particular, it has been very enlightening to see how you approach the Smart Search ("tell me about X according to authors who believe Y") and how that's not currently a good fit for the current implementation. I hope you return to this conversation with more valuable insights like that.
Hi, Bradley
I'd be happy to discuss the low-level details about Search, but no one has informed us/me about them, so it's all guesswork on the customer side.
Certainly you must be using at least the first-step pretrained LLM's, since that's where natural-language recognition comes from, *to the best of my knowledge*. I suppose that you may not be using the later steps of finetuning and alignment in the "normal" manner, since there is a paucity of interaction with this new Logos feature in the early stages, until you get a robust user base (if that magnitude ever occurs). So, yeah, I get it that you'd need to find another shortcut. RHLF similarly calls for a "two-way street" with feedback, and suffers from a similar Catch-22, afaict. Also, you offer no "ranking" responses to users from which a RHLF can learn.
You, or someone, earlier mentioned something about "pre-processing" the query before you hand it off to the search engine. I couldn't find that post so I may well be misquoting or misunderstanding. If however that is the case, and you aren't doing supervised finetuning of the LLM with or without RHLF, then doesn't that mean you'll need to *teach users how to structure queries*, in order to use your hybrid Logos AI? And if that's the case, how is that different from the current structured syntax with various tokens and keywords (other than refinement levels)?
Maybe that last paragraph is totally off-base ... again, I'm having to guess. Would you be willing to post a "mini-white-paper" (a gray scrap) to describe your model's flow-chart, so that users might be able to most effectively use it? My apologies if you've already done this and I missed it ... the forum is huge and I don't try to stay abreast of everything.
You expressed hope that I would return to the conversation with more insights as to possible weak points in the current parsing/interp engine ... I did pay the $9.99 to test initially, since I didn't want to post comments totally on assumptions ... but as mentioned earlier, I was so disappointed by the initial tests that I asked for a refund. (I'm retired on SS so I don't have money to burn).
Bradley, I've done a LOT of beta-testing for a wide range of software, as well as doing a LOT of development myself, over the past 50+ years. I'd be willing to dive into that activity for y'all, but I absolutely refuse to *pay* you in order to help you. It should be the other way around but I'll do it for free if it truly will help, and if you provide that "gray scrap" I mentioned earlier, and if my feedback will result in a *dialogue* rather than just filling up a black hole with no response.
Final suggestion (which other users might want to comment on): imo, if you are pre-processing the queries anyway, maybe a good preliminary step would be to do some simple enhancements to the existing token+keyword model. Imo, the greatest weakness of that model is the "fishing around" the user has to do, to figure out what the appropriate tokens + keywords should be (not speaking about and/or boolean operators, but the pre-colon categories, and the post-colon specifics).
So, my suggestion to improve that should actually be fairly simple to implement as a single-layer expert-system ... just provide hover-click lists, or dropdown-boxes, etc, for the user to select for BOTH the pre-colon and post-colon entries (sorry, I don't recall the generic terms y'all may have used for these). Ideally, the dropdown or hover lists might even offer a parenthetical phrase after obscure ones to help the user.
I'll betcha that if you provide THAT as part of the Subscription service, even though it doesn't need LLM or the cloud, then people would perk up and get excited. And if more people use that kind of feature, you could gather that (via cloud) usage info to help inform your "AI" preprocessor.
Summary: teach your AI via an expert system.
I hope this helps. If you prefer, feel free to contact me by email ... hvacsage at yahoo dot com.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
3. Libraries: We plan to continue to offer libraries via our existing perpetual licensing model along with dynamic pricing. We haven't yet decided if we'll refresh them every two years, move to an annual release, or something else.I may be in the minority, but this is my major concern. I want to make sure that there are still base package libraries available, as this is where I focus most of my attention.
Am I to understand that you are considering reconfiguring base packages of books yearly, or every two years as it is now? Can you expound on the current ideas, or maybe start a new thread if you are searching for ideas?
There definitely will still be numerous multi-level tracks of libraries available. But we want to simplify the buying process for the new customer.
This is still an active area of discussion, but here's what might change:
These libraries will still be perpetually licensed with dynamic pricing.
TBD on whether subscribers enjoy special benefits such as early access, an extra discount, etc.
As a FLC subscriber for years, when these new plans do go forward, my 3 favorite current perks are below. I hope they can be retained in some sort of way/shape/form:
1) 2% Back annually
2) 3 Faithlife Free Books & Lexham Discount Monthly
3) Mobile Ed Courses (I would love to see this expanded with maybe an old Blockbuster approach for the older folks here... a quota of rental courses that renews monthly/annually. The choice of courses would also need to be expanded as I've noticed from time to time that not all are available.
If I can be greedy, FLTV is dying. I would love for this new subscription model to help prop this up or maybe combine with someone like RightNowMedia or another one. For years people have asked for improvements to include a minor owned videos section but that has never come. If FLTV dies, can you maybe transfer these videos to Logos itself? I've purchased several films over the years but they only show on FLTV and finding them is a real pain.
Thank you
Specially after the selling of logos to a secular owner.When did this happen? Who owns it now?
Scooter, you need to keep up! Last year a venture capital group bought majority share. Looking at their other investments, looks like they try to nudge smaller companies with promise, for success. Being 'secular' or 'greedy' depends ... more like Bob finally got rewarded for all those years of scrimping.
But it illustrates, that the Logos cheerleaders hopefully don't use the same rationalizing, for their 401 investments. New owners can be good. Can demand better management. And can sell to other new owners. Forever got shorter, last year.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
So trying to get my head wrapped around this. What I think I hear is books will still be sold without a subscription. There might be a feature set sold also no subscription. Now if we don't subscribe the new features we get will not be updated? So what about previous features will they not be upgraded to? If you offer a feature set to be sold at launch it doesn't seem ethical to not update it. I have to be reading this wrong.
Specially after the selling of logos to a secular owner.When did this happen? Who owns it now?
Scooter, you need to keep up! Last year a venture capital group bought majority share. Looking at their other investments, looks like they try to nudge smaller companies with promise, for success. Being 'secular' or 'greedy' depends ... more like Bob finally got rewarded for all those years of scrimping.
But it illustrates, that the Logos cheerleaders hopefully don't use the same rationalizing, for their 401 investments. New owners can be good. Can demand better management. And can sell to other new owners. Forever got shorter, last year.
DMB
What venture capital group bought them? This is the first that I heard of this too.
I know things have been changing all along. Major staff who were greatly involved are no longer around.
This is really concerning. It is understandable why they are making this major change.
They need to make a profit for those who have major share.
This is all understandable because as one individual said, the company is not a Christian Non-Profit.
It is a business. It is nice they are still listening to their user base.
Forever may not be very long.
The original post intended to say, "In the next version of Logos, we're going to be leaning heavily into subscription for these five reasons, but we don't yet know whether we're going to lean into subscription exclusively."
So to be clear, future users will own nothing and be happy as they choose between food and shelter or Bible study. You sound like Klaus Schwab and the WEF. This is pure socialism and is completely inline with the zeitgeist rather than the Scriptures. Bill Gates did the same thing. He moved Microsoft Office to subscription only. Yet Western civilization is founded upon private property ownership. Y'all are making permeant renters out of people who have historically supported you and put up with your failures and publications of countless false teachers all so you could keep the business running. This is just the logical conclusion of the trajectory y'all have been headed in for sometime. Very sad. All this proves you care nothing for missions or missionaries in the field. Meanwhile Blue Letter Bible will send you their entire offline version on CD for free by request. See the difference? BLB is a ministry. Logos is a business and this is a bad business move into socialism. You can be part of the solution or part of the problem. It appears you are opting to become part of the problem. If y'all go down this road I will never again be able to recommend Logos to anyone but will recommend they seek another software provider. Repent.
Nathan
So to be clear, future users will own nothing
You'll still own all your books, and your Logos software will continue to be updated for free.
Is it really going to be as firm as 'buy once, no upgrade'?We're saying that if we offer a perpetual license, it wouldn't come with regular updates, whereas a subscription would.
Mark
Would you say that those of us who do own Logos 10 feature sets and are able to get a discount on a subscription as a result...
Would you say that if we were offered a perpetual license that would not come with regular updates....that we would be able to keep up with updates by subscribing at a discount (since we purchased the features)? And if this could be true, then when a new version of a perpetual license came out, we could do the same?
You can be part of the solution or part of the problem. It appears you are opting to become part of the problem.
It appears that there's a fair amount of misinformation which has guided you to this conclusion. Users will continue to own and purchase books. We will continue to own the features we have purchased. And (fingers crossed) we will HOPEFULLY be able to continue purchasing limited feature sets in the future. The subscription model is necessary due to the expenses that the company incurs by providing cloud-based services, at this point predominantly AI. However, as long as they do indeed offer feature sets for purchase in the future, the subscription will truly be optional. No one who has invested in Logos wants the company to go broke. It is far too early to make judgements, as we have not even been made aware of the details of the road they are going down yet. I get that uncertainty is uncomfortable. But I am glad that management had the courage to seek the input of their user base before finalizing their decisions.
Repent.
Bottom line is...Logos will be leaning heavily into subscriptions because they are thinking long term sustainability for their business. They are choosing to adapt their business model so they can be around for years to come. They have nothing to repent for. I applaud them.
Now if we don't subscribe the new features we get will not be updated? So what about previous features will they not be upgraded to? If you offer a feature set to be sold at launch it doesn't seem ethical to not update it. I have to be reading this wrong.
They have said that bug fixes will be issued to everyone. Thus, if features are purchased, then updates that pertain to allowing those features to work as they were intended to work will be issued. This is different than a feature being improved or expanded upon. Such updates have never been given out for free. Rather, they have been included in the next batch of feature set purchases. I anticipate this would be the path going forward. Subscribers, however, would be issued these feature improvements immediately. For purchasers, however, I'm not sure that much would change from how it is today, as even now users must wait 2 years for the next set of feature upgrades.
1.I have 10 full features and still can't translate Greek to English; will that ever be fixed?
2.
will you be able maintain my permanent license (updates) properly or will it wane away..
3Will it be possible to subscribe and at the same time keep permanent licence,
You said about what i was thinking. I think the antichrist is behind AI and yes satan will be glad to help out with our Bible study.
I knew a pastor who thought the same thing about personal computers.
Specially after the selling of logos to a secular owner.When did this happen? Who owns it now?
Scooter, you need to keep up! Last year a venture capital group bought majority share. Looking at their other investments, looks like they try to nudge smaller companies with promise, for success. Being 'secular' or 'greedy' depends ... more like Bob finally got rewarded for all those years of scrimping.
But it illustrates, that the Logos cheerleaders hopefully don't use the same rationalizing, for their 401 investments. New owners can be good. Can demand better management. And can sell to other new owners. Forever got shorter, last year.
scooter indeed needs to keep up!! Are you allowed to whisper their name here, so I can look at their other investments, as well??
Logos is now a commodity, one egg in a dozen-sized paper mache little box. You have 401's; we in Canada have RRSRs. You never buy too many small cap firms. When they fall, they fall right off the bridge.
I like 'Forever got shorter, last year.' When I was 5, we dropped down into North Dakota + turned left, coming back into Canada on the Macinac Bridge. That bridge felt forever to a 5 year old. And very, very high. When I now picture forever, that's where I am. It felt dangerous, but I knew Dad was a steady hand at the wheel.
A sub allows the owner to have less legal obligation to a participant, I would think, although I am not a lawyer.
Hi Mark,
Many thanks to you for putting together this very informative post about the changes coming to Logos Bible Software. As with many Logos users I am interested in what all of this means for our experience in using Logos. Over the years, I have paid thousands of dollars for both my Logos library as well as the upgrades to the program over the years. And over those years, we have been told that we will always get to keep our libraries and the tools/features we have purchased.
So, my question regarding this new subscription model is: If we decide to embrace this subscription model, do we still get to permanently keep both the libraries and tools/features we have purchased prior to shifting to a subscription? I am asking this because in your post here, you mention that we would get to keep our libraries, but no mention is made regarding us being able to keep the tools/features we have paid for.
Personally, I would prefer to purchase future feature sets, rather than subscribe for access to features/tools. But, I am willing to try a subscription, even though I am not really keen on AI.
Many thanks, in advance for taking the time to read over this and for replying.
In His grace,
Rev. Eric Burrows-Stone
In His grace,
Rev. Eric Burrows-Stone
Yes! PC, cell phones, credit cards, checking accounts, social security ect. The god of this world owns it all except our relationship and dependance on God. Lets not let him into our prayer closet . It's one thing to have the Bible or Bible software on our devices. It is a different story if AI or god of this world is controlling it; and yes i very well could be mistaken in the case of Logos and very hopeful that i am wrong. I simply feel compeled to wave a cautionary flag to warn folks. God bless and peace
Says the Antichrist: „[T]he University of Tubingen only the other day requested me to accept the degree of a Doctor of Theology honoris causa“ (in Solovyovs homonymous work)
So, my question regarding this new subscription model is: If we decide to embrace this subscription model, do we still get to permanently keep both the libraries and tools/features we have purchased prior to shifting to a subscription?
The answer to this question is a firm yes. This has been clearly addressed in this thread, but I'm certainly not going to take the time to sift through every post to find it, nor would I expect you to. This thread is almost getting too long to be helpful anymore.
This thread is almost getting too long to be helpful anymore.
It might be helpful if Faithlife made a FAQ page with succinct descriptions of their plans (as they are so far, with updates as more decisions are made) and answers to common questions.
This thread is almost getting too long to be helpful anymore.It might be helpful if Faithlife made a FAQ page with succinct descriptions of their plans (as they are so far, with updates as more decisions are made) and answers to common questions.
Perhaps they could also do a live Webinar with Q&A that gets archived to the Logos Pro page and linked in the forums.
AI is only going to become more and more of a thing as time goes on. I am excited to see how Christians can use it to the glory of God.
AI is going to become more and more of a thing as time goes on. I am excited to see how Christians can use this latest technology to the glory of God.
AI can have a negative impact or a positive impact depending on how it is used....just like the internet. I am excited to see how Christians will be able to use it for the glory of God.
AI can have a negative impact or a positive impact depending on how it is used.
And we tend to forget how widely we use it. Facial recognition to unlock our phone, Siri/Alexa voice recognition, even our thermostats to control house temperature ... all these are applications of AI.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
AI can have a negative impact or a positive impact depending on how it is used.And we tend to forget how widely we use it. Facial recognition to unlock our phone, Siri/Alexa voice recognition, even our thermostats to control house temperature ... all these are applications of AI.
Good point!
And we use AI to vaccum our house. Does a good job!
xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".
Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!
You, or someone, earlier mentioned something about "pre-processing" the query before you hand it off to the search engine. I couldn't find that post so I may well be misquoting or misunderstanding. If however that is the case, and you aren't doing supervised finetuning of the LLM with or without RHLF, then doesn't that mean you'll need to *teach users how to structure queries*, in order to use your hybrid Logos AI? And if that's the case, how is that different from the current structured syntax with various tokens and keywords (other than refinement levels)?
I think I remember that remark, too, but I can't find it now and don't remember exactly what was being said.
As far as I know, we perform minimal preprocessing on the query. Maybe we look for and extract fully-formed Bible references, but that would be it. To the best of my knowledge, no preprocessing is necessary to create and use a vector embedding from a string of text.
Maybe that last paragraph is totally off-base ... again, I'm having to guess. Would you be willing to post a "mini-white-paper" (a gray scrap) to describe your model's flow-chart, so that users might be able to most effectively use it? My apologies if you've already done this and I missed it ... the forum is huge and I don't try to stay abreast of everything.
No, we don't have a whitepaper available for the Smart Search (and if we did produce one, it would become out of date quickly as technology changes). IMO, from a product perspective, if one has to read a white paper in order to use the new search engine, then we have failed. That's the "problem" (from one perspective) with the existing Precise engine: a lot of up-front knowledge is required to use it well. (That's also a great strength from a different perspective: it allows very precise combinations of queries across multiple data sets and a full-text index.)
The goal is that Smart Search returns useful results for the vast majority of queries without our having to "*teach users how to structure queries*". That's also what makes feedback such as "I tried searching for X and the results were poor" useful, as it helps us see where we're missing the mark in terms of delivering an "it just works" experience.
So, my suggestion to improve that should actually be fairly simple to implement as a single-layer expert-system ... just provide hover-click lists, or dropdown-boxes, etc, for the user to select for BOTH the pre-colon and post-colon entries (sorry, I don't recall the generic terms y'all may have used for these). Ideally, the dropdown or hover lists might even offer a parenthetical phrase after obscure ones to help the user.
A "query builder" is something that we've considered for the Precise Search Engine for many years, and may still be something we investigate more in the future.
https://feedback.logos.com/boards/logos-desktop-app/posts/search-query-builder
The thing that is aggravating to me is that the point continues to be hammered by subscription supporters that this is about sustainability for Logos going forward.....
I guess I don't see how features that are being created for the subscription customers and from what it sounds like, will still be a part of the same engine, just activated by license for subscribers and not activated for those who choose not to subscribe.... Leaving non subscribers in the dark for new features.
So for me - if the engine is the same, if the feature is activated for those who subscribe, I don't see how difficult it is to not punish those who choose to not subscribe by not offering the ability to purchase a license as has always existed..... If all it takes is having the license for the features, sell the feature sets as is currently - otherwise this is just a stunt to force people to subscribe to have new features - not about the customers nor sustainability....
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
So for me - if the engine is the same, if the feature is activated for those who subscribe, I don't see how difficult it is to not punish those who choose to not subscribe by not offering the ability to purchase a license as has always existed.....
The problem is that most of the posts are speculative in the form of "If Logos does X my response will be Y" without concrete knowledge of what features will be subscription only by the fall and without concrete knowledge of what the marketing groupings and cost will be. But Logos specifically wanted to know what we would feel about it (speculation) ... so they can make rational decisions on the marketing. And they have to make their decisions before we can make ours. So we need to remember it is speculation.
My problem with some of the posts is that they seem to equate AI with chatbots which creates unrealistic expectations of the tools and that some speculation on the use of AI is taken as fact. I have reservations regarding the subscription model in terms of gifting some else with my collection. On the other hand, I have faith in the current management based on the belief that Vic was a change management leader who moved Logos from a startup model to a sustainable model. I understand why that includes subscriptions. I do not know and will not speculate how AI platforms will be funded once they reach the basic utility stage. When was the last time you thought about funding the internet infrastructure?
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
If all it takes is having the license for the features, sell the feature sets as is currently - otherwise this is just a stunt to force people to subscribe to have new features - not about the customers nor sustainability....
This is exactly right. It has been said too many times that "no one will be forced to subscribe." But the reality is that if feature sets are not offered in the future for purchase, then this statement is very misleading, sugarcoating the reality that everyone who chooses not to subscribe will be left with software that is frozen in time - functional, yes, but never improving. Such users would never have any software enhancements to look forward to. If this is the path that is chosen, people should say it as it is, not trying to sugarcoat it and make it seem like users have genuine options.
So for me - if the engine is the same, if the feature is activated for those who subscribe, I don't see how difficult it is to not punish those who choose to not subscribe by not offering the ability to purchase a license as has always existed.....The problem is that most of the posts are speculative in the form of "If Logos does X my response will be Y" without concrete knowledge of what features will be subscription only by the fall and without concrete knowledge of what the marketing groupings and cost will be. But Logos specifically wanted to know what we would feel about it ... so they can make rational decisions on the marketing. And they have to make their decisions before we can make ours. My problem with some of the posts is that they seem to equate AI with chatbots which creates unrealistic expectations of the tools and that some speculation is taken as fact. I have reservations regarding the subscription model in terms of gifting some else with my collection. On the other hand, I have faith in the current management based on the belief that Vic was a change management leader who moved Logos from a startup model to a sustainable model. I understand why that includes subscriptions. I do not know and will not speculate how AI platforms will be funded once they reach the basic utility stage. When was the last time you thought about funding the internet infrastructure?
It's a wise dicission MJ. I like your position.
Blessings in Christ.
The problem is that most of the posts are speculative in the form of "If Logos does X my response will be Y" without concrete knowledge of what features will be subscription only by the fall and without concrete knowledge of what the marketing groupings and cost will be.
I understand and agree with your main point. However, I'm not sure that these speculative posts are actually a problem. People were asked for their thoughts and opinions while being faced with vague and incomplete information. Responding to incomplete information by providing speculative answers seems perfectly reasonable to me.
However, I'm not sure that these speculative posts are actually a problem.
I've reworded the post to show that I agree with you as long as their speculative nature is recognized. Thanks for pointing out I could have easily been misunderstood.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
(remove space after copying to browser)
https://www.revenuecat. com/state-of-subscription-apps-2024/
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
“Frozen in time”nails this point. Imagine, if you will, that this plan was initiated at Logos 7. Today subscribers would be getting Logos 10 (or better) but you would still be at L7. Now consider this as a subscriber L7-10, these many years latter you have to drop the subscription, and now you are back to L7. Let that sink in.
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
(remove spaces after copying to browser)
https://www.revenuecat. com/state-of-subscription-apps-2024/
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
(remove spaces after copying to browser)
www. revenuecat. com/ state-of-subscription-apps-2025/
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
(remove spaces after copying to browser)
www. revenuecat. com/ state-of-subscription-apps-2024/
MY APOLOGIES for the repeated post. The forum kept giving me error messages with each try. I thought it was due to the link, so I tried parsing it. I was posting from an iPhone, fwiw. It was a generic error message that essentially said something went wrong. This forum doesn't allow us to delete posts so again, my apologies.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
The thing that is aggravating to me is that the point continues to be hammered by subscription supporters that this is about sustainability for Logos going forward.....
I guess I don't see how features that are being created for the subscription customers and from what it sounds like, will still be a part of the same engine, just activated by license for subscribers and not activated for those who choose not to subscribe.... Leaving non subscribers in the dark for new features.So for me - if the engine is the same, if the feature is activated for those who subscribe, I don't see how difficult it is to not punish those who choose to not subscribe by not offering the ability to purchase a license as has always existed..... If all it takes is having the license for the features, sell the feature sets as is currently - otherwise this is just a stunt to force people to subscribe to have new features - not about the customers nor sustainability....
Mark gives 5 reasons in his original post:
Logos subscriptions aren’t new. More than ten thousand people have been subscribing to Logos for nearly a decade. But we’re now embracing subscription for our software because doing so has five distinct advantages.
It’s interesting that this article popped up in the news stream tonight. It references a massive study done on subscription based apps (admittedly all are far less robust than Logos), concluding that the subscription paradigm was NOT profitable.
(remove spaces after copying to browser)
www. revenuecat. com/ state-of-subscription-apps-2024/
MY APOLOGIES for the repeated post. The forum kept giving me error messages with each try. I thought it was due to the link, so I tried parsing it. I was posting from an iPhone, fwiw. It was a generic error message that essentially said something went wrong. This forum doesn't allow us to delete posts so again, my apologies.
AND not only that ... I mistyped it. It should be 2024, not 2025.
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Redeeming the time (Eph.5:16+Col.4:5) ... Win 10, iOS & iPadOS 16
Jim Dean
This forum doesn't allow us to delete posts so again, my apologies.
This forum doesn't allow us to delete posts so again, my apologies.
Just an FYI Brother,
You can delete a post but only if you get to it within the very first few minutes of making said post. How log that is I don't really know but I would guess less than 5 or so.
EDIT:
I kept checking after making this post and the Delete option was still there 7-10 minutes after making this post, but then went away. So, 7 minutes may be a safe number.
Would you say that those of us who do own Logos 10 feature sets and are able to get a discount on a subscription as a result...
Would you say that if we were offered a perpetual license that would not come with regular updates....that we would be able to keep up with updates by subscribing at a discount (since we purchased the features)? And if this could be true, then when a new version of a perpetual license came out, we could do the same?
I think you're asking:
If I buy L10, will I get a discount on the subscription? Answer: yes.
If I buy L11, will I get a discount on the subscription? Answer: If we offer that, then yes. Will it be a bigger discount than the L10 discount? I've no idea. One step at a time, I think.
So, my question regarding this new subscription model is: If we decide to embrace this subscription model, do we still get to permanently keep both the libraries and tools/features we have purchased prior to shifting to a subscription? I am asking this because in your post here, you mention that we would get to keep our libraries, but no mention is made regarding us being able to keep the tools/features we have paid for.
Yes, you get to keep both. (We do occasionally retire rarely used features, in line with our support policy. Recent examples have been Handouts and Faithlife Assistant. But that's the exception, not the norm.)
So we need to remember it is speculation.
Got it! Thanks for helping me catch up with you on that.
If I buy L11, will I get a discount on the subscription? Answer: If we offer that, then yes.
Ok, now I'm beginning to get excited. I could foresee a scenario where in order to keep the discount from Logos 10, one would have to purchase the feature set from Logos 11, and so on...
A setup like this would enable a more affordable subscription price while allowing the user to make full use of the latest non-AI features, even in the event of a subscription interruption. Yes please!