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Subscription fee exhaustion seems an odd concept to me. Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscript

by ethbro 6y ago

Subscription fee exhaustion seems an odd concept to me. Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"? It seems an ironic perspective given that "Time is the only real currency we have" is on the HN front page! I specifically mentioned it because Apple (1) has cloud resources, whether they see it as an offering or not, (2) has full stack integration with their products, & (3) has historically prized ease of use and packaging new technology in a slick way. "Underpowered Mac / iPad / etc, now with iPower transparent cloud compute" seems a unique way to leverage their strengths and abilities in ways that Google, MS, and Amazon lack the capabilities to match.

bluescrn 6y ago
> Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"? Sounds like Silicon Valley thinking. If you're used to massive salaries (and massive housing costs), you probably won't care about relatively small subscription costs. But for the majority of people elsewhere in the world, those costs really do add up. There's very little appeal in renting a PC or games console in the cloud, then getting a sub-standard PC or console experience for an ongoing fee.
- ac29 6y ago
  Just to add to this - life is pretty expensive these days, and a lot of people really don't have much discretionary income left each month after taxes, rent, health insurance, food, etc. Median household income in the US is ~$63k, and after all of those expenses its pretty easy to be left with something like $100 a month (or less, or even worse, needing to take on debt to cover bills). When that is the case, even a $5/month subscription is a lot of money.
  - ethbro 6y ago
    Point not being that subscription is not a lot of money. Point being that expecting someone with that level of disposable income to having savings that allow for capital expenditures (instead of amortized subscriptions) isn't likely either.

by ethbro 6y ago

bluescrn 6y ago

> Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"? Sounds like Silicon Valley thinking. If you're used to massive salaries (and massive housing costs), you probably won't care about relatively small subscription costs. But for the majority of people elsewhere in the world, those costs really do add up. There's very little appeal in renting a PC or games console in the cloud, then getting a sub-standard PC or console experience for an ongoing fee.

ac29 6y ago
Just to add to this - life is pretty expensive these days, and a lot of people really don't have much discretionary income left each month after taxes, rent, health insurance, food, etc. Median household income in the US is ~$63k, and after all of those expenses its pretty easy to be left with something like $100 a month (or less, or even worse, needing to take on debt to cover bills). When that is the case, even a $5/month subscription is a lot of money.
- ethbro 6y ago
  Point not being that subscription is not a lot of money. Point being that expecting someone with that level of disposable income to having savings that allow for capital expenditures (instead of amortized subscriptions) isn't likely either.