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I think all these companies rely on /captive audiences/. ie people who have invested in their product already, and they can somehow "up sell" them the subscribt

I think all these companies rely on /captive audiences/. ie people who have invested in their product already, and they can somehow "up sell" them the subscribtion for a while and it sounds like a GREAT plan. However, any 'new' customer will not let themselves be trapped. It's happening with Adobe Photoshop and stuff, where they've been skinning their customer base for years, but quite frankly who would now as a new potiential customer decide to shackle themselves to that? I know quite a few people who will use inferior tools JUST so they don't have to hook up to Adobe blood-suck. Say Adobe Lightroom. Super product, but updates started to slow down and slow down and WOW now look it's all ONLINE baby for a price. I bought all updates until LR6, but now I know it's a lot cheaper to archive my machine with LR6 in a corner and use it for my photo edit than switching to the 'super value online thingy' for $$$/year. I don't use it that much to want that, and next time I want to use it, it actually might be incompatible with /whatever is in my chain of hardware/ anyway. I'm sad to say Sketchup is doing this, if they had a $100 upgrade price every year or so, I'd pay happily -- however here's lies the other main problem: these companies don't WANT to invest in R&D enough to have a 'valid' reason to have a new major version every 12-18 months, they actually think people will just keep paying. Well guess what, perhaps some people will, but no NEW people will. In the case of sketchup, whatever the marketing blurbs have spattered about, NOTHING IS NEW for like 10 years, I mean, they try to add 'hooks' here and there, but the main program is exactly the same, same bugs for that long. I suspect the devs who know how to do matrix multiplication have long left after google dumped the product, and they are now left with a handful of webheads. Do I want to pay for that? Hmm wait until I clean the coffee off the front my t-shirt.

roywiggins 6y ago
I'm still on Lightroom 5, I bought it years ago and that's where all my photos live. If I'd been forced into a subscription the total cost would have been many multiples of what I paid. I don't rent my camera for years on end- why would I rent the software that organizes all my photos?
- StillBored 6y ago
  I agree and there are pieces of software I've only purchased once and have used for decades. But that also creates a bit of an incentive not to worry to much about quality. After all, selling you a fixed progress bar in the next version gives people an incentive to upgrade. Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good behavior.
mardifoufs 6y ago
Agree on all points but I'd be surprised if sketch up had a captive audience? It's not like adobe that basically just had to put a fence around the herd, they basically just closed the doors with no one inside. Unless a lot has a changed I remember sketch up barely working much less being used by professionals? it's very weird to make their product less accessible at this stage. Edit: to clarify I'm not saying you can't be professional and use sketchup, it's more that it's hard to really pull the subscription bait on switch on non corporate users on a niche product like this. Especially a niche that has alternatives.Maybe sketchup is actually used in business now though.
fmajid 6y ago
I have two LR6 licenses, so 4 computers (my desktop, my wife’s laptop, my laptop and one spare). The second license I bought less than a year ago (DVD from B&H, I was surprised it was still available for sale). With DNG converter, it even works reasonably well with my newer cameras (Nikon Z7 and Fuji X-T4, my Ricoh GRIII being supported natively). At some point it will stop working with macOS the way CS6 did, but I also flipped the bozo bit on Apple so my plan is to switch to Linux and DarkTable, which is making great strides.

roywiggins 6y ago

I'm still on Lightroom 5, I bought it years ago and that's where all my photos live. If I'd been forced into a subscription the total cost would have been many multiples of what I paid. I don't rent my camera for years on end- why would I rent the software that organizes all my photos?

StillBored 6y ago
I agree and there are pieces of software I've only purchased once and have used for decades. But that also creates a bit of an incentive not to worry to much about quality. After all, selling you a fixed progress bar in the next version gives people an incentive to upgrade. Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good behavior.

mardifoufs 6y ago

Agree on all points but I'd be surprised if sketch up had a captive audience? It's not like adobe that basically just had to put a fence around the herd, they basically just closed the doors with no one inside. Unless a lot has a changed I remember sketch up barely working much less being used by professionals? it's very weird to make their product less accessible at this stage. Edit: to clarify I'm not saying you can't be professional and use sketchup, it's more that it's hard to really pull the subscription bait on switch on non corporate users on a niche product like this. Especially a niche that has alternatives.Maybe sketchup is actually used in business now though.

fmajid 6y ago

I have two LR6 licenses, so 4 computers (my desktop, my wife’s laptop, my laptop and one spare). The second license I bought less than a year ago (DVD from B&H, I was surprised it was still available for sale). With DNG converter, it even works reasonably well with my newer cameras (Nikon Z7 and Fuji X-T4, my Ricoh GRIII being supported natively). At some point it will stop working with macOS the way CS6 did, but I also flipped the bozo bit on Apple so my plan is to switch to Linux and DarkTable, which is making great strides.