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Thank you for the very thoroughly detailed reply! > I'd be very wary of using it on anything new. That makes sense and I can understand it. On the other hand,

Thank you for the very thoroughly detailed reply! > I'd be very wary of using it on anything new. That makes sense and I can understand it. On the other hand, the a text editor and todo app aren't exactly new apps ideas. > "Save this note to Dropbox" or "Open Twitter with this note's content as the tweet" and the list goes on. Perhaps this is a failing on my part again but... how is that an app problem? If the user has a Dropbox account or Twitter account then don't those provide the services through the OS? So every app works with Dropbox (or Nextcloud or Google Drive or their local filesystem) and every app can share a link to Twitter (or to Nextcloud or Slack or Discord or Twitch or ...). Why does the app need special integrations with the provider? I would argue that's a failure of Dropbox or Twitter. They shouldn't provide APIs or toolkits that apps need to use. They should integrate with the OS and become a provider of services to the OS. Then every app gets the ability to save things to Dropbox or post something to Twitter. > Apollo lets you use the base app for free but for nice/power-user features you have to pay for a subscription. Cool. Apollo isn't a text editor or a todo app though. > I have plenty of iOS games that have died because they were never updated. I paid for them once and now they don't run at all on my phone I assume they don't run on your current phone. Do they still run on your old phone? > Mobile development is difficult and needs to be ongoing which leads us to subscriptions seeing how there isn't a better method out there that I'm aware of. Mobile development doesn't need to be difficult. It's made difficult by Apple's continuously-moving goalposts. > BBEdit charges for the new major versions of it's app and to me, if you are releasing on a regular schedule, that's pretty much the same as a subscription. In many ways, I agree. But there's one important distinction. I can pull up my old Mac OS 9 machine and run my old BBEdit on it. I'd be willing to bet that if I bought BBEdit ten years ago for Mac OS X on Intel then it would still run on today's Mac OS X even if it doesn't have all of the fancy new features of a new version. > Subscriptions help solve part of that problem by incentivizing developers to keep their apps updated or people will leave for ones that do. I don't have a problem whatsoever paying for new features that I want and use. What I have a problem with is this: > apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services Basic text editors and todo apps were solved decades ago. Why do users need to pay for simple text editors as a subscription service? That's a failure of Apple's ecosystem. You clearly want to migrate the discussion to continued developer support and new features. So let's do that then. Let me walk you through my experience. I want to use a terminal on my iPhone. I know that I get terminals for free in Mac OS, Linux, and even Windows has a command prompt. They're literally free. So I see the lack of one in iOS as anti-consumer. Or, most definitely, anti-power-user. But whatever. In Apple's infinite wisdom, users shouldn't have a terminal emulator. So off to the app store I go to search for one. The first result for "terminal" is Termius. It says it needs `in-app purchases`. In-app purchases for a terminal emulator? That sounds like a scam. The next one, xTerminal, also needs in-app purchses. The third one, LibTerm, doesn't say that it needs in-app purchases. But it's 448.7MB in size. Why the hell does a terminal emulator need that much storage to install? Nope, sounds like malware. The fourth one, SSH Client, also wants in-app purchases. I've scrolled two pages and all four of the top results smell fishy. So I don't install a terminal on my phone. I keep using Linux because it does what I want for free. Tech marching on doesn't need to bring scammy baggage with it. Apple's walled garden ecosystem has brought that. And they're not policing their walled garden against anti-consumer behavior.

joshstrange 6y ago
I'll try to keep this reply much more brief. I think the divide between what we think come largely from my expanding into talking about subscription service as a whole instead of just the examples you gave: text editor and todo app. I can completely understand why some people might be fine with a text editor or todo app that doesn't change much and I'll ceed the point to you that the speed of mobile platforms causes work that might not otherwise be needed. Some of that comes from it still being a changing landscape where technology is improving. Desktops/laptops have not seen as large of leaps in part because they started from a much higher point. For a long time mobile phones had to be pretty limited because if they weren't they'd burn through the battery in no time at all (see: lack of backgrounding in early iOS/Android). I think the desktop platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) started from a much more mature (and open) place and thus it was easier to write something that would stand the test of time. Even then, things like gedit still get updates, nothing is ever really "done". > Basic text editors and todo apps were solved decades ago. Yes they were, now people want non-basic versions of both which is was brings up to where we are today. Part of that "required churn" can be blamed on Apple/Google but some of it is due to things that just weren't possible before. I won't pretend that Siri is good but Siri Intents (I think that's what it's called) is a newer (last few years or so) addition and I think it's a decent example of "why would a todo app need a subscription". The platform changes and your users want you to take advantage of the new features so that they can say "Hey Siri, tell Things to remind me do X" (don't get me started on not being able to set defaults). Or, to bring back another example, I might want a widget on my home screen of the next few items on my todo list. Are these features necessary for todo app? No, in the general sense of "necessary" but yes in the sense of "needed to compete in the mobile stores". Platform churn aside, these new features require ongoing development and subscriptions mean you can roll out a feature as soon as it's ready instead of waiting for the next major point release so you have a list of features worth paying for all a once. Could a developer gate each feature behind a 1-time IAP? Sure but as a developer all I can think of is "there be dragons", that sounds miserable to support. I do want to address the terminal program point you made. I've used mobile terminal and later mTerm on my jailbroken iPhone. For moving around my local phone's FS it's decent enough but I hated using it for SSH. The UI was just too clunky for mobile which is why I paid for Prompt1/2. I understand the annoyance at paying for something that is free on desktop but I think that misses the amount of work it takes to get a good SSH client on mobile. Could Apple add a Terminal app in the next OS release? Sure they could but unless they put in a lot of work it would be a terrible experience. I'm not trying to pretend Apple is perfect or blameless but I understand the decision. Lastly, I agree with you that there are some apps that exist that don't require a subscription but one has been shoehorned in. I don't pay for apps like that, I guess I bristled up when you mentioned text editors (to which I pivoted to my notes app, Drafts) and todo manager (to which my mind jumped to Things), both of which I pay via a subscription. Your broader point about subscriptions being forced into some apps that don't make sense is correct, I just think sometimes people throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to subscriptions. PS: If you are looking for linux-like terminal on iOS I would suggest you look at iSH[0]. It's free, open source, and seems like it would be something you might like. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243

joshstrange 6y ago

I'll try to keep this reply much more brief. I think the divide between what we think come largely from my expanding into talking about subscription service as a whole instead of just the examples you gave: text editor and todo app. I can completely understand why some people might be fine with a text editor or todo app that doesn't change much and I'll ceed the point to you that the speed of mobile platforms causes work that might not otherwise be needed. Some of that comes from it still being a changing landscape where technology is improving. Desktops/laptops have not seen as large of leaps in part because they started from a much higher point. For a long time mobile phones had to be pretty limited because if they weren't they'd burn through the battery in no time at all (see: lack of backgrounding in early iOS/Android). I think the desktop platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) started from a much more mature (and open) place and thus it was easier to write something that would stand the test of time. Even then, things like gedit still get updates, nothing is ever really "done". > Basic text editors and todo apps were solved decades ago. Yes they were, now people want non-basic versions of both which is was brings up to where we are today. Part of that "required churn" can be blamed on Apple/Google but some of it is due to things that just weren't possible before. I won't pretend that Siri is good but Siri Intents (I think that's what it's called) is a newer (last few years or so) addition and I think it's a decent example of "why would a todo app need a subscription". The platform changes and your users want you to take advantage of the new features so that they can say "Hey Siri, tell Things to remind me do X" (don't get me started on not being able to set defaults). Or, to bring back another example, I might want a widget on my home screen of the next few items on my todo list. Are these features necessary for todo app? No, in the general sense of "necessary" but yes in the sense of "needed to compete in the mobile stores". Platform churn aside, these new features require ongoing development and subscriptions mean you can roll out a feature as soon as it's ready instead of waiting for the next major point release so you have a list of features worth paying for all a once. Could a developer gate each feature behind a 1-time IAP? Sure but as a developer all I can think of is "there be dragons", that sounds miserable to support. I do want to address the terminal program point you made. I've used mobile terminal and later mTerm on my jailbroken iPhone. For moving around my local phone's FS it's decent enough but I hated using it for SSH. The UI was just too clunky for mobile which is why I paid for Prompt1/2. I understand the annoyance at paying for something that is free on desktop but I think that misses the amount of work it takes to get a good SSH client on mobile. Could Apple add a Terminal app in the next OS release? Sure they could but unless they put in a lot of work it would be a terrible experience. I'm not trying to pretend Apple is perfect or blameless but I understand the decision. Lastly, I agree with you that there are some apps that exist that don't require a subscription but one has been shoehorned in. I don't pay for apps like that, I guess I bristled up when you mentioned text editors (to which I pivoted to my notes app, Drafts) and todo manager (to which my mind jumped to Things), both of which I pay via a subscription. Your broader point about subscriptions being forced into some apps that don't make sense is correct, I just think sometimes people throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to subscriptions. PS: If you are looking for linux-like terminal on iOS I would suggest you look at iSH[0]. It's free, open source, and seems like it would be something you might like. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243