7 ms·

The problem is that many people, even in developer circles like here on HN, are still very negative when it comes to subscriptions. From a consumer point of vi

The problem is that many people, even in developer circles like here on HN, are still very negative when it comes to subscriptions. From a consumer point of view that's understandable: Everyone wants to keep their recurring costs low. But from a developer point of view, this is an antiquated way of thinking about software. Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working. Even more so on platforms like iOS, where you're beholden to the whims of the platform OS. So you need recurring revenue to offset that maintenance cost. I wish consumers would understand this better.

tomc1985 5y ago
I wish businesses would understand that inflicting subscriptions on consumers is a lot more onerous than they think. A subscription means one has to use the software they paid for. You can't have it sit on a shelf for those once-every-few-months use cases. It means having to manage a million stupid business relationships with vendors that one doesn't want to have to deal with. It means trolling credit card statements after-the-fact to make sure the subscription was actually cancelled when that comes time, and it means dealing with the cancellation process (and whatever dark patterns the vendor throws down) on a fairly regular basis. The old paid-updates model isn't "antiquated", it's customer-centric. Subscriptions are the opposite: customer-hostile. The service worker earning minimum wage can't afford a million subscriptions. Your subscription means they are a lost customer, and it means they cannot invest in their future in a way that they can effectively control their costs. It's a great way to get your stuff pirated. Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. I don't want to live in a future where I am beholden to a million rent-seeking wantrepreneurs because they forgot how to finance their business the old-fashioned way, or because they are afraid of being "antiquated" The SAAS mentality really, really, really needs to die.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  > Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. How is paying $1000 better than paying $32 every six months and getting access for the entire month? $1000 better if you'll use it for 30 months without interruptions but it sounds like that's not your use-case.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Photoshop is $10 per month in the photography plan on adobe's site, but only on an annual basis. MSRP and business users pay $30+ a month by itself. In either case where are you getting $32 every six months? I guess the photography plan is competitive, but it's still a subscription. I hate paying monthly fees for anything, especially for something I don't use. Much prefer to pay a higher fixed cost and finance that on my own... and yes I preferred this when I was a poor student; I bought a lot of expensive software back in the day by saving what I could from my $12/hour (in 2004 money) day job. And believe it or not, being able to open the program and have it simply work, without going through a bunch of login/update/subscription hassle, is really important for creativity. Technical crap regularly derails my creative process when I'm manic with an idea, so the possible premium is worth it.
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      $10 is annual which is not useful when you need it once every 6 months. You wrote that you need Photoshop every 6 months. It means that you can pay $32, get access for a month and cancel subscription afterwards. I get what you're saying, but my point is that $1000 is ludicrously expensive when you only rarely need that software and in this case cheap subscription is a good option. I would not consider $1000 for Photoshop at all, but $32 is something I could pay if there's no free or cheap alternative.
      - 5y ago
nitrogen 5y ago
I wish consumers would understand this better. Developers aren't consumers, they are producers. And producers understand that durability and longevity are more important than enabling the rent-for-life, own nothing, subservient economy.
- cloogshicer 5y ago
  I understand what you mean. I also think that durability and longevity are very important. But wouldn't you agree that those qualities are very difficult to achieve and thus expensive? Part of the problem is that software development is still in its infancy in my understanding. Average software quality and reliability just isn't very high.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    But wouldn't you agree that those qualities are very difficult to achieve and thus expensive? I don't think I would agree with that. With software, durability is the default. I can write a program once, and run it on the same hardware until the capacitors fail. It takes active intervention in the form of forced upgrades and planned obsolescence to make software "decay." For a producer as I'm using that term in my previous comment, software is a tool. If I buy a physical tool, I will pay up front for fine craftsmanship, but from there on that tool belongs to me, and I expect it to last as long as the care I give it allows. I expect to do the same with software. If a software vendor wants more money, they need to provide more value in return. Note that this does not mean I would never pay for subscription services, but I will not stand for companies trying to blur the line between service and tool.
    - spronkey 5y ago
      First comment in this thread that's hit the nail on the head with regards to why software requires maintenance. After all, if I write an algorithm, how on earth does it just stop working after a while? Fixing flaws is a separate and legitimate concern, but whether feature or security, this is solved by the idea of a warranty where the purchase price includes the product, and some time-limited obligation to ensure that it is fit for purpose. Once that's up, it's up to the developer to determine whether it's worth their while continuing to support it - but at least the end user can run it on the platform they originally purchased it on. Theoretically. Then comes the hiding-in-plain-sight pernicious moneymaker mentioned: platform planned obsolescence. It comes in many forms, forced upgrades as mentioned, but also things like "turn on auto-updates because that's just what you do these days", "oh this is a 32-bit app so you can't run it anymore - pester the developer". Then there's all the developer-side stuff like "32-bit apps don't work anymore, update", "Oh neither does the older SDK, update that too", "Oh didn't we mention there's this new screen shape and you have to add support for that too", and "oh if you don't do all this stuff your app will disappear from the store in X days". What about the less obvious stuff like "this new SDK/toolkit/platform library is the way to build new apps! There's not really a clear upgrade path, but it's the one true way. Until the next one." It's next to impossible for developers to solve this problem because it is an externality imposed on them by platform vendors. It is the main reason why software, in the short term, needs to be maintained. Of course, long term you expect that big developments and innovations would result in some level of obsolescence, but the devices and software industries have an incredibly fast rate of churn even for the pace of innovation. It's very interesting using systems from 5, 10, 20 years ago just to see how far we've come (or in many cases, how far we haven't). Apple in particular has driven this by consistently eschewing backwards compatibility, constantly churning their SDKs, and continuously breaking older platforms. It's no surprise, they have two strong financial incentives to do so: if new software requires new Apple hardware, that's new revenue for them, providing they can convince us to buy it. If new hardware requires new software, that's new revenue for them thanks to their app stores. If they can get developers to move to subscription models well, that increases the recurring revenue via IAPs. Force them to use your payment and accounting services too, clipping the ticket along the way? More revenue! We're the suckers though - we've been conditioned so hard to expect their stuff to be somewhat fragile, expensive to repair, and severely limited in lifespan that we almost like it. You dropped your phone? Oh the glass on the back has all broken. That's integral to the chassis, so it's a really expensive repair - over half the cost of a new one. Might as well treat yourself. No don't listen to that Rossmann guy, he's obviously <unsafe/counterfeit/untrustworthy>, eyes over here buddy, look at my pretty blue shirt. Oh hey, if you go to him Face ID won't work, because a nation-state actor might have installed an intercept on his dodgy counterfeit screen. You want to keep secure right? Anyway what were we saying again? Oh yeah, the new one. Oh you also ran out of storage? It's only been 5 years, the base model still has the same amount, so why don't you pay a bit more and get the upgrade. After all it only makes sense that you'd accumulate stuff over time right? What did you say, SD card? RAM stick? nVME SSD? No no no, they're way too slow/insecure/low-tech/dangerous to work with iPhone/Mac. No no your friend who put one in his computer has a PC - these are Macs, entirely different type of thing. Of course software needs to be maintained, of course it does. How could it possibly work on your new machines, how on earth! I digress...
1_player 5y ago
> I wish consumers would understand this better. No. I routinely buy software and lifetime subscriptions in the $10 to $100 range without batting an eye, but if I had to pay $5 a month for every piece of software or service I use, I would spend thousands of dollars every single month and it'd be ridiculous even if I'm lucky enough to be able to afford that. There's a place for recurring subscriptions and a place for fixed priced software that is supposed to work for eternity, even if without upgrades. Don't blame the consumer if they don't want to pay $5 a month for a standalone app.
- HumblyTossed 5y ago
  This sums it up. Even for people who make great money, how many subscriptions do devs really think we want to have?
  - zepto 5y ago
    Not many, but that just reveals a more painful truth - how much time do people have to invest in using apps? The answer is not much, that’s the real bottleneck. You can’t expect people to pay for what they can’t use, and we just can’t use all that much software because we don’t have time for it.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  What grinds my gears is when an app goes subscription and then jacks their prices. Fantastical 2 was a $50 one-time purchase. Fantastical 3 is $60 per year. If you switch to a subscription model, your new price better be no more than your expected amortized purchase price. If you use to launch paid major version upgrades every 2 years at $100 a pop, your rental price needs to be less than $50 per year to make up for the lack in functionality. Don't try to be a used car salesman and emphasize the "low monthly payment" when your customers are used to considering the total annual cost.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Apps keep working for years though. On Android anything since KitKat still works.
- blihp 5y ago
  If you're talking about apps via Google Play, only for some kinds of apps (ironically, the ones that make minimal use of platform specific features tend to fare the best... typically games) Also, Google is actively culling apps from the app store that don't upgrade to recent Android SDKs which often forces additional development to make the migration. For many apps, that means they will die/disappear since the economics of mobile don't justify their continued development.
syshum 5y ago
>>Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working Funny because I know many many many business that run entirely on old unmaintained code, code that can not be maintained because upgrading it will break things, will make things stop working.
izacus 5y ago
In the great subscription exodus of 2018, about 10-15 of my apps moved to this "sustainable" subscription model. Only two are still being maintained with proper new features and improved (those would be 1Password and Jetbrains tooling). All the other apps pretty much stopped feature work and are now mostly more broken than they were before switching to the subscription model. There's an occasional update, but it's all pretty much dead. So out of that deal I (as a user) have gotten pretty much nothing - the developer is constantly taking my money with nothing to offer in return. If I stop paying, they'll take away the app I've paid for. Compare this to something like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop model - I pay license every year to get support for new OS and new feature. But it's MY choice whether I want to pay and if the updates actually offer me VALUE for the money. And this keeps us honest - honest money for honest value delivered with incentive for developer to keep maintaining their software and not just sitting on their rent-seeking vendor lockin. It seriously sucks that Apple and Google don't allow for that sales model in their stores - it makes the market worse for all of us.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  Could you name and shame some of the apps your are talking about? I pay for 1Password and JetBrains and similarly am happy with them but I also pay for a number of other subscriptions and I haven't felt the same "resting on their laurels" that you are describing.
  - izacus 5y ago
    Out of top of my mind - Evernote, Lightroom on Desktop. A PDF reader on my Android phone (still doesn't support dark mode, years after introduction). Boostnote, another note-taking app. LastPass also doesn't really justify their costs considering their poor engineering.
    - eric_cc 5y ago
      Boostnote is still free and open source. They also have a paid version but there is no real reason to switch to it.
    - 5y ago
lacker 5y ago
The problem is that many people, even in developer circles like here on HN, are still very negative when it comes to subscriptions. It's always going to be that way, and that's okay. It's still the right move for professional iOS tools to move to a subscription model. Some fraction of your user base will complain and refuse to subscribe. But if you actually make a good tool, you will fairly quickly see an increase in revenue, which lets you invest more in making a good product. A bunch of people will periodically complain on HN that they don't like subscriptions and it's not too hard to just ignore that and move on. Don't look at 10 people complaining on HN and conclude "this must not be the best business model".
eps 5y ago
Very few people object to paying for updates as an option. The expectation is that if you got a version now and it works fine, then you should be able to keep using it without paying. It's only fair, because after all developer costs here are exactly zero. If later on you see an update with something you like, then you pay again. That's the model a lot of Windows desktop software is rapidly converging to and it's a good fit for subscriptions, as a convenience option. In comparison, any software that drops completely dead once you stop paying comes across as a rip-off and quite rightfully so.
fouc 5y ago
> Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working. That's only true in the context of the environment the software is in. The environment is very hostile to supporting old versions of software. We keep pushing out operating system updates and updates on linked libraries and so on, mostly in the name of security and feature creep.. and software that worked perfectly fine at one point are gradually murdered. It's kind of a tragedy.
appleiigs 5y ago
As a consumer when I buy a product I expect it to be a finished product with minimal bugs. If it does have bugs it should be remedied/fixed and I shouldn't have to pay for it (similar to a warranty). If there are new features, I'll pay for them if I want them.
- blihp 5y ago
  That's only feasible if the platform is relatively stable. The problem, especially with 'modern' platforms, is that it doesn't even remotely work that way anymore. On iOS and Android, for example, they make breaking changes nearly every major release of their respective platforms. So for an application to look like it's standing still (i.e. just to keep working from release to release) takes a non-trivial amount of work.
  - yreg 5y ago
    Well iOS Transmit still works just fine, 3 years after it was discontinued…
  - Hammershaft 5y ago
    This is one the larger reasons iOS (& android) gaming is such a vapid wasteland of exploitative f2p trash. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g... The 'Pay Once' model used for quality self contained games that you see on windows or consoles are unsustainable for constantly incompatible os updates.
zepto 5y ago
All these points are correct, but you leave out the counterpoint which is that once a company has recurring revenue, the incentive to update the software in ways that benefit the existing users can be lower. Increasing the size of the user base becomes a priority over refining service for existing users, and that often means developing features that existing users don’t need or changing the UI in ways that make things easier for new users but worse for power users.
vbezhenar 5y ago
I hate when software changes. When I'm buying software, I want for it to stay as it is. All new features don't bring anything but bloat. All I need is bugfixes and security fixes. It does not require a significant investments. So my ideal software is when developer spends some time, builds a program, sells it and spends a little time keeping it alive. There are some exceptions. For example Intellij Idea should support new Java versions which might require significant development. But those are exceptions (for example I hate almost all new Intellij Idea features, thankfully most of them could be disabled).
Hammershaft 5y ago
What possible advantage do subscriptions have for users over license upgrades? The incentives of license upgrades are much more tuned towards developers adding meaningful features, and also more tuned towards developers finishing development on a product when it is mature. Beyond that, license upgrades allow users to actually keep what they have paid for. I'm convinced a major reason Adobe made the switch to a cloud subscription was because they recognized their products were maturing and the window was closing on locking in recurring revenue before the licensed product was so mature there would be little incentive for users to subscribe.
darkarmani 5y ago
> Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working. I don't understand this mentality. I can run an 8 year old version of nginx just fine. Why would it stop working?

tomc1985 5y ago

I wish businesses would understand that inflicting subscriptions on consumers is a lot more onerous than they think. A subscription means one has to use the software they paid for. You can't have it sit on a shelf for those once-every-few-months use cases. It means having to manage a million stupid business relationships with vendors that one doesn't want to have to deal with. It means trolling credit card statements after-the-fact to make sure the subscription was actually cancelled when that comes time, and it means dealing with the cancellation process (and whatever dark patterns the vendor throws down) on a fairly regular basis. The old paid-updates model isn't "antiquated", it's customer-centric. Subscriptions are the opposite: customer-hostile. The service worker earning minimum wage can't afford a million subscriptions. Your subscription means they are a lost customer, and it means they cannot invest in their future in a way that they can effectively control their costs. It's a great way to get your stuff pirated. Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. I don't want to live in a future where I am beholden to a million rent-seeking wantrepreneurs because they forgot how to finance their business the old-fashioned way, or because they are afraid of being "antiquated" The SAAS mentality really, really, really needs to die.

vbezhenar 5y ago
> Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. How is paying $1000 better than paying $32 every six months and getting access for the entire month? $1000 better if you'll use it for 30 months without interruptions but it sounds like that's not your use-case.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Photoshop is $10 per month in the photography plan on adobe's site, but only on an annual basis. MSRP and business users pay $30+ a month by itself. In either case where are you getting $32 every six months? I guess the photography plan is competitive, but it's still a subscription. I hate paying monthly fees for anything, especially for something I don't use. Much prefer to pay a higher fixed cost and finance that on my own... and yes I preferred this when I was a poor student; I bought a lot of expensive software back in the day by saving what I could from my $12/hour (in 2004 money) day job. And believe it or not, being able to open the program and have it simply work, without going through a bunch of login/update/subscription hassle, is really important for creativity. Technical crap regularly derails my creative process when I'm manic with an idea, so the possible premium is worth it.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    $10 is annual which is not useful when you need it once every 6 months. You wrote that you need Photoshop every 6 months. It means that you can pay $32, get access for a month and cancel subscription afterwards. I get what you're saying, but my point is that $1000 is ludicrously expensive when you only rarely need that software and in this case cheap subscription is a good option. I would not consider $1000 for Photoshop at all, but $32 is something I could pay if there's no free or cheap alternative.
    - 5y ago

nitrogen 5y ago

I wish consumers would understand this better. Developers aren't consumers, they are producers. And producers understand that durability and longevity are more important than enabling the rent-for-life, own nothing, subservient economy.

cloogshicer 5y ago
I understand what you mean. I also think that durability and longevity are very important. But wouldn't you agree that those qualities are very difficult to achieve and thus expensive? Part of the problem is that software development is still in its infancy in my understanding. Average software quality and reliability just isn't very high.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nitrogen 5y ago
  But wouldn't you agree that those qualities are very difficult to achieve and thus expensive? I don't think I would agree with that. With software, durability is the default. I can write a program once, and run it on the same hardware until the capacitors fail. It takes active intervention in the form of forced upgrades and planned obsolescence to make software "decay." For a producer as I'm using that term in my previous comment, software is a tool. If I buy a physical tool, I will pay up front for fine craftsmanship, but from there on that tool belongs to me, and I expect it to last as long as the care I give it allows. I expect to do the same with software. If a software vendor wants more money, they need to provide more value in return. Note that this does not mean I would never pay for subscription services, but I will not stand for companies trying to blur the line between service and tool.
  - spronkey 5y ago
    First comment in this thread that's hit the nail on the head with regards to why software requires maintenance. After all, if I write an algorithm, how on earth does it just stop working after a while? Fixing flaws is a separate and legitimate concern, but whether feature or security, this is solved by the idea of a warranty where the purchase price includes the product, and some time-limited obligation to ensure that it is fit for purpose. Once that's up, it's up to the developer to determine whether it's worth their while continuing to support it - but at least the end user can run it on the platform they originally purchased it on. Theoretically. Then comes the hiding-in-plain-sight pernicious moneymaker mentioned: platform planned obsolescence. It comes in many forms, forced upgrades as mentioned, but also things like "turn on auto-updates because that's just what you do these days", "oh this is a 32-bit app so you can't run it anymore - pester the developer". Then there's all the developer-side stuff like "32-bit apps don't work anymore, update", "Oh neither does the older SDK, update that too", "Oh didn't we mention there's this new screen shape and you have to add support for that too", and "oh if you don't do all this stuff your app will disappear from the store in X days". What about the less obvious stuff like "this new SDK/toolkit/platform library is the way to build new apps! There's not really a clear upgrade path, but it's the one true way. Until the next one." It's next to impossible for developers to solve this problem because it is an externality imposed on them by platform vendors. It is the main reason why software, in the short term, needs to be maintained. Of course, long term you expect that big developments and innovations would result in some level of obsolescence, but the devices and software industries have an incredibly fast rate of churn even for the pace of innovation. It's very interesting using systems from 5, 10, 20 years ago just to see how far we've come (or in many cases, how far we haven't). Apple in particular has driven this by consistently eschewing backwards compatibility, constantly churning their SDKs, and continuously breaking older platforms. It's no surprise, they have two strong financial incentives to do so: if new software requires new Apple hardware, that's new revenue for them, providing they can convince us to buy it. If new hardware requires new software, that's new revenue for them thanks to their app stores. If they can get developers to move to subscription models well, that increases the recurring revenue via IAPs. Force them to use your payment and accounting services too, clipping the ticket along the way? More revenue! We're the suckers though - we've been conditioned so hard to expect their stuff to be somewhat fragile, expensive to repair, and severely limited in lifespan that we almost like it. You dropped your phone? Oh the glass on the back has all broken. That's integral to the chassis, so it's a really expensive repair - over half the cost of a new one. Might as well treat yourself. No don't listen to that Rossmann guy, he's obviously <unsafe/counterfeit/untrustworthy>, eyes over here buddy, look at my pretty blue shirt. Oh hey, if you go to him Face ID won't work, because a nation-state actor might have installed an intercept on his dodgy counterfeit screen. You want to keep secure right? Anyway what were we saying again? Oh yeah, the new one. Oh you also ran out of storage? It's only been 5 years, the base model still has the same amount, so why don't you pay a bit more and get the upgrade. After all it only makes sense that you'd accumulate stuff over time right? What did you say, SD card? RAM stick? nVME SSD? No no no, they're way too slow/insecure/low-tech/dangerous to work with iPhone/Mac. No no your friend who put one in his computer has a PC - these are Macs, entirely different type of thing. Of course software needs to be maintained, of course it does. How could it possibly work on your new machines, how on earth! I digress...

1_player 5y ago

> I wish consumers would understand this better. No. I routinely buy software and lifetime subscriptions in the $10 to $100 range without batting an eye, but if I had to pay $5 a month for every piece of software or service I use, I would spend thousands of dollars every single month and it'd be ridiculous even if I'm lucky enough to be able to afford that. There's a place for recurring subscriptions and a place for fixed priced software that is supposed to work for eternity, even if without upgrades. Don't blame the consumer if they don't want to pay $5 a month for a standalone app.

HumblyTossed 5y ago
This sums it up. Even for people who make great money, how many subscriptions do devs really think we want to have?
- zepto 5y ago
  Not many, but that just reveals a more painful truth - how much time do people have to invest in using apps? The answer is not much, that’s the real bottleneck. You can’t expect people to pay for what they can’t use, and we just can’t use all that much software because we don’t have time for it.
kstrauser 5y ago
What grinds my gears is when an app goes subscription and then jacks their prices. Fantastical 2 was a $50 one-time purchase. Fantastical 3 is $60 per year. If you switch to a subscription model, your new price better be no more than your expected amortized purchase price. If you use to launch paid major version upgrades every 2 years at $100 a pop, your rental price needs to be less than $50 per year to make up for the lack in functionality. Don't try to be a used car salesman and emphasize the "low monthly payment" when your customers are used to considering the total annual cost.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Apps keep working for years though. On Android anything since KitKat still works.

blihp 5y ago
If you're talking about apps via Google Play, only for some kinds of apps (ironically, the ones that make minimal use of platform specific features tend to fare the best... typically games) Also, Google is actively culling apps from the app store that don't upgrade to recent Android SDKs which often forces additional development to make the migration. For many apps, that means they will die/disappear since the economics of mobile don't justify their continued development.

syshum 5y ago

>>Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working Funny because I know many many many business that run entirely on old unmaintained code, code that can not be maintained because upgrading it will break things, will make things stop working.

izacus 5y ago

In the great subscription exodus of 2018, about 10-15 of my apps moved to this "sustainable" subscription model. Only two are still being maintained with proper new features and improved (those would be 1Password and Jetbrains tooling). All the other apps pretty much stopped feature work and are now mostly more broken than they were before switching to the subscription model. There's an occasional update, but it's all pretty much dead. So out of that deal I (as a user) have gotten pretty much nothing - the developer is constantly taking my money with nothing to offer in return. If I stop paying, they'll take away the app I've paid for. Compare this to something like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop model - I pay license every year to get support for new OS and new feature. But it's MY choice whether I want to pay and if the updates actually offer me VALUE for the money. And this keeps us honest - honest money for honest value delivered with incentive for developer to keep maintaining their software and not just sitting on their rent-seeking vendor lockin. It seriously sucks that Apple and Google don't allow for that sales model in their stores - it makes the market worse for all of us.

joshstrange 5y ago
Could you name and shame some of the apps your are talking about? I pay for 1Password and JetBrains and similarly am happy with them but I also pay for a number of other subscriptions and I haven't felt the same "resting on their laurels" that you are describing.
- izacus 5y ago
  Out of top of my mind - Evernote, Lightroom on Desktop. A PDF reader on my Android phone (still doesn't support dark mode, years after introduction). Boostnote, another note-taking app. LastPass also doesn't really justify their costs considering their poor engineering.
  - eric_cc 5y ago
    Boostnote is still free and open source. They also have a paid version but there is no real reason to switch to it.
  - 5y ago

lacker 5y ago

The problem is that many people, even in developer circles like here on HN, are still very negative when it comes to subscriptions. It's always going to be that way, and that's okay. It's still the right move for professional iOS tools to move to a subscription model. Some fraction of your user base will complain and refuse to subscribe. But if you actually make a good tool, you will fairly quickly see an increase in revenue, which lets you invest more in making a good product. A bunch of people will periodically complain on HN that they don't like subscriptions and it's not too hard to just ignore that and move on. Don't look at 10 people complaining on HN and conclude "this must not be the best business model".

eps 5y ago

Very few people object to paying for updates as an option. The expectation is that if you got a version now and it works fine, then you should be able to keep using it without paying. It's only fair, because after all developer costs here are exactly zero. If later on you see an update with something you like, then you pay again. That's the model a lot of Windows desktop software is rapidly converging to and it's a good fit for subscriptions, as a convenience option. In comparison, any software that drops completely dead once you stop paying comes across as a rip-off and quite rightfully so.

fouc 5y ago

> Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working. That's only true in the context of the environment the software is in. The environment is very hostile to supporting old versions of software. We keep pushing out operating system updates and updates on linked libraries and so on, mostly in the name of security and feature creep.. and software that worked perfectly fine at one point are gradually murdered. It's kind of a tragedy.

appleiigs 5y ago

As a consumer when I buy a product I expect it to be a finished product with minimal bugs. If it does have bugs it should be remedied/fixed and I shouldn't have to pay for it (similar to a warranty). If there are new features, I'll pay for them if I want them.

blihp 5y ago
That's only feasible if the platform is relatively stable. The problem, especially with 'modern' platforms, is that it doesn't even remotely work that way anymore. On iOS and Android, for example, they make breaking changes nearly every major release of their respective platforms. So for an application to look like it's standing still (i.e. just to keep working from release to release) takes a non-trivial amount of work.
- yreg 5y ago
  Well iOS Transmit still works just fine, 3 years after it was discontinued…
- Hammershaft 5y ago
  This is one the larger reasons iOS (& android) gaming is such a vapid wasteland of exploitative f2p trash. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g... The 'Pay Once' model used for quality self contained games that you see on windows or consoles are unsustainable for constantly incompatible os updates.

zepto 5y ago

All these points are correct, but you leave out the counterpoint which is that once a company has recurring revenue, the incentive to update the software in ways that benefit the existing users can be lower. Increasing the size of the user base becomes a priority over refining service for existing users, and that often means developing features that existing users don’t need or changing the UI in ways that make things easier for new users but worse for power users.

vbezhenar 5y ago

I hate when software changes. When I'm buying software, I want for it to stay as it is. All new features don't bring anything but bloat. All I need is bugfixes and security fixes. It does not require a significant investments. So my ideal software is when developer spends some time, builds a program, sells it and spends a little time keeping it alive. There are some exceptions. For example Intellij Idea should support new Java versions which might require significant development. But those are exceptions (for example I hate almost all new Intellij Idea features, thankfully most of them could be disabled).

Hammershaft 5y ago

What possible advantage do subscriptions have for users over license upgrades? The incentives of license upgrades are much more tuned towards developers adding meaningful features, and also more tuned towards developers finishing development on a product when it is mature. Beyond that, license upgrades allow users to actually keep what they have paid for. I'm convinced a major reason Adobe made the switch to a cloud subscription was because they recognized their products were maturing and the window was closing on locking in recurring revenue before the licensed product was so mature there would be little incentive for users to subscribe.

darkarmani 5y ago

> Software that is not actively maintained (which is expensive) eventually stops working. I don't understand this mentality. I can run an 8 year old version of nginx just fine. Why would it stop working?