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> or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really wo
by Macha 5y ago
> or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades.
To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really would pay for. Largely enabling that is why they moved to the subscription process because people like me would use IntelliJ 18 for five or so years then update for OS support or whatever. €100/yr is way more than I used to pay for intelliJ, €240/yr is way more than I used to pay for Photoshop, etc. because SaaS conversions generally involved splitting the old upfront price as if customers were on a 2 year upgrade cycle rather than 5.
As for security updates, these feel like general hygiene, e.g. if someone's selling a physical electronic product here they need to keep it from manufacturer defects for two years. If my headphones have a bug where they catch fire the manufacturer needs to eat the cost and recall and fix/replace/refund them. Even if it does wipe out their margin from the upfront €100 cost. Similarly if commercial software lets someone own my computer with log message, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect recent software to be fixed.
- jsmith99 5y agoAt least Microsoft are still making personal office subscriptions cheaper than buying office was. 5 users, each with several devices and their own terabyte of OneDrive, is £60 a year at many retailers. I assume they will jack up the price later.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago> Microsoft are still making personal office subscriptions cheaper than buying office was. Nah you are missing the forest for the trees. Office at the moment is a gateway drug for Microsoft to get you on their cloud services. Office is not an end product anymore, it is a hook to capture market into their cloud services. They could sell office at a loss and still make money from all the Corporate/government contracts they got hooked on Azure.
- ericd 5y agoEh I still chose to buy, I usually use a copy of office for 5-10 years, so it’s still vastly cheaper to buy.
- monkey_monkey 5y agoIf that's your IntelliJ usage model, why don't you just go for the perpetual licence and then update after 5 years (or whenever)?
- kaetemi 5y agoYou can get Photoshop for half the price with the Photography bundle. Just includes less cloud space, which you probably don't use.
- sirwitti 5y agoEven though I don't like paying for software monthly, I think that the JetBrains suite of tools is an example of how this can be a fair deal. 100€/year for tools I use professionally every day and that improve my business is a no-brainer to me. Also I really like the way the prices go down if you use it for more than a year.
- cooperadymas 5y agoYour specific use case is explicitly afforded by Jetbrains licensing model. I don't think there is any problem to be had. You can buy a license now, use it for 5 years, then buy another. https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
- justsomehnguy 5y ago> If my headphones have a bug where they catch fire the manufacturer needs to eat the cost and recall and fix/replace/refund them > Even if it does wipe out their margin from the upfront €100 cost. That assumes what the initial price wasn't at least x20, though. > splitting the old upfront price as if customers were on a 2 year upgrade cycle rather than 5. It is also about perceived cost and maintenance costs: you can charge $10/y but ~$3 from this sum would go to fees and taxes, and you still need a profit margin and sustainability margin for the future growth (and recession) and to be able to give out refunds.
- Macha 5y ago> That assumes what the initial price wasn't at least x20, though. Yes, I assume this is true because these companies were profitable businesses charging 2x annual, not 20x, before the move to subscription models. Requiring 20 years of subscription to profit sounds highly risky and not all the kind of thing investors would support.
- fy20 5y agoPhotoshop CS2 in 2005 was $599 for the full version. Today that's the equivalent of $850. That would pay for 3.5 years with the current subscription model. So if you were upgrading every 2 years it's actually cheaper now, but of course if you wanted to keep the old version for 5 years it would be more expensive.
- ericd 5y agoRight, and the old way let you choose your upgrade cycle, rather than letting the company choose how often they’d like to make you buy.
- warrenm 5y agoOutside of [possibly] amateur hobbyists, who isn't upgrading their software/hardware at least every ~3 years?
- Macha 5y agoHave you _seen_ the IT infrastructure of some non-tech companies? The amount of companies that had to scramble for the Windows 7 (released 2009) EOL in 2020?
- warrenm 5y agoI'm aware that some laces are completely unaware of the world around them Doesn't change the fact that the world keeps going whether you're paying attention or not
- warrenm 5y agoThis is more-or-less how Logos (a bible study tool suite) works: you buy this "version", and you get updates until/unless a new "version" comes out You can keep running old version(s) as long as you want - but when a major rev releases, they have an upgrade option The updates aren't "indefinite" - but they're pretty long-lasting
- erwincoumans 5y agoIndeed. I'm still using Paintshop Pro 7.04 10th anniversity edition, that I purchased in 2001. It still works great today, blazing fast.