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> We don't want "super cheap products", we want reasonably priced products we own after we buy. I am afraid the ‘we’ here isn’t nearly as large a demographic a

> We don't want "super cheap products", we want reasonably priced products we own after we buy. I am afraid the ‘we’ here isn’t nearly as large a demographic as you think it is. If it was, we wouldn’t see the mass of advertising supported products we see. Mainstream consumers do want free / cheap products, despite the many caveats associated with them and the market has adjusted to give them that. The other follow up is, as a consumer, how do you determine what is a reasonable price for something. You have no visibility into the COGS other than your own experiences which may or may not apply. Similar to the OP, I am not advocating for high subscriptions with no value or horrible dark patterns around unsubscribing…

uoaei 5y ago
Sometimes people think they want things a certain way because 1. They have no idea it can be different 2. They wouldn't know what it would look like if it were different 3. They don't understand, or they resign to accept, the ethical implications of the status quo
willis936 5y ago
Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them. People prefer free and second to that a one-time payment model. Maybe that payment only includes a year of patches, but people still prefer it. Companies prefer subscriptions because it maximizes revenue. It's as simple as that. Zero sum game between company and consumer.
- afarrell 5y ago
  > Nobody likes them. If that was true, financing wouldn't exist for consumer products. In practice, people pay extra to turn a one-time payment into a subscription.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Except with financing you own the product and one day the payments end. You're saying that home ownership is the same as renting if you don't buy upfront? That's simply not true. Also, the vast majority of people would prefer to live in a home they own than burn money renting.
    - andrewlgood 5y ago
      Some financing leads to ownership. Leasing a car does not lead to ownership - it is an extended rental. I am not a fan of products that make it difficult to unsubscribe, but I do like the variable cost aspect of SaaS. Generally quick to start using and quick to stop. I have not seen it commented on, but my sense is security is easier with a SaaS model. How many pirated versions of software have you come across in your career pre-Saas?
- warrenm 5y ago
  >Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them That's patently false I, for one, happen to like being able to push costs from capex to opex (and yes, that's true for my own personal use like it is for business use) *for most things) - a subscription price gives me a closer approximation of a given tool's/service's value proposition than does a one-off purchase (most of the time) Everything from car leases (albeit I typically purchase my cars, leases most definitely have their place for a significant portion of vehicle operators) to Netflix fees come in the form of a "subscription" - follow the terms of the subscription, and you get to use whatever it is as long as you want
  - willis936 5y ago
    Leasing vs. ownership of cars is a great example of having a choice between ownership and a service. About 1/3 of cars are leased rather than owned. I should say your choice to subscribe should not be taken away. I don't think my choice to own should be taken away.
    - warrenm 5y ago
      The example breaks-down (no pun intended) on cars, though: software is likely not usable after 3-5 years (the length of a normal car lease) Cars are typically usable for well over a decade :)
      - willis936 5y ago
        My Acrobat 9.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth. I still run it on occasion, but there are more issues with DPI scaling and new PDF features. It looks like Adobe does sell one-time purchases of Acrobat Pro 2020 for $450. I'll cease my cloud-yelling.
      - ryandrake 5y ago
        > software is likely not usable after 3-5 years Whoa whoa wait! How did we get to this point? Maybe I’m living in the past, but software should work essentially forever. There are no moving parts. No wear/maintenance items. It doesn't distort like a photocopy when loaded to and from media. The only thing that should cause working software to fail is some underlying change to its foundation: an incompatible OS or browser change or deprecated API, and so on, and we should hold platform vendors accountable for regressions and breakage. I wish platforms took backward compatibility seriously. Apart from a cosmic ray flipping a bit somewhere, there is no physics reason software should “wear out.” How did this become a fringe point of view?

uoaei 5y ago

Sometimes people think they want things a certain way because 1. They have no idea it can be different 2. They wouldn't know what it would look like if it were different 3. They don't understand, or they resign to accept, the ethical implications of the status quo

willis936 5y ago

Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them. People prefer free and second to that a one-time payment model. Maybe that payment only includes a year of patches, but people still prefer it. Companies prefer subscriptions because it maximizes revenue. It's as simple as that. Zero sum game between company and consumer.

afarrell 5y ago
> Nobody likes them. If that was true, financing wouldn't exist for consumer products. In practice, people pay extra to turn a one-time payment into a subscription.
- willis936 5y ago
  Except with financing you own the product and one day the payments end. You're saying that home ownership is the same as renting if you don't buy upfront? That's simply not true. Also, the vast majority of people would prefer to live in a home they own than burn money renting.
  - andrewlgood 5y ago
    Some financing leads to ownership. Leasing a car does not lead to ownership - it is an extended rental. I am not a fan of products that make it difficult to unsubscribe, but I do like the variable cost aspect of SaaS. Generally quick to start using and quick to stop. I have not seen it commented on, but my sense is security is easier with a SaaS model. How many pirated versions of software have you come across in your career pre-Saas?
warrenm 5y ago
>Nobody asked for subscriptions. Nobody likes them That's patently false I, for one, happen to like being able to push costs from capex to opex (and yes, that's true for my own personal use like it is for business use) *for most things) - a subscription price gives me a closer approximation of a given tool's/service's value proposition than does a one-off purchase (most of the time) Everything from car leases (albeit I typically purchase my cars, leases most definitely have their place for a significant portion of vehicle operators) to Netflix fees come in the form of a "subscription" - follow the terms of the subscription, and you get to use whatever it is as long as you want
- willis936 5y ago
  Leasing vs. ownership of cars is a great example of having a choice between ownership and a service. About 1/3 of cars are leased rather than owned. I should say your choice to subscribe should not be taken away. I don't think my choice to own should be taken away.
  - warrenm 5y ago
    The example breaks-down (no pun intended) on cars, though: software is likely not usable after 3-5 years (the length of a normal car lease) Cars are typically usable for well over a decade :)
    - willis936 5y ago
      My Acrobat 9.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth. I still run it on occasion, but there are more issues with DPI scaling and new PDF features. It looks like Adobe does sell one-time purchases of Acrobat Pro 2020 for $450. I'll cease my cloud-yelling.
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      > software is likely not usable after 3-5 years Whoa whoa wait! How did we get to this point? Maybe I’m living in the past, but software should work essentially forever. There are no moving parts. No wear/maintenance items. It doesn't distort like a photocopy when loaded to and from media. The only thing that should cause working software to fail is some underlying change to its foundation: an incompatible OS or browser change or deprecated API, and so on, and we should hold platform vendors accountable for regressions and breakage. I wish platforms took backward compatibility seriously. Apart from a cosmic ray flipping a bit somewhere, there is no physics reason software should “wear out.” How did this become a fringe point of view?