19 ms·

What the heck subscription models are you using? In my experience the software gets broken over time and you can't do anything about it, including RUN THE OLD V

What the heck subscription models are you using? In my experience the software gets broken over time and you can't do anything about it, including RUN THE OLD VERSION WHICH WORKED. There's no longer as much incentive for companies to improve because they'll get paid anyway instead of payment being contingent on actually delivering something useful. Yes subscription models are good for developers, no this doesn't make the software better, it makes it worse. (or at the very least to improve much slower) I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative, even though there was a period of time where I would pay for software between when I was poor and had to pirate everything and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. I don't believe SaaS is moral, it basically removes all the power from the consumer and allows the software providers to rake you over the coals over and over. I'm not interested in funding such things. I feel more comfortable with piracy than I do with SaaS on a philosophical level. SaaS companies don't innovate, they buy competitors because they're using an abusive business model with bad incentives. P.S. SaaS can probably be implemented in a decent way, and some SaaS does actually provide an ongoing service, but in general I believe my point stands.

solardev 4y ago
Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.
- phrom 4y ago
  Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows is getting worse by moving towards ads.
  - paultopia 4y ago
    Although TBF office and windows have gotten worse with every version at least since the 1990s.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      Yeah Excel 3.0 had much better cloud multi-user editing support. It really only went downhill after Excel 5.0 came out with this whole VBA nonsense in '93. Unnecessary bloat, really just showcasing the fact Microst doesn't know what it's users actually want. Excel today is way better than the Excel I used in the 90s. I wouldn't trade it for a moment.
    - andylynch 4y ago
      They ruined office with … removing Excel’s 64k row limit, better file format, collaborative editing and better data analysis functions?
      - paultopia 4y ago
        If you're using a tool like excel to work with data with more than 64,000 rows or analyze data, or if you're collaboratively editing a dataset in a non-version-controlled format... best of luck to you, I'll send flowers to your widow.
        andylynch 4y ago
        It’s great for what it does. You might be surprised at how your bank and accountant get stuff done.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    That hasn't been my experience. Windows 11 has more features any any version before it, and same goes for Office.
    - janlaureys 4y ago
- jonwest 4y ago
  Do you feel as though Windows as a SaaS would be better? At least as a consumer I have a choice to say “I’d rather not upgrade to Windows 11 and get the worse experience” and not just login and see that those changes that I wouldn’t have upgraded for have just been pushed down as it happens with a SaaS. Windows, as an example, is an interesting one in that you’re paying once for a license and it’s good more or less indefinitely (or until things stop working and are no longer supported), but Microsoft does still have an obligation to be pushing out updates, whether security or QoL, so I’m not sure that it being worse over time has any reflection on the license model.
  - TingPing 4y ago
    You don't have a choice not to upgrade Windows, not practically, it will go out of support and you can't do anything about it other than hope Windows Next will be more to your liking.
    - krater23 4y ago
      Hello from the past. I'm typing this on a Windows 7, without the most of the updates. Most works fine, just can't install the newest Office or Games. But who wants that? p.s.: Nope, no viruses or things like that. Windows 7 is so old that it's not supported by botnets anymore.
      - SteveNuts 4y ago
        This is like bragging about not wearing a seatbelt because "I haven't flown through the windshield yet"
        thot_experiment 4y ago
        I've flown through the windshield a couple times in my life WRT malware. I've lost so much more time to work computers where I'm forced to use retail Win 10/11 and have to deal with intrusive update policies than I have due to malware. Having to nuke a few computers from orbit once a decade is a small price to pay for having systems that I can trust to work the same as they did yesterday, systems that never interrupt my flow. EDIT: to expand on this a little bit, I think a lot of cybersecurity concerns are basically forced upon us by SaaS as a model. Attack surfaces become much smaller if you can just block things from communicating with the outside entirely. Not to mention the wonderful technology known as a "hardware power switch" good luck remotely turning on my SSD full of tax documents and embarrassing photos.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > Creative Cloud … all subscriptions and getting better all the time. I may be an atypical user—I'm definitely sub-power user in this domain—but everything Adobe has got worse for me since moving to "Creative Cloud".
  - arcturus17 4y ago
    Opposite. I'm an infra-power user that uses AI once every two months, and I like the experience. Can't tell how it is for power users though. Maybe they hate it.
    - JadeNB 4y ago
      > Opposite. I'm an infra-power user that uses AI once every two months, and I like the experience. Can't tell how it is for power users though. Maybe they hate it. Fair enough. I didn't mean to claim that everyone had a negative experience, just that it was far from a one-sided thing where these apps could be said unambiguously to improve. ("In summary, Adobe Creative Cloud is a land of contrasts.")
  - MiddleEndian 4y ago
    I use Creative Cloud as well, but I've found with auto-update you get random unexpected bugs. I disable it, I kill their background processes if I notice them, and occasionally I'll let it update things if I know a new version has something I want.
- tttttt5ts 4y ago
  And your work pays for a lot of that? Must be nice.
  - solardev 4y ago
    No, they pay for a couple, but I pay for most of it. IntelliJ in particular I pay for one because it's affordable enough and two because the corporate price is much much higher than than the individual price and I'm tired of begging companies to buy it, especially when other web devs are happy enough with VSCode.
- dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
  We’ll see how well Figma holds up under Adobe, but at this point, I am not optimistic.
- Diapason 4y ago
  Spotify? What the heck is it doing in this list. When you pay Spotify - you are paying - supposedly for a large part - for Artists's right, not for a Software service.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Spotify is way better than similar offerings though, like Amazon or YouTube or Apple and such. Part of that is because their app makes social playlists easy. Everything from Christmas music to board game nights has a good community driven playlist.
    - exodust 4y ago
      But we can't even "bookmark" or save a position in a playlist. No way to place a pin in a playlist, go listen to something else, then come back to that playlist position. Major let down of Spotify playlists. Also the mandatory syncing across devices is annoying. I sometimes listen on my PC, and don't want my phone to lose it's place where I paused it previously. Also finding playlists by "humans" not algorithms seems deliberately blurred. Spotify wants to push certain content, so they've designed their service to make it unclear or unintuitive if you want to find playlists curated by people only.
- lozenge 4y ago
  I haven't seen any improvement in Spotify in years. Still can't organise songs in any meaningful way, can't rate songs, playlists suck, shuffle is broken, and they keep pushing podcast content when I never listen to podcasts. 1Password also used to sync to Dropbox for free and even had an HTML version that could serve from Dropbox.
  - least 4y ago
    Spotify still hasn't reached feature parity with Spotify when it first came out. Only recently did something as basic as lyrics return. It's still not extensible like it once was.
    - class4behavior 4y ago
      There were no lyrics all this time? Either it's really hard to get people to pay attention to alternatives like Deezer and Tidal or there is little demand for lyrics.
      - least 4y ago
        Spotify's killer feature at this point is probably that they have an ad-supported tier while none of the other services (that I'm aware of) do... unless you count youtube? I think lyrics was a bit of legal hurdle so Spotify had to get rid of it. I imagine they brought it back recently as they worked out a legal way to provide them again.
        class4behavior 4y ago
        Nonsense. Most of them do. Deezer even offered a bigger music archive in the beginning. Tidal started as sub only but added a US only free tier, instead it pays its artist much better.
        least 4y ago
        Apologies, then, my knowledge of the state of music services is apparently quite outdated. Has Deezer always offered a free tier? They're not really on my radar. In either case, I do think some of the points the other comment made are prescient. Spotify Connect is definitely a killer feature and I think Spotify Wrapped is one of those cultural phenomenon that you can't reliably predict the impact of. Network effects definitely seem to be quite powerful.
- falcolas 4y ago
  1password - the non-SAAS version - works a charm on my phone. I haven't needed an update. And aside from compiling for newer phone versions, I haven't noticed an update. Except on the desktop which was updated to be crippled (can't edit items) and it advertises for the SAAS version with every other click. Which, fuck them. Their move to SAAS has done nothing but corrupt what was a good software company.
- FpUser 4y ago
  Out of the products you listed I use 2: IntelliJ - JetBrains actually offers perpetual model along with subscription. That is the reason I use their product. Postman - I use free version to play with the APIs. It costs me nothing and if it disappears tomorrow my development is not going to get disrupted at all as for anything serious I just use plain old scripts that are free.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  Lastpass didn't deliver a single improvement, but they did double the yearly price
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    Switch to 1password or something else ? That's the nice part about subscription - when it's about to expire it's easy to switch. Just make absolutely sure you remove payment info from that scammer site - they charged me for a year after I canceled and supposedly "refunded me" when I went to support forums- but never actually saw money refund. Couldn't be bothered to go further but just the fact that they will charge post cancelation is extremely scummy.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
      I already did as of last week. Waited 3 years, the software is all riddled with bugs and nothing got fixed. Insane
    - chillfox 4y ago
      How do you figure moving hundreds of passwords + shared passwords (requires other people to also move) from one solution to another is easy.
      - agret 4y ago
        Shared passwords is a hard one, they've got you by the gonads there. I moved to Bitwarden and all I did was export my password database as a csv then import it into Bitwarden and it all came across with no issues.
      - Rastonbury 4y ago
        That's a slight strawman, the same thing applies to owned software. If I own non-subscription software and want to migrate to something newer/better, it won't be easy either. It may be even harder if either or both does not come with support. Companies ruining their product lines is not really a good argument against subscriptions unless the company has monopoly like power and customers have no choice but to stick with inferior (these exist). If it's a sticky product, it would've been sticky either way owned or subscribed. Password managers are commodities even if it takes effort to move. Main problem here is bosses want to go with incumbent big dog or has a relationship with sales, sticking the company to products that are subpar or going downhill. If anything subscriptions make it so that there are competitors chasing those dollars while being willing to help you migrate
- Kuinox 4y ago
  Spotify have sound disapearing for licensing reason. I guess that improvement ?
- ambicapter 4y ago
  You don’t think that’s because companies pour more resources into the subscription model software that is making them more money?
- pishpash 4y ago
  But you don't have to upgrade your old purchased software. If your purchased Office worked for you, keep using it. How would it get worse for you?
- coldtea 4y ago
  You've mixed subscription based services (Google storage space) and content (Spotify) with subscription based software. For services, it might make sense. Even so, what exactly is "getting better all the time" about Spotify the software? It's been the same for like 5 years now. As for the rest: 1Password declined (turned to Electron shit), Creative Cloud keeps adding bloat while not adressing decades standing issues, IntelliJ is, I guess OK, Figma I don't use so can't tell. And I know (even use) many more software that turned into subscriptions and now sit on their asses or deliver minimum value - and of course will stop working the moment you had enough with their lack of progress end your subscription.
  - thecoppinger 4y ago
    Claiming 1Password has declined is unfair at best. They release a steady stream of updates, and when I discovered a UX issue earlier this year their team were on it like a rash.
    - vonseel 4y ago
      Yea I don't understand all the recent hate over their new version. I installed the new version on my devices, and while the keyboard shortcuts seemed to change, once I looked them up it worked better than before. I just use the cmd+ shift+space shortcut for everything now.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        There are many, many, many issues raised on their support forum with regards to their new version. All of them are ignored. The most glaring one: search. Which is verifiably worse UX now.
        pasc1878 4y ago
        Also the change to force you to store passwords in the cloud. You used to be able to have a vault and keep it on your machines only. I can't see how any company could allow this software storing company passwords on their machines.
- smrtinsert 4y ago
  I only pay for intellij which I consider to be essential. The rest are replaceable with compromise or not worth it to me.
- tored 4y ago
  Spotify, IntelliJ (Phpstorm), Postman is definitely getting worse.
  - jasonlotito 4y ago
    IntelliJ you buy and you keep what you buy. That's it. You can pay each year to buy the "latest" version, with a price decrease every year until the 3rd year. You can use the version you buy forever.
    - tored 4y ago
      IntelliJ is still getting worse regardless of their subscription plan (and it is getting more expensive). I think it took the wrong turn around a year ago at the same they changed the splash screen (that is why I remember it), after that the updates have been worse.
      - jasonlotito 4y ago
        So you can just stop paying and use the version you like forever. Done. Everything else is meaningless.
- CGamesPlay 4y ago
  1Password is objectively getting worse: 1Password 7 has 4.3 stars on the App Store and 1Password 8 has a measly 2.7 stars. 1Password 7 is no longer receiving updates (it's no longer for sale either). 1Password 8 requires iOS 15, so the updates that you're paying for as part of your subscription model require that you pay for a new phone to get them. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-7-password-manager/id568903335 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-7-password-manager/i... and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-8-password-manager/id1511601750 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-8-password-manager/i...
  - jevgeni 4y ago
    Counting pitchforks doesn't make the pitchforks objective.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Requiring iOS 15 or later is objectively worse though when the previous version supports older software.
  - citruspi 4y ago
    > 1Password 8 requires iOS 15, so the updates that you're paying for as part of your subscription model require that you pay for a new phone to get them. That assumes that iOS 15 requires a new phone... which isn't the case. Apple generally has an excellent track record of supporting older devices when they release new major OS versions. Taking a look at the devices that support iOS 15[0], the oldest one appears to be the iPhone 6S... which was released in 2015. So you could theoretically use the new 1Password 8 on iOS 15 on a phone that is 7 years old. No need to pay for a new phone. [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe3fa5df43/15.0/ios/15.0 https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe...
- pigsty 4y ago
  Office is so bad that it’s unbearable. Photoshop became subscription-only and now I’m stuck with spyware that auto-launches and runs in the background in over 2 dozen separate processes and more bugs and glitches than I ever had on paid versions before. Meanwhile, Sublime Text and Procreate hold up and I’m not paying monthly.
- antifanboy 4y ago
  You’re kidding abiut 1password right? It has significantly gone downhill since they sold out its hsers and went subscription. I have a shell alias to kill off al of 1password’s processes and use it 2-4x per day. Thrree or four times a week I have to clear my sessions and close safari to get 1password yo work, which means lost productivity. Im also quite worried about privacy with their shit tastic hosted vaults and still use my own local Copies. 1password is always my first example of what goes wrong for the user when companies decide they should subscribe for $50/year to a product they once bought for $40.
  - deliriumchn 4y ago
    time to migrate to self hosted bitwarden...
- hbossy 4y ago
  Spotify did get worse. It used to have build-in Genius lyrics / trivia display for currently playing song. This feature and recommendation system actually convicted me to pay for it over using youtube as main music player. It is no longer available.
- mns 4y ago
  I think IntelliJ is getting worse, but at least you have a perpetual fallback license, which I might use at one point, as they are augmenting my code so much with everything, that if I open some source files in a plain text editor, they look completely different. I find this extremely annoying, because I don't want the IDE to change my view of the code so much that it starts interfering with it. Spotify is more of a content provider, but even there, a few year ago I found it to be one of the best software out there and their Spotify connect was just magic. Not hey seem to be everywhere: soundbars, watches, the apps are a bloated mess that I need to restart Spotify desktop in order to update the like of a song that I liked on my phone. But this is the natural lifecycle of software products, something starts off as a great product coming to replace some sort of legacy monster, only to end up becoming the monster that they replaced.
Enginerrrd 4y ago
Yeah, I'd appreciate updates if they just fixed bugs, security, and the stuff that was broke. Instead, it's often endless addition of features no one asked for and UI redesigns/reorgnization. No thanks. I'd probably be willing to pay a subscription to withhold that part.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  “No one asked for” That’s a huge assumption, likely wrong.
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
    It was hyperbolic, admittedly, but it's a very small percentage of users that request any new features.
inglor_cz 4y ago
I am fine with the subscription model of IntelliJ and their IDEs. The progress is real and if you stop paying, you lose the ability to upgrade your IDE, but the older versions still work.
- edude03 4y ago
  Yep this. I don't mind paying a subscription as long as the vendor can't hold my data hostage. An IDE for example - I won't lose my source code if the company goes out of business but something like figma? Roam? I find those types of SaaS really hard to have faith in
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  They're one of the only companies that seem to have a pro-consumer, or at least balanced implementation of SaaS. I'm not familiar with the specifics, but if I can install the older versions I already paid for, sgtm. I don't have a use for IntelliJ but if I did I would almost certainly pay.
cubano 4y ago
Its hard to pirate SaaS for rather obvious reasons. The cracks don't work for very long and usually don't work for 20% of the system. However, I agree...pirating is a must-do these days. It's almost impossible to figure out how well a software package is going to react to your needs without actually using it on said needs. I do, however, think it's very important to remind everyone that you eventually must buy the product if it's filling your needs well enough. Pirating is a crappy solution to a crappy problem.
aplummer 4y ago
> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Imagine stealing peoples work you admit you can afford, and claiming their business model is immoral!
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  How is it stealing? They don't suddenly not licenses of their software to sell anymore because someone made an unlicensed copy.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.
  - thot_experiment 4y ago
    Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents. SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Yes. It's the 21st century, artificial scarcity no longer makes any sense. Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs. People need new business models. Selling bits doesn't work. Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it.
      - phendrenad2 4y ago
d0liver 4y ago
Pretty much all software companies now have ongoing costs associated with the software after you would have purchased it - ops, hosting, security updates, and backports for compatability. In order to sell it to you and have it make sense they'd need to charge you a lot for it - the cost of keeping it up for however long you might use it. Essentially you'd need to pay ten years worth of subscription costs and just not have a choice in the matter. I'm sure they would prefer that, but you wouldn't buy it at that price because you know you probably won't use it for that long. Also, maintaining multiple versions of the thing is going to be a lot more expensive than just getting everyone on the current version. So, the company which has ongoing costs charges you an ongoing bill because it makes the most sense for both of you. I think that maybe what you really don't like is the fact that US monopolies are not regulated and so all of your options suck whether or not they are SaaS companies.
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  No. SaaS has wormed it's way into your brain at such a deep level that you believe that "ops, hosting, security updates, and backports for compatability" are necessary to have high quality reliable software. None of that is true. Software can be written to just work on a machine you install it on. My copy of Adobe CS6 still works just fine, software doesn't just stop working on it's own. There are no ongoing maintenance costs for multiple versions. It works just fine installing off the same media it did 10 years ago. Security updates are not really necessary if your software runs in autistic mode. The reason you believe these things is because people build software in stupid ways in order to justify ongoing costs. Cloud-first software architecture is something you do because you want to collect rents, and then you try to write good software DESPITE it. It's not a sound technical choice for most of the software that goes that route.
Ylpertnodi 4y ago
>I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative, even though there was a period of time where I would pay for software between when I was poor and had to pirate everything and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Same and similar. I resurrected an old pc and re-installed som backed-up old software and it mostly worked...well!! Apart from that, I prefer portable, non-installable software. I got burned a couple of years ago - spent €100s on some music software, two months later it went to subscription, for some Reason.

solardev 4y ago

Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.

phrom 4y ago
Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows is getting worse by moving towards ads.
- paultopia 4y ago
  Although TBF office and windows have gotten worse with every version at least since the 1990s.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Yeah Excel 3.0 had much better cloud multi-user editing support. It really only went downhill after Excel 5.0 came out with this whole VBA nonsense in '93. Unnecessary bloat, really just showcasing the fact Microst doesn't know what it's users actually want. Excel today is way better than the Excel I used in the 90s. I wouldn't trade it for a moment.
  - andylynch 4y ago
    They ruined office with … removing Excel’s 64k row limit, better file format, collaborative editing and better data analysis functions?
    - paultopia 4y ago
      If you're using a tool like excel to work with data with more than 64,000 rows or analyze data, or if you're collaboratively editing a dataset in a non-version-controlled format... best of luck to you, I'll send flowers to your widow.
      - andylynch 4y ago
        It’s great for what it does. You might be surprised at how your bank and accountant get stuff done.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  That hasn't been my experience. Windows 11 has more features any any version before it, and same goes for Office.
  - janlaureys 4y ago
jonwest 4y ago
Do you feel as though Windows as a SaaS would be better? At least as a consumer I have a choice to say “I’d rather not upgrade to Windows 11 and get the worse experience” and not just login and see that those changes that I wouldn’t have upgraded for have just been pushed down as it happens with a SaaS. Windows, as an example, is an interesting one in that you’re paying once for a license and it’s good more or less indefinitely (or until things stop working and are no longer supported), but Microsoft does still have an obligation to be pushing out updates, whether security or QoL, so I’m not sure that it being worse over time has any reflection on the license model.
- TingPing 4y ago
  You don't have a choice not to upgrade Windows, not practically, it will go out of support and you can't do anything about it other than hope Windows Next will be more to your liking.
  - krater23 4y ago
    Hello from the past. I'm typing this on a Windows 7, without the most of the updates. Most works fine, just can't install the newest Office or Games. But who wants that? p.s.: Nope, no viruses or things like that. Windows 7 is so old that it's not supported by botnets anymore.
    - SteveNuts 4y ago
      This is like bragging about not wearing a seatbelt because "I haven't flown through the windshield yet"
      - thot_experiment 4y ago
        I've flown through the windshield a couple times in my life WRT malware. I've lost so much more time to work computers where I'm forced to use retail Win 10/11 and have to deal with intrusive update policies than I have due to malware. Having to nuke a few computers from orbit once a decade is a small price to pay for having systems that I can trust to work the same as they did yesterday, systems that never interrupt my flow. EDIT: to expand on this a little bit, I think a lot of cybersecurity concerns are basically forced upon us by SaaS as a model. Attack surfaces become much smaller if you can just block things from communicating with the outside entirely. Not to mention the wonderful technology known as a "hardware power switch" good luck remotely turning on my SSD full of tax documents and embarrassing photos.
JadeNB 4y ago
> Creative Cloud … all subscriptions and getting better all the time. I may be an atypical user—I'm definitely sub-power user in this domain—but everything Adobe has got worse for me since moving to "Creative Cloud".
- arcturus17 4y ago
  Opposite. I'm an infra-power user that uses AI once every two months, and I like the experience. Can't tell how it is for power users though. Maybe they hate it.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > Opposite. I'm an infra-power user that uses AI once every two months, and I like the experience. Can't tell how it is for power users though. Maybe they hate it. Fair enough. I didn't mean to claim that everyone had a negative experience, just that it was far from a one-sided thing where these apps could be said unambiguously to improve. ("In summary, Adobe Creative Cloud is a land of contrasts.")
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  I use Creative Cloud as well, but I've found with auto-update you get random unexpected bugs. I disable it, I kill their background processes if I notice them, and occasionally I'll let it update things if I know a new version has something I want.
tttttt5ts 4y ago
And your work pays for a lot of that? Must be nice.
- solardev 4y ago
  No, they pay for a couple, but I pay for most of it. IntelliJ in particular I pay for one because it's affordable enough and two because the corporate price is much much higher than than the individual price and I'm tired of begging companies to buy it, especially when other web devs are happy enough with VSCode.
dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
We’ll see how well Figma holds up under Adobe, but at this point, I am not optimistic.
Diapason 4y ago
Spotify? What the heck is it doing in this list. When you pay Spotify - you are paying - supposedly for a large part - for Artists's right, not for a Software service.
- solardev 4y ago
  Spotify is way better than similar offerings though, like Amazon or YouTube or Apple and such. Part of that is because their app makes social playlists easy. Everything from Christmas music to board game nights has a good community driven playlist.
  - exodust 4y ago
    But we can't even "bookmark" or save a position in a playlist. No way to place a pin in a playlist, go listen to something else, then come back to that playlist position. Major let down of Spotify playlists. Also the mandatory syncing across devices is annoying. I sometimes listen on my PC, and don't want my phone to lose it's place where I paused it previously. Also finding playlists by "humans" not algorithms seems deliberately blurred. Spotify wants to push certain content, so they've designed their service to make it unclear or unintuitive if you want to find playlists curated by people only.
lozenge 4y ago
I haven't seen any improvement in Spotify in years. Still can't organise songs in any meaningful way, can't rate songs, playlists suck, shuffle is broken, and they keep pushing podcast content when I never listen to podcasts. 1Password also used to sync to Dropbox for free and even had an HTML version that could serve from Dropbox.
- least 4y ago
  Spotify still hasn't reached feature parity with Spotify when it first came out. Only recently did something as basic as lyrics return. It's still not extensible like it once was.
  - class4behavior 4y ago
    There were no lyrics all this time? Either it's really hard to get people to pay attention to alternatives like Deezer and Tidal or there is little demand for lyrics.
    - least 4y ago
      Spotify's killer feature at this point is probably that they have an ad-supported tier while none of the other services (that I'm aware of) do... unless you count youtube? I think lyrics was a bit of legal hurdle so Spotify had to get rid of it. I imagine they brought it back recently as they worked out a legal way to provide them again.
      - class4behavior 4y ago
        Nonsense. Most of them do. Deezer even offered a bigger music archive in the beginning. Tidal started as sub only but added a US only free tier, instead it pays its artist much better.
        least 4y ago
        Apologies, then, my knowledge of the state of music services is apparently quite outdated. Has Deezer always offered a free tier? They're not really on my radar. In either case, I do think some of the points the other comment made are prescient. Spotify Connect is definitely a killer feature and I think Spotify Wrapped is one of those cultural phenomenon that you can't reliably predict the impact of. Network effects definitely seem to be quite powerful.
falcolas 4y ago
1password - the non-SAAS version - works a charm on my phone. I haven't needed an update. And aside from compiling for newer phone versions, I haven't noticed an update. Except on the desktop which was updated to be crippled (can't edit items) and it advertises for the SAAS version with every other click. Which, fuck them. Their move to SAAS has done nothing but corrupt what was a good software company.
FpUser 4y ago
Out of the products you listed I use 2: IntelliJ - JetBrains actually offers perpetual model along with subscription. That is the reason I use their product. Postman - I use free version to play with the APIs. It costs me nothing and if it disappears tomorrow my development is not going to get disrupted at all as for anything serious I just use plain old scripts that are free.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Lastpass didn't deliver a single improvement, but they did double the yearly price
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Switch to 1password or something else ? That's the nice part about subscription - when it's about to expire it's easy to switch. Just make absolutely sure you remove payment info from that scammer site - they charged me for a year after I canceled and supposedly "refunded me" when I went to support forums- but never actually saw money refund. Couldn't be bothered to go further but just the fact that they will charge post cancelation is extremely scummy.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
    I already did as of last week. Waited 3 years, the software is all riddled with bugs and nothing got fixed. Insane
  - chillfox 4y ago
    How do you figure moving hundreds of passwords + shared passwords (requires other people to also move) from one solution to another is easy.
    - agret 4y ago
      Shared passwords is a hard one, they've got you by the gonads there. I moved to Bitwarden and all I did was export my password database as a csv then import it into Bitwarden and it all came across with no issues.
    - Rastonbury 4y ago
      That's a slight strawman, the same thing applies to owned software. If I own non-subscription software and want to migrate to something newer/better, it won't be easy either. It may be even harder if either or both does not come with support. Companies ruining their product lines is not really a good argument against subscriptions unless the company has monopoly like power and customers have no choice but to stick with inferior (these exist). If it's a sticky product, it would've been sticky either way owned or subscribed. Password managers are commodities even if it takes effort to move. Main problem here is bosses want to go with incumbent big dog or has a relationship with sales, sticking the company to products that are subpar or going downhill. If anything subscriptions make it so that there are competitors chasing those dollars while being willing to help you migrate
Kuinox 4y ago
Spotify have sound disapearing for licensing reason. I guess that improvement ?
ambicapter 4y ago
You don’t think that’s because companies pour more resources into the subscription model software that is making them more money?
pishpash 4y ago
But you don't have to upgrade your old purchased software. If your purchased Office worked for you, keep using it. How would it get worse for you?
coldtea 4y ago
You've mixed subscription based services (Google storage space) and content (Spotify) with subscription based software. For services, it might make sense. Even so, what exactly is "getting better all the time" about Spotify the software? It's been the same for like 5 years now. As for the rest: 1Password declined (turned to Electron shit), Creative Cloud keeps adding bloat while not adressing decades standing issues, IntelliJ is, I guess OK, Figma I don't use so can't tell. And I know (even use) many more software that turned into subscriptions and now sit on their asses or deliver minimum value - and of course will stop working the moment you had enough with their lack of progress end your subscription.
- thecoppinger 4y ago
  Claiming 1Password has declined is unfair at best. They release a steady stream of updates, and when I discovered a UX issue earlier this year their team were on it like a rash.
  - vonseel 4y ago
    Yea I don't understand all the recent hate over their new version. I installed the new version on my devices, and while the keyboard shortcuts seemed to change, once I looked them up it worked better than before. I just use the cmd+ shift+space shortcut for everything now.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      There are many, many, many issues raised on their support forum with regards to their new version. All of them are ignored. The most glaring one: search. Which is verifiably worse UX now.
      - pasc1878 4y ago
        Also the change to force you to store passwords in the cloud. You used to be able to have a vault and keep it on your machines only. I can't see how any company could allow this software storing company passwords on their machines.
smrtinsert 4y ago
I only pay for intellij which I consider to be essential. The rest are replaceable with compromise or not worth it to me.
tored 4y ago
Spotify, IntelliJ (Phpstorm), Postman is definitely getting worse.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  IntelliJ you buy and you keep what you buy. That's it. You can pay each year to buy the "latest" version, with a price decrease every year until the 3rd year. You can use the version you buy forever.
  - tored 4y ago
    IntelliJ is still getting worse regardless of their subscription plan (and it is getting more expensive). I think it took the wrong turn around a year ago at the same they changed the splash screen (that is why I remember it), after that the updates have been worse.
    - jasonlotito 4y ago
      So you can just stop paying and use the version you like forever. Done. Everything else is meaningless.
CGamesPlay 4y ago
1Password is objectively getting worse: 1Password 7 has 4.3 stars on the App Store and 1Password 8 has a measly 2.7 stars. 1Password 7 is no longer receiving updates (it's no longer for sale either). 1Password 8 requires iOS 15, so the updates that you're paying for as part of your subscription model require that you pay for a new phone to get them. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-7-password-manager/id568903335 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-7-password-manager/i... and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-8-password-manager/id1511601750 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-8-password-manager/i...
- jevgeni 4y ago
  Counting pitchforks doesn't make the pitchforks objective.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Requiring iOS 15 or later is objectively worse though when the previous version supports older software.
- citruspi 4y ago
  > 1Password 8 requires iOS 15, so the updates that you're paying for as part of your subscription model require that you pay for a new phone to get them. That assumes that iOS 15 requires a new phone... which isn't the case. Apple generally has an excellent track record of supporting older devices when they release new major OS versions. Taking a look at the devices that support iOS 15[0], the oldest one appears to be the iPhone 6S... which was released in 2015. So you could theoretically use the new 1Password 8 on iOS 15 on a phone that is 7 years old. No need to pay for a new phone. [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe3fa5df43/15.0/ios/15.0 https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe...
pigsty 4y ago
Office is so bad that it’s unbearable. Photoshop became subscription-only and now I’m stuck with spyware that auto-launches and runs in the background in over 2 dozen separate processes and more bugs and glitches than I ever had on paid versions before. Meanwhile, Sublime Text and Procreate hold up and I’m not paying monthly.
antifanboy 4y ago
You’re kidding abiut 1password right? It has significantly gone downhill since they sold out its hsers and went subscription. I have a shell alias to kill off al of 1password’s processes and use it 2-4x per day. Thrree or four times a week I have to clear my sessions and close safari to get 1password yo work, which means lost productivity. Im also quite worried about privacy with their shit tastic hosted vaults and still use my own local Copies. 1password is always my first example of what goes wrong for the user when companies decide they should subscribe for $50/year to a product they once bought for $40.
- deliriumchn 4y ago
  time to migrate to self hosted bitwarden...
hbossy 4y ago
Spotify did get worse. It used to have build-in Genius lyrics / trivia display for currently playing song. This feature and recommendation system actually convicted me to pay for it over using youtube as main music player. It is no longer available.
mns 4y ago
I think IntelliJ is getting worse, but at least you have a perpetual fallback license, which I might use at one point, as they are augmenting my code so much with everything, that if I open some source files in a plain text editor, they look completely different. I find this extremely annoying, because I don't want the IDE to change my view of the code so much that it starts interfering with it. Spotify is more of a content provider, but even there, a few year ago I found it to be one of the best software out there and their Spotify connect was just magic. Not hey seem to be everywhere: soundbars, watches, the apps are a bloated mess that I need to restart Spotify desktop in order to update the like of a song that I liked on my phone. But this is the natural lifecycle of software products, something starts off as a great product coming to replace some sort of legacy monster, only to end up becoming the monster that they replaced.

Enginerrrd 4y ago

Yeah, I'd appreciate updates if they just fixed bugs, security, and the stuff that was broke. Instead, it's often endless addition of features no one asked for and UI redesigns/reorgnization. No thanks. I'd probably be willing to pay a subscription to withhold that part.

therealdrag0 4y ago
“No one asked for” That’s a huge assumption, likely wrong.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  It was hyperbolic, admittedly, but it's a very small percentage of users that request any new features.

inglor_cz 4y ago

I am fine with the subscription model of IntelliJ and their IDEs. The progress is real and if you stop paying, you lose the ability to upgrade your IDE, but the older versions still work.

edude03 4y ago
Yep this. I don't mind paying a subscription as long as the vendor can't hold my data hostage. An IDE for example - I won't lose my source code if the company goes out of business but something like figma? Roam? I find those types of SaaS really hard to have faith in
thot_experiment 4y ago
They're one of the only companies that seem to have a pro-consumer, or at least balanced implementation of SaaS. I'm not familiar with the specifics, but if I can install the older versions I already paid for, sgtm. I don't have a use for IntelliJ but if I did I would almost certainly pay.

cubano 4y ago

Its hard to pirate SaaS for rather obvious reasons. The cracks don't work for very long and usually don't work for 20% of the system. However, I agree...pirating is a must-do these days. It's almost impossible to figure out how well a software package is going to react to your needs without actually using it on said needs. I do, however, think it's very important to remind everyone that you eventually must buy the product if it's filling your needs well enough. Pirating is a crappy solution to a crappy problem.

aplummer 4y ago

> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Imagine stealing peoples work you admit you can afford, and claiming their business model is immoral!

HideousKojima 4y ago
How is it stealing? They don't suddenly not licenses of their software to sell anymore because someone made an unlicensed copy.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents. SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Yes. It's the 21st century, artificial scarcity no longer makes any sense. Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs. People need new business models. Selling bits doesn't work. Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago

d0liver 4y ago

Pretty much all software companies now have ongoing costs associated with the software after you would have purchased it - ops, hosting, security updates, and backports for compatability. In order to sell it to you and have it make sense they'd need to charge you a lot for it - the cost of keeping it up for however long you might use it. Essentially you'd need to pay ten years worth of subscription costs and just not have a choice in the matter. I'm sure they would prefer that, but you wouldn't buy it at that price because you know you probably won't use it for that long. Also, maintaining multiple versions of the thing is going to be a lot more expensive than just getting everyone on the current version. So, the company which has ongoing costs charges you an ongoing bill because it makes the most sense for both of you. I think that maybe what you really don't like is the fact that US monopolies are not regulated and so all of your options suck whether or not they are SaaS companies.

thot_experiment 4y ago
No. SaaS has wormed it's way into your brain at such a deep level that you believe that "ops, hosting, security updates, and backports for compatability" are necessary to have high quality reliable software. None of that is true. Software can be written to just work on a machine you install it on. My copy of Adobe CS6 still works just fine, software doesn't just stop working on it's own. There are no ongoing maintenance costs for multiple versions. It works just fine installing off the same media it did 10 years ago. Security updates are not really necessary if your software runs in autistic mode. The reason you believe these things is because people build software in stupid ways in order to justify ongoing costs. Cloud-first software architecture is something you do because you want to collect rents, and then you try to write good software DESPITE it. It's not a sound technical choice for most of the software that goes that route.

Ylpertnodi 4y ago

>I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative, even though there was a period of time where I would pay for software between when I was poor and had to pirate everything and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Same and similar. I resurrected an old pc and re-installed som backed-up old software and it mostly worked...well!! Apart from that, I prefer portable, non-installable software. I got burned a couple of years ago - spent €100s on some music software, two months later it went to subscription, for some Reason.