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0 pointsxp843y ago0 comments

First off, I'd really appreciate if you could reduce the angry, accusatory tone, I don't think it's productive. I have zero apps including subscription apps. I work for a B2B company for a paycheck. I am on the consumer side of the transactions at issue here. I don't know what you do for a living, because from your positions, it appears you might have no idea how the software business actually works in 2023.

Nobody's forcing you to pay for software subscriptions. If you don't see an ongoing benefit from using software under active development and maintenance, by all means, don't subscribe. Use abandoned software from 10 years ago forever on your Windows 7 machine, or write your own, or use awful ad-supported dreck. You'll get no objection from me, it's your choice.

But a lot of people have moved on from the one-time-only model. Developers know that you don't build the "final email client" or "final podcast app" or "final note taking app" and have it stay static for 30 years. Apps are either under development or they die.* If you don't think the users who derive value from the app every day, and need it to keep existing, should be the ones who pay for that app to keep existing, well, I don't know what to tell you. I for one expect all my core apps to just work on every new device I get, and when I install a new OS version I don't want to worry that apps were left behind. I want Office on my Android tablet today, and if I buy an iPad tomorrow I want it working there, and I have a PC and a Mac so I want it on both. I don't want to have to spend $350 for a new copy of Office just because I decided to buy a Mac.

There are other advantages for consumers too. For instance, you can pay like $20-30 for all Adobe's top-end apps for a month - to try them out or to do a one-off project now and then. That would have cost you $2000 20 years ago when the "buy" model was the only one. Likewise, it would be silly to pay $20 each for 5 competing apps to see which one you like best, but when they're $1 a month you can try them all serially to find your favorite, without any "trial" restrictions which can get in the way.

But it's clear you think that continuing to make sure software works forever, fielding support issues from customers, making updates for every new OS feature, is "sitting back" and doing nothing, and that it's realistic for you to update neither your OS nor your software, ever, just to avoid paying maybe $80 a year in software subscriptions, so, okay. You do you. I'll refrain from replying after this comment, because it appears you have no interest in anything but griping about paying for what you use.

* This was even true in the 1980s, but the timescales were much longer then. A Commodore 64 program was also pretty obsolete 12 years later when everyone had moved onto new and incompatible hardware, but today Apple can hardly keep the SDK stable for 12 months.

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_zzaw3y ago

I've gone back over my posts to see if I said anything out of line, and I don't think I did. I'm just being direct; I haven't been nasty, or even snarky (which you were, consistently, in your last response). I am indeed rightfully disturbed by what I see as a greedy, lazy business model that shuts lower-income folks out of the tech world, so the tone's not going to change.

I'm not going to address most of your post, because there honestly is not a lot to reply to: you're just reiterating assertions and—more problematically—insisting I said things I didn't say. I don't think it's the best use of my time to indulge that.

> If you don't think the users who derive value from the app every day, and need it to keep existing, should be the ones who pay for that app to keep existing, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Show me where I said I don't think users should pay for the app to keep existing. I'm fine with paying for app releases. Once per release.

> There are other advantages for consumers too. For instance, you can pay like $20-30 for all Adobe's top-end apps for a month - to try them out or to do a one-off project now and then.

Cool! If it's such an advantage for consumers, I'm all for offering that. Just include a lifetime license as well. If rentware is so beneficial to consumers, then there wouldn't be any problem offering people a choice, correct? Let the market decide.

> But it's clear you think that continuing to make sure software works forever, fielding support issues from customers, making updates for every new OS feature, is "sitting back" and doing nothing

Again: Show me exactly where I said that. I'm getting tired of this; you saw that I said the exact opposite as far as updates. Regarding support, again, I have no problem charging for that. That's a service.

I'm disappointed by this last response of yours. You came off as reasonable initially, but the shift to deliberately misquoting me is not cool. I don't think you should do that; it implies a lot about how confident you are in your reasoning.

Anyway—I suspect the rentware fad will be over in a few years, since everyone hates it and subscription fatigue is still setting in. (Especially if a recession, which I think is coming, makes a lot of folks question why they're paying $50–$100 in subscriptions every month for software they would have owned a few years ago.) The market will settle down to either a hybrid—apps offered under both rentware and lifetime licensing—or simply back to charging a more reasonable one-time amount.

And devs will be fine; they'll just have to treat their businesses as actual businesses, not lifestyle passive-income streams. I'm good with that.

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