[satysin]

Installed to tryout it out. I dislike it requires yet another user account just to try it out[1][2].

Overall it is pretty simple to use with a decent UI and worked fine for my quick test of a Signal desktop app video call by selecting the mmhmm virtual camera in Signal.

It did not work in FaceTime as there is no way to change the camera from the built in one (however I was able to change the audio source to mmhmm audio fwiw). Not sure if this is a FaceTime limitation or mmhmm?

For £20 I would probably buy it but £10 a month (or £100 a year)?! No. Sorry.

I fail to see why this type of application needs to be a subscription service and a rather expensive one at that. Unless I am missing something it doesn't rely on a backend service the mmhmm developers would need to maintain and outside of adding new features it isn't likely the OS APIs used to access the camera will change much, if at all, on a desktop OS these days so on going development costs to the core camera functionality already present is likely to be minimal.

A nice product but not worth an indefinite £10 a month to me personally.

[1] Also there does not appear to be a delete account option anywhere on the website. I hate this when forced to sign up just to try the software. I have emailed using the address on their website to request deletion but it should be a clear option on the account management page.

[2] Also accepting an 8 character minimum (requiring upper, lower and special character) password while rejecting a 4 word (27 character) passphrase is laughable.

[joshspankit]

I feel like this is one of the great cases for a “residential” vs “commercial” model.

From a software dev perspective, I definitely understand the benefit of monthly/yearly subscriptions vs feast and famine cycles (with the hope that you can justify an upgrade to your users), but it.has.gotten.out.of.hand.

Some of your best customers start out bootstrapping and becoming experts in the cheapest (workable) solution. If you tell them they’re “too poor” for not wanting to pay your prices at the door, you just lose out.

With an excellent product, it’s even viable to have free tiers and then charge businesses $$$ (basically all past Windows software if you count piracy as free), or move to a Patreon/sponsorship model (Vue.js).

If you have to pay “cloud” costs, I get the struggle of giving it away for free, but if it’s all on-device? What’s your argument?

[ponker]

I don’t need an “argument” to charge a specific price or business model. I’ve created something and am offering it to anyone who will pay what I’m asking.

Why, as a customer, would you care about my “argument” for my price as opposed to the value it creates for you?

This product is expensive and I expect most people to walk away but I also see why they don’t want to go down the old Windows 3.1 route of a perpetual license.

[bnegreve]

>I don’t need an “argument” to charge a specific price or business model.

I disagree, you need to sell your business model just as much as you need to sell your product.

As a customer,

1. I need to know whether this is a fair pricing for the service, because I need to decide whether I should pay for it, or search (or wait) for an alternative. If it is overpriced, a cheaper alternative is likely to appear soon, and it is probably better to wait.

2. I want don't want to encourage business models that don't fit my usage, to avoid the proliferation of such business models across the industry.

[joshspankit]

^This

Also, I will add that as a (potential or actual) customer: if I think your product is great, I want your business to succeed and for it to succeed it has to have a business model that is positioned for the long-term.

Flat out: If the model doesn’t work, I’m going to look for another alternative.

If the model does not work it could mean you go out of business, or “pivot” to private buyers, or lose focus and clutter the software with “upgrades” in an attempt to catch up. In each case it means the software would no longer work for me and I’d have to find an alternative anyway so I might as well find the alternative first.

[michaelcampbell]

> 1. I need to know whether this is a fair pricing for the service,

That answer comes from you, not the content producer. He's said what he considers fair, for him. You need to decide if it's fair, for you.

[eitland]

I partly agree, as an author it is your software and your choice. Demanding anything (unless one has an existing relationship as a customer that warrants it) is probably a sign of feeling entitled.

Also these days I expect software to need security fixes for the lifetime of the software which is why I am somewhat less hostile to subscriptions than I would otherwise be.

But I also partly understand very well what the users upthread writes, so let me try to explain:

> I don’t need an “argument” to charge a specific price or business model. I’ve created something and am offering it to anyone who will pay what I’m asking.

Fine, go right ahead. Consider the posts upthread as an explanation for why they wont use your software and will recommend against it.

If people still buys it: Power to you. And, I should say, it looks like something that certain people will pay for

> Why, as a customer, would you care about my “argument” for my price as opposed to the value it creates for you?

Maybe they shouldn't care to write it, but at least now you know their reasoning.

[dusted]

"Why, as a customer, would you care about my “argument” for my price as opposed to the value it creates for you?"

Because I am a human with feelings, and if I _feel_ I'm getting screwed, you can prove to me all day long how I'm actually saving money, it won't matter because I'll find something else where I feel treated right (not that that's that easy these days).

[meheleventyone]

Price and in particular an on going cost factors into the value a product provides. Positioning in the market via pricing and other factors are as much part of selling your product as making sure people know what it does. Customers will have an opinion on it and it will be something worthwhile to understand in the large. Further if the pricing raises eyebrows customers will want a justification to feel good about buying.

[purplecats]

Ah it's not even free? That's misleading. Theres the option to download etc on their page but no results for "pricing". I hate that they try to make you invest in them first then you get shown the fee. I cant say I'm the biggest fan of false advertising or dark patterns against me.

[dusted]

Yea, and this is basically just obs with a webcam output and some built in assets, I'll just go ahead right now and donate their price to the OBS project.

[fxtentacle]

As someone who has previously worked on real time audio apps on Mac, I find the price justified.

Supporting MacOS with anything that needs kernel drivers requires constant updates and the potential market is so small that it kind of needs to be expensive per customer or else you need to cut corners with the quality.

Windows has 5x the market share, so there you can sell for 80% less per user because you'll sell more licenses which compensates that. And a windows version for $2 per month sounds fair, so then $10 monthly on Mac is fair, too.

[qppo]

Why do you need kernel extensions for realtime audio on Mac? If anything, CoreAudio is a dream to work with compared to the shitshow of APIs on Linux and Windows.

Not to mention there are plenty of cross platform libraries for real time audio where you would never need to care about the difference.

[klik99]

Anything that needs to create input/output devices for routing into other apps “in the box” requires kernel extensions. I’ve heard some hack together more real time guarantees for performance purposes (mac os has a habit of regressing on audio stream stability) but most people who need that guarantee will build on an open source os anyway.

CoreAudio is great, but since everyone just uses cross platform libraries will rarely be utilized to its fullest.

[nikanj]

Big Sur doesn't even support kernel extensions, so this sounds unlikely.

[klik99]

Quick google shows that subset of kexts still allowed. I updated to Big Sur last week and installed kernel extensions for exactly this reason.

[user-the-name]

You might be confusing this with the fact that Big Sur, on Apple Silicon, does not support x86 kernel extensions. It still supports them elsewhere, and it supports arm64 kernel extensions on Apple Silicon.

[Bishonen88]

in most cases, tools with subscriptions do not need more maintenance than products with a one-time purchase (don't know anything about this specific case, so dunno if it applies here). It's just that after adobe/jetbrains and others opened pandoras box, slowly but surely more and more devs try to make their tools to a continuous income stream...

It get's really silly to the point that a snipping app has a yearly subscription (xnip), calendars have subscriptions (fantastical) and many other tools which once would have been a $20-$30 purchase all now want $3-$10 a month.

Personally I'm sick of it. I'd rather go back to the 'old days'...

[hedora]

I recently installed dosbox on my rpi, and it made me seriously consider how hard it would be to modernize all that old software.

Desktop apps were mostly better, and were all much faster on the rpi than native alternatives are on my recent $2700 laptop.

Edit: modernize = app store for abandonware + docker-alike for dos instances.

[laumars]

GOG already does this for old games. But there’s a much bigger retro gaming following than there is a market sector for folk who just prefer older applications.

[ljm]

Typically also done by forcing some 'cloud sync' into it and then using that to justify the switch, moving control of your data into their hands and holding it hostage.

That was enough for me to ditch 1password in favour of bitwarden.

[reaperducer]

Typically also done by forcing some 'cloud sync' into it and then using that to justify the switch

Is this even needed on a Mac? Can't all Macintosh software just sync through iCloud, instead of relying on the developer's solution?

/ Serious question. I'm not a Mac software dev.

[airtonix]

except that in order to control your own data with bitwarden across many devices you need to spin up your own server.

Should checkout Enpass. - Has google drive/dropbox/webdave sync connectors. - runs on android/ios/mac/linux/windows

[fxtentacle]

While I agree with you in general, this tool appears to rely on a kernel extension for their virtual Webcam. And that creates a lot of additional and ongoing maintenance work.

[toast0]

Or they could charge you a simple price for the version for Mac OS 2020, and when Apple breaks it next year, you can buy the version for Mac OS 2021.

[imposterr]

Try explaining that to customers who paid for the software and don't understand why they have to pay again.

[reaperducer]

Tell them that's how it was done for decades and decades?

Plenty of successful software companies sell their software, instead of renting it.

Moreover, the billion dollar company I work for will not buy any software that requires a subscription, unless it's from Microsoft, Adobe, or another big name. If a program from Rando Joe's Softworks requires a subscription, the company will tell the employee to find another solution.

[kovek]

Anyone could make a copy of fantastical and sell it for cheaper with less support. What do you think about such an alternative?

[dakial1]

I completely understand your point of view of charging for the resources needed to get the work done, but the market does not really care for this and you need to charge what the clients are willing to pay for your product.

If clients are willing to pay less than the value of the resources necessary to build and maintain the product, you have either a communication problem (you're not showing the right value to your clients), or a market fit problem.

[maest]

The problem is, the price is capped at the top by the value the buyer gets.

The vagaries of doing real time audio on Macs don't have much weight on the price people will pay.

[evrydayhustling]

All the account creation friction sucks, but I'll defend the price. It's a subscription because the value you get depends on how long you use it. Making the price incremental (vs e.g. a one time $100 charge) means more people can try it and get value for a limited time, and only keep it if it continues to add value for them.

Is $100/yr too much? A b2b sales team might spend $400 getting a first meeting with a customer, and $10k more over the course of further meetings. A 1h internal meeting with 10 people might cost thousands in wages. If mmhmm makes a handful of meetings marginally more effective it will pay for itself.

If the product works but the price doesn't, you may not be the intended buyer.

[madeofpalk]

> It's a subscription because the value you get depends on how long you use it

Isn’t that true of all things you purchase?

[evrydayhustling]

Most non-consumables can be rented (and frequently are) just for this reason. We buy things when our use expends or transforms the product (e.g. a house) so that we don't have to coordinate with the owner.

It's nice to be able to buy outright (or download free!) things that we want to maintain, but most software doesn't fit that for most people.

[falcor84]

Well, I suppose not for consumables like food or fuel.

[madeofpalk]

Okay so I'm glad we've agreed that single-use food items shouldn't be a subscription...

[jen20]

But if the product is ok and useful at a cost which users to not want to pay, it’s just a matter of time before equivalent features get integrated into video calling platforms directly.

[ponker]

That’s a different issue not related to the pricing model.

[ldenoue]

They have a recording functionality that generates interactive videos (as a person watching, you can still move the presenter around and jump to specific slides and images). So they might offer online hosting for your productions, à la YouTube or SlideShare?