[the_snooze]

Kind of orthogonal to the article, but I feel the iOS App Store's subscription mechanism is how online subscriptions as a whole should work. There's a unified predictable way to start subscriptions, and more importantly, a unified predictable way to stop them. I don't have to jump through hoops to stop a subscription, and the UI is clear on when recurring charges will occur next and for how much. I would love it if banks let me unilaterally cancel subscriptions just as easily on my online banking page.

It almost makes the Apple tax worth it. Almost.

[DanHulton]

This is actually kind of ironic, because Apple's refusal to allow for paid upgrades to pay-once software is actually a major driver of developers switching from pay-once to subscriptions. It's way easier to convince customers to buy a subscription to a piece of software than it is to convince them to buy an _entirely new app_ with a new version number on it, then migrate all their data, re-organize their device so the new version is in the same spot, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the Apple subscription interface, too, but I wish it wasn't the only reasonable way for devs to monetize ongoing work.