[cglong]

This article misses the elephant in the room: Apple. For years after the App Store launched, developers asked for an integrated way to provide upgrade pricing to help support major upgrades. Instead, they usually had to resort to creating an entirely new entry in the App Store. How many customers were lost because they didn't know they had to go back to the Store to download a separate app named Thing 2? And how many then felt ripped off that they didn't get a discount after having previously purchased Thing 1?

After years of being asked for upgrade pricing, Apple instead introduced and then started pushing developers to embrace the exact subscription model we see today. Unlike paid upgrades, a subscription guarantees recurring revenue not only for the developer, but for Apple themselves.

[photochemsyn]

It's not just Apple - Microsoft may have led the way with the switch from 'purchase' of Microsoft Office Suite to 'leasing' where you had to pay for a yearly fee to maintain access. That's when I decided to learn Linux and installed LibreOffice.

In the older model, you could purchase hardware and associated software and even if the company stopped supporting either, you still had a basic working system that might last for ten years or more with care. You could still send email, type up documents, send to a printer (that's a whole other story now), and have a useful functional tool, even if a lot of the web would stop working over time.

Now it all seems to be about accelerated obsolescence, ensuring products have short lifetimes to force consumers to adopt the latest products. Backwards compatibility gets dropped, deliberate strategies are introduced to force anyone wanting a banking app on their phone to upgrade to the latest model, etc.

My solution has been to switch over to Linux for almost anything computer-related, except for some business things where you have to interact with the Apple/Microsoft world. Unfortunately mobile phones are much worse and you need to keep updating the mobile phone well before the hardware fails, and even there I occasionally contemplate dropping the smartphone entirely... Can't wait for full Linux-on-mobile.

[jodrellblank]

> “Microsoft may have led the way with the switch from 'purchase' of Microsoft Office Suite to 'leasing' where you had to pay for a yearly fee to maintain access.”

This never happened, you can buy office as a one time purchase now and get the version you paid for and nothing else, just like you could with office 1997, here:

Home version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

Business version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/p/office-profe...

- “One-time purchase for 1 PC or Mac”

- “Classic 2021 versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint”

[wafriedemann]

Typical Tim Cook strategy. I mean, who am I to judge Tim Cook. I assume in-app purchases work similarly to in-game purchases, meaning a very small amount of customers contribute the vast amount to revenue. One reason I believe this is that these apps cost ridiculous amounts of money for what they are. Notes app monthlies, Bunch of face filters for a yearly subscription, and so on. In the short term this increases revenue for devs and Apple. However, I do think that this strategy could backlash for Apple if the app ecosystem (a differentiating factor at some point) becomes less and less attractive. All of my paid apps are Mac exclusive. If they change to subscription then I am out. This also means my lock-in to Mac diminishes.

[blibble]

> Unlike paid upgrades, a subscription guarantees recurring revenue not only for the developer, but for Apple themselves.

I just buy nothing at all from the app store

yeah I'd like a night sky app, happy to pay a one off fee (even $20) and for upgrades

but not a monthly subscription

[gnicholas]

> Unlike paid upgrades, a subscription guarantees recurring revenue not only for the developer, but for Apple themselves.

Actually, Apple would get more revenue the other way. They only take 15% on subscription revenue after the first year.

[wlesieutre]

Assuming that the cost to users of paid upgrades versus subscriptions are the same, which I don't think is a good assumption.

Paid upgrades I only had to buy when they were worth buying, so often I wouldn't. I was using Photoshop CS5 for quite a long time, well after CS6 came out and then into the subscription era, and I got a great value out of that purchase even as someone who wasn't using it professionally.

Subscriptions can keep on charging me the same price even when development is stopped or focused on features I don't want. Keep paying forever or you lose it.

[syzarian]

What Apple earns from fees from $x per month per user in recurring revenue is greater than the fees for $y per user per upgrade for certain values of x and y depending on the number of users in each category. How do you know what you is true?

[comte7092]

There are two scenarios:

1. Monthly subscriptions earn more revenue for developers compared to pricing sporadic upgrades/updates.

2. The converse of 1.

If 1 is true, then we’d likely end up with subscriptions regardless or apples incentives here. If 2 is true, then Apple is clearly leaving money on the table, because they take a percentage of revenues, and as parent comment states, they take a higher percentage of that revenue in the alternative scenario.

So it doesn’t really matter if they know which drives more revenue. All that matters is that the incentives dictate that Apple benefits the most when developers make more revenues.

[syzarian]

It matters as it pertains to whether or not the claim that was made is true.

[wafriedemann]

The bean counter is not enforcing strategies that make him less money overall, that's certain.

[hgsgm]

No business CEO is trying to make less money.

[barbazoo]

Maybe, in the short term, to make more money in the long term.

[steponlego]

I like this Apple policy. It seems scummy to charge for minor updates and if some App maker constantly has to revise their program and re-publish it under a different name it discourages charging for minor updates.