| > That means judicious adding of things people really want, but also NOT adding crap just to add a bullet point on a box. So if you didn't do anything, why should you get paid? > those paid updates are very likely to either be not consequential enough to justify paying, or to add bloat. Presumably, when you bought the app, you were satisfied with the functionality it already had (and indeed if they make big changes it often gets hate just for the disruptiveness). So if your updates aren't doing me any good, why should you get paid? > But my point is software costs money (time) to support, forever. And once a product (especially a specialized one) has already found most of its buyers, that means the developer has every incentive to abandon the app because maintaining or updating it is never going to justify the cost. Some things aren't meant to last forever. Some apps aren't meant to be ongoing business models. Apple isn't still producing the computers it sold in the 90s. Sunsetting a product and ending support for it is a natural part of a product's life cycle. This is how pretty much every company operates. Part of running a successful company is handling change and continually innovating and evolving, not just expecting your customer base to subsidize your stagnancy. > So yes, a developer doing your preferred model absolutely must have a half dozen apps ... The mature ones will be left to wither even if they are widely-used and popular, because there aren’t enough new buyers. That's part of business. I can't think of any successful business with only one single product that it maintains for eternity. There might be one, but that's not how normal businesses operate. > many modern apps have a server-side component which needs to be paid for forever. I don't have a problem with paying for resources I'm actually using. I use a note-taking app that includes a cloud subscription for syncing across devices; I'm fine with paying for that, because I'm getting something in return that I actually want and use. > The updates I’m talking about, which you “don’t want to pay for,” include “making the app continue to run on a current OS” What I said—and what you included in your quote—was "maybe I don't feel I need any updates". I want a choice. "Stupid feature we added just to justify demanding 10 bucks a month from you" is one thing. "This app works on the latest OS release" is another. Copying-and-pasting from above: I'm fine with paying for that, because I'm getting something in return that I actually want and use. Your basic logic here is that you just want to write one little app and then sit back and have that one little app support you for the rest of your life. That's not a reasonable business model. I'm sorry if this sounds blunt, but that's just you wanting money without having to work for it. Essentially you're trying to take an unprofitable way of working and force it to be profitable by demanding money you don't deserve. I think that's wrong. A lot of us think that's wrong. And I'd go so far as to say that, judging by every tech forum I'm active on, most of us—with the exception of a handful of wealthy tech influencers and their dev friends—think that's wrong. So yeah. As I said: Grubby. |
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.