That pricing sounds fair. Unfortunately, I feel that's the exception. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 was $400 [1]. Now Dreamweawer Creative Cloud is $250 per year [2]. So after 1.75 years, you've already taken a loss.
Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.
I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each
Office is also just cheaper, it's 1/4 the price for the lifetime license than it used to be. The family offering is still the best deal I've seen to get it though. Not all subscriptions allow multiple users or even you to use it at the same time on multiple devices though, Office is just pushing that sale.
Plus the latest version of the software. I would still be using Office 2013 if I had to pay what I paid for it to upgrade every release (multiplied by the half a dozen or so O365 licenses I'm currently using.)
You say that, but then stuff like OnePass and Dropbox decide to reneg their subscription services down-the-line or simply make their clients worse. A lot of the time, a subscription to a program gives the developer no incentive to iterate on what already exists.
And then you just drop them for a competitor. Since you have no sunk costs, you lose nothing by hopping to whatever the best option is other than a small amount of pain migrating, But for something like dropbox, there isn't that much lock in.
They don't, It's just a better result for the users who get newer and better software, and a better result for the sellers who only have to support one version and get a consistent cash flow.
But what if it is newer and not better?
Lightroom regularly breaks plugin compatibility, increases resource consumption and processing time, or simply stops working.
If your workflow depends on software, that no longer works after a forced update, what are your options?
There are people running ancient MacOS versions, because that allows them to keep using professional firewire audio interfaces they have.
How would subscription model that breaks expensive hardware compatibility, breaks all your existing photo/video projects (aperture/final cut), or breaks compatibility with really expensive plugins needed for work be better for users?
Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.
I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each