[jbstack]

For the majority of software I use, I don't really care about continuous upgrades and new features, as long as it works with the feature set I signed up for.

A great example for me is the Xodo app on Android. It's by far the best PDF editor that I've found on Android, particularly for annotating with a digital pen. Some features are locked. If I want to unlock them, it's $5 a month. I get nothing out of that which isn't already in the app. I'm happy to pay a one-off fee for the work the developers have done up to that point. I'm definitely not happy to add another $5 a month to my pile of subscriptions.

For me the boundary is this: (1) If I get something of value every month (e.g. use of a cloud server, or something which obviously needs regular updating like Netflix) -> subscription justified; (2) If I just want to use what I can already see in the app -> very unlikely I'll ever subscribe unless the product is absolutely essential to me and there are no competitors.

A good example of the latter is Skritter. I don't care about new functionality, but there literally isn't another app which can do what it does, so I pay the subscription.

[Grombobulous]

As you have demonstrated with this comment, customers don’t really understand that there’s no such thing as “the product is done and costs are no longer incurred” even if the product is 100% done, and this is especially true on commercial app stores.

It costs $99/year to keep your app on the Apple App Store. Stop paying and all apps are delisted.

It costs $5/month to maintain a business phone line (Apple needs a phone number)

It costs $10/month for a mail forwarding service (or else Apple will publish your home address)

It costs ~$100/year to maintain an LLC.

A developer must buy a new Mac every 10-12 years or so just to maintain basic OS support (we can call that ~$50 a year for a MacBook Neo, but if you want your code compile to not be painful you’ll probably grab a MacBook Pro).

Domain name? $15/year. Business email, $10/year.

[dghlsakjg]

Yep. Businesses have overhead.

There are plenty of businesses that have all that overhead and still sell things instead of subscriptions.

Flip this argument around: you go buy a rake at the hardware store. They tell you they need to charge $5 a month for as long as you want to use it since they have to pay for a phone and website, no apple fee, but their city business license is more than that, etc.

Precisely no one will take that deal. If the store wants to stay in business they must continue to sell more products. It’s not my responsibility to keep paying them for a product so they can have a phone line.

If you are selling an app that has a service backing it or are providing support and updates, fine. Try to sell it as a subscription. If you are selling an app that runs entirely on my device? Version it. If you want me to pay for your overhead of continued development, create a new version that has something I would want to pay for.

[vladms]

I think that for the physical store example the overhead is already included in the object price, and probably a significant part of it.

> If you want me to pay for your overhead of continued development

My recollection with the status of 20-30 years ago is that people would sell you buggy applications for huge amounts of money and then you would be on your own. Doing good applications, without bugs, supported on multiple platforms and multiple use-cases is very expensive and takes time. Not sure what was your experience with pay once and just use the app, maybe it was better...

The benefit of subscriptions is that everybody has more flexibility. The developers can work continuously on the application. The customers can already use it for less than a one time (very large price) and see if it fits their needs and can change their mind if things don't go in the right direction.

[Grombobulous]

The problem is that you’re not really making the right analogy. For one thing, the hardware store isn’t staying in business because you bought a rake once that you’ll never buy again. They’re making money on the contractors coming in and repeatedly buying things like paint and drywall. They’re making money on you buying light bulbs, dish soap, and mulch every year for the rest of your life.

When you really think about all the things a hardware store sells, not a lot of it lasts forever.

As a customer I’m totally all for buy-once and FOSS software. But I recognize that it’s not always the economic reality.

There’s plenty of buy-once iOS software out there. I’m definitely not saying that developers can’t do it, merely that I don’t blame the ones who go subscription-based, and that a lot of customers don’t realize the ongoing costs associated with publishing an iOS app.

[dghlsakjg]

The hardware store isn’t a perfect analogy, but my grandpas hammer has yet to reach EOL. Hardware stores are FULL of profitable items that you only buy once, or are you replacing your toilets on a monthly basis? Pick a different store if it bothers you that the hardware store also sells consumables. Hell, pick a hardware vertical like tools or plumbing fixtures that only sell once. Specialty hardware stores exist for those things, and their business does not rely on consumables. Plenty of businesses that exist to sell you a product or service once and count on no repeat business. The jeweler I bought my wife’s engagement ring from is not expecting me to buy another. He’s quite successful still despite having to cover the overhead of running a workshop and storefront.

I’m not blaming the ones who go subscription based. I endorsed it as a model when it makes sense (when you are providing an ongoing connected service inherent to the product, eg.). Developing the next version of your software doesn’t qualify as a service in my mind.

I’m complaining about software that goes subscription based completely unnecessarily. Adobe is the perfect example. There is no reason I shouldn’t be able to just buy photoshop. That worked fine for decades. I don’t need a subscription to MS Word, either. What new development has happened in text editing since autosave was added a few decades ago?

I can still play my original copy of Half Life, and valve is doing fantastic selling software instead of subscriptions. Arguably they are one of the biggest and most loved by consumers for that.

[mrguyorama]

You think that's bad? You should see what the hole in the wall food place pays for rent every single month. They still don't require a subscription for their service.

None of that applies to Android, and it only applies to Apple because we have such abysmal regulation in the modern era, where you apparently aren't allowed to regulate business that happens with a computer for some reason.

[Grombobulous]

The hole in the wall food place can sell me the exact same food every single day. My stomach is definitely on a subscription plan.

As far as “none of this applies to Android,” you’re right, but the App Store is where 70% of mobile revenue is spent, even though Apple has less than 20% global marketshare. [1]

[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

[simiones]

The biggest tension between software and one-off purchases is related to bugfixing, and especially security. It makes sense that you don't expect new features for a product that you paid for once. But, what is the case with bugs? If the product mostly does what it promised to do, but sometimes crashes, do you expect those crashes to be fixed for your version, or not? What it you're using a 10-year old version and a new critical (say, unauthenticated remote execution) vulnerability is found in it? Do you expect to get it resolved as part of the price you originally paid, or would you be ok with being told you have to buy a new version if you want this ?

[jbstack]

There's some merit to your arguments, but not enough to justify a subscription:

- Subscriptions are marketed as being a lot more than just bugfixes - new features being the big one. But there's usually no cheaper "bugfix-only" subscription, which means that someone who doesn't care about new features has to pay for them anyway.

- To be honest - yes, I do expect bugfixes for free if I've paid to buy the product. After all, a bug is a defect, and products are usually sold with the expectation that they will be fit for purpose. That's the principle which applies to physical consumer products, so why should it be any different for software? If I bought software that calculates my taxes for me, and it turns out a bug means that it applies the wrong tax rules, then I haven't got what I paid for. Why am I expected to pay every month just to make my software do what it was supposed to do in the first place?

- The developer is still incentivised to fix bugs in order to attract new purchasers.

- Subscriptions aren't a magic solution financially anyway, because there's an average limit to how long a customer stays subscribed for.

[Telaneo]

Heck, I'd pay to explicitly not get the new features and only get the security and bug fixes in several cases. The "new" features is in some cases just a reshuffling of the UI and removal of features I actually do use.

[skinfaxi]

How do manufacturers of physical products handle defects? Aren't they obligated to correct defects through recalls and similar mechanisms? I don't see why software wouldn't work similarly.

[simiones]

Not always, it depends on the defect. There are many, many design defects that do not significantly impact the working of the device that will not get repaired, but would usually be patched in regular software (especially for visual design or bad UX like a literal rough edge on a physical product). Recalls in particular are very rare - they generally only happen for very serious faults, usually those that affect the safety of the device.

Also note that expectations can vary quite a bit between physical and software products. For an example, my vacuum cleaner fairly often shuts down if I stop and re-start it too soon. If this happened with an app, I would certainly consider it a pretty ugly bug, and might ask when they plan to fix it. But I would never consider sending the vacuum cleaner to a service station to try and get rid of it - and I think there is little chance they could fix it even if I did.

[swiftcoder]

A good chunk of the software on my device doesn't need to access the internet, another big chunk does so using standard mechanisms (i.e. libcurl) that could be security patched out of band by the OS.

The only reason I routinely need to update most software, is that Apple/Google keep changing device screen resolutions/cutouts and they keep killing off old APIs

[egorfine]

> as long as it works with the feature set I signed up for.

Yes. On the exact major OS version you signed up on.

[jbstack]

That's fine. It's my choice whether to upgrade my OS or not. If I do so, and my app no longer works on the new OS, then I can purchase a new version. Why should I pay a monthly fee just in case I might upgrade my OS and just in case the app doesn't work there?

Also, it's far less likely than you're suggesting that I would need the exact major OS version I started with. The majority of apps survive an OS upgrade just fine. In my case, I use NixOS, so that isn't even an issue at all since every package can have all of its dependencies frozen for as long as you like, even with a new major OS version.

[Grombobulous]

It’s worse than that, stop paying Apple $99/year and all your apps get pulled.