321–330 of 710 posts
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Unfortunately for Adobe products the subscription is for a year, but your point stands. Office used to be hundreds of dollars, now you can start using it for $10/month and it includes cloud storage/syncing.
I pay monthly for adobe. Well I see the invoices that are paid for my subscription. Around €90 per month including VAT.
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Standalone software keeps working more or less forever regardless of the company. I still use Jasc Paint Shop Pro X from something like 15 years ago as my image editing software. It might not be as good as more modern software, but I know how to use it and I don’t need to retrain on something new, which means I can be very fast with whatever I need to do. Subscription-based software including updates is a downside as…
>Standalone software keeps working more or less forever regardless of the company. That may be true for Windows, but it isn't true for Mac (unless you never upgrade your computer). I have been writing and supporting the same piece of commercial software since 2005 on Windws and Mac. v1 of my software probably still works on Windows 11. Not a chance on Mac (it has gone PowerPc -> Intel -> Arm in that time!).
They almost never stop working on you, and are far easier to maintain cross platform.
Using the same thing on Mac at work and Linux at home is a joy.
Increasingly, I actively try to use the command line approach to all my software. Not because it's better (often it... isn't. FFmpeg is actually remarkably annoying for example), but it's bloody reliable.
Yes, and the only practical answer is to consider how many of these subscriptions you actually need. For instance, I see no reason why a password manager should be a SaaS. I don't care how long these companies have been around thusfar; in my opinion, using a password manager as-a-service is asking for trouble and is a waste of money. The closer you approach "perfect" security, the more of your personal security you e…
> why a password manager should be a SaaS While I fully agree with you, how do you sync passwords across my 3 laptops and 3 phones without a SaaS offering? While I don't use this feature, but it is common for ppl to share an account. How can I securely share credentials with family members?
One big negative aspect is that everything tends to cost around $10/month, from a verified Twitter account to an app to teach English to my children. Now, it may be small change for single people with Silicon Valley salaries, but I have a family to feed on my French experienced engineer salary, and I basically have around $150-$200/month left for entertainment for the whole family. I cannot buy 10 internet services,…
Hmm, I'm debating a lot of this now for my work. What if they said $10/month or $50/year? Or would you prefer a software you could buy for $50 until it falls apart? (I built an app and didn't update it as Android and iOS changed and it doesn't work anymore) Edit: ok not falls apart but maybe doesn't stay updated and becomes obsolete, or has bugs that don't get fixed, etc.
It is at the same time a subscription to the latest updates, and a one time purchase of an older version that will still be able to open your files, if you drop the subscription. Or the company disappears.
I think that is the best option for a subscription. If you go the one off purchase route though, consider also adding a "grace period" where users get free upgrades to the next version or at least a good discount. For example, if I buy your $50 dollars software, and the next week you show up with a new version with really cool features for the same $50 dollars, I would feel scammed, especially if you hadn't made any announcements that the new version was about to come out. Try to either have a release schedule where you announce a month or two before they're out, or to offer a month or two or free upgrades if you someone buys a version right before a new one comes out.
>So yeah, why is that? And is anyone else tired of the constant barrage of subscriptions for things that should be one off purchases? It's extremely tiresome. And surely the only motives are profit and control. It's gotten so bad that now auto manufacturers are charging monthly subscriptions to use features that are built into the car that you have already purchased.[0] It's a disturbing trend that will eventually ha…
Charging a sub for things like heated seats is obviously broken, but I also don't know if people have an appetite for what the upfront costs would be for many pieces of software that are currently subscription based, in order to provide support for any length of time. Look at the pricing for IDA, which tries to balance having an astonishingly good product, but very limited market, for how this can end up distorted wi…
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Yeah the problem with software these days is the constant upgrade cycle. Own-it-for-life means "I expect free updates for the next 20 years" which as we've seen with the mIRC author isn't the best business model. Turns the software developer into indentured servitude to all the people who bought it in the past. The JetBrains model where you own it up need to rent it to get upgrades seems to work reasonably well, but…
Offering free upgrades for life is almost always a terrible idea: https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-free... And offering upgrades for life and then trying to backtrack on it is even worse.
Individual customers, and corporate customers, are wildly different.
The "buy it for life" business model works very well if you're trying to launch a mass market product to individuals.
In your first year of a product, those users who'll pay upfront 3 years of subscriptions for a "lifetime pass" are an awe-inspiringly useful customer segment to identify.
They're your way to run experiments to find "what am I doing well and how can I do more of it."
Plus, they're effectively loaning your business money against future revenues. During the first 2 years of your product, that's an amazing deal all round.
Just... never, ever, let corporations "buy it for life." Corporations will exploit by it for life dramatically.
It's very much possible that a large company subsidizes these costs or runs ads, thereby making it "free". But the costs are still there.
You do have a point about office and image editing programs. A local desktop app in itself has no recurring costs for the company that built it, at least not directly. Still, after market and customer saturation it would mean the companies go bankrupt, as little new revenue comes in.
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> why a password manager should be a SaaS While I fully agree with you, how do you sync passwords across my 3 laptops and 3 phones without a SaaS offering? While I don't use this feature, but it is common for ppl to share an account. How can I securely share credentials with family members?
I keep a Keepass compatible password database file in my iCloud folder so I can access it from my computer and my phone with appropriate apps.
But also, when business interests get involved in producing software in general, it often causes problems, i.e. ads, worse interop, performance considered unimportant, marketing emails, DRM, the software not working after the company is acquihired or fails. However, producing software takes time which costs money. So, commercially produced software can only exist at this intersection between there being a business model, and the software being useful. The condition is, the usefulness must be enough to be worth paying for, and the result is what we have now.
Imagine rewinding to 1990 with unlimited borrowed VC funds, hiring every person employed in tech full time until 2023, and building a massive suite of useful software for individuals, companies, govt, with a few different alternatives for each use case (like we have now), except they communicate via a series of well defined and public APIs. The entire software stack would be developed in this way, for maximum usability, performance, interoperability, features, etc. . After getting to the set of features we now have in late 2022, we pause the thought experiment, note the date, and split the cost between the users. Ignoring the various practical issues with this experiment, I bet it would be possible to get to where we are sooner and far cheaper per user.
Long story short, I don't think the goal of making money as a business is very well aligned with the goal of producing really good quality and long lasting software, even if the users are willing to pay, and this is a real problem. For personal use, I won't tolerate ads, DRM, etc., so I now self host.
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I thought about it and a lot of physical products we use everyday are either perishables themselves or require perishables for a regular maintenance. Yes, we aren't forced to buy from the exact same brands like in a subscription model. Practically, we end up buying the same products in a predictable schedule, to keep the wheel spinning.
A lot? Furniture? Clothing? Cars? Electronics? Appliances? Physical books? [takes off glasses to think] Glasses? Physical products wear out eventually, but they can last for many years. They're not necessarily perishable.
Cleaning products, washing powder, fabric softener, bleach, fuel, windshield wiper fluid, tires, batteries.
Books, sure, they seem to be maintenance-free. I guess glasses too.