131–140 of 257 posts
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What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.
How do you "subscribe" to open source software?
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This reminds me a lot of presentation slides that I read a few nights ago. I was reading presentation slides from Carnegie Mellon professor Heather Miller about the funding challenges that open source software projects have ( https://2019.programming-conference.org/details/programming-... ). So many people and companies rely on open source infrastructure and productivity tools, and while there are plenty of people co…
What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.
1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising.
2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers are down. This adds a completely unnecessary external dependency.
3) You're entirely at the vendor's mercy if they decide to change the software. At the very least, you're subjected to constant small breakages of your workflow, and at worst they change some major feature that you depend on and put you out of business for days or weeks until you find a workaround.
Edit: Also 4) The aforementioned awkward cloud tie-in often brings with it some gnarly privacy issues, with your sensitive files and private data being leeched off to the vendor's servers FoR YoUR ConVeNIeNcE.
I have been an OmniGraffle user from the very beginning (~2000). I love OmniGraffle. But I've seen Sketch come (and go) and there have been no significant updates for OmniGraffle for a very very long time. Omni only added to their iOS offerings and totally forgot about desktop. I understand that mobile "is the future" but, there is a significant need for desktop design applications. And although I still use OmniGraff…
I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest…
Honestly starting to feel like the past 4 years of OS X changes have just been too much burden for the few remaining OS X software developers across the board. I recall when the Mac App Store came about a lot of developers moved their software to it, then sandboxing happened and that seemed like an absolute nightmare for most to implement, then after months of that they started to leave the App Store and then there's Gatekeeper too.
Now I'm not saying these are bad things, I definitely see the benefits but there just isn't the mass of engineering talent or money in building OS X software to justify the work required.
This has been tangible to me, 6 years ago my Mac was running all Cocoa apps apart from Creative Suite. Today all the apps I'm running are Electron apart from Textmate and Creative Suite.
The neglect of the Mac platform and the divvying up of the small Mac userbase into Mac users, iPad users and iPhone users means the future of the OS X app experience is just going to be running Javascript apps in Chrome wrappers.
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I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest…
I would wish for some features of Sketch actually yes - then I wouldn't have had the need to buy Sketch (and next switch to Figma). Also some better/easier integrations with Powerpoint/Keynote would be nice, I draw 50% (in the past >90%) of diagrams in OmniGraffle that I use in PP/Keynote. I agree that the basics are excellent (alignment, copy & paste, sizing, ...) and still best in class.
Think Figma took them completely by surprise, Sketch's success was built on the user experience of a cocoa app feeling much more solid and slick than antiquated Adobe software, don't think they ever expected webtech to be able to compete but obviously with the force behind it and OS X being stagnant, it did.
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I was saying the same thing earlier today. Most of their products are $100-200. I like OmniGraffle but I only need to make graphics a few times a year, and free alternatives like draw.io or even Keynote often suffice.
That is the issue. It is not that it isn't worth $250 for the Pro version if you use it everyday, but it isn't worth it if you only use it twice a year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest…
> (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently) Honestly starting to feel like the past 4 years of OS X changes have just been too much burden for the few remaining OS X software developers across the board. I recall when the Mac App Store came about a lot of developers moved their software to it, then sandboxing happened and that seemed like an absolute nightmare for most to implement, t…
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> I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting. Don't we spend on software, though? Software spend is surely in the billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions a year. As consummate consum…
Worth thinking about the number of companies globally that make a living writing software in the following categories of development tools a. Debuggers b. IDEs c. Querying Tools d. Text editors e. Source control tools f. Build systems The market for development tools does not look particularly vibrant based on the above.
Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…
Omnigraffle is an essential tool for me. I couldn’t write my articles without it, and it’s the best visualizer I’ve ever used. I happily pay for it.
I have used it for years and years, for normal stuff like software diagrams and business process and shit like that, but also for stuff like floor-planning my house and doing mockups to decide what furniture and TVs to buy, to making easy-to-understand political comic books to influence how my friends vote (old example: https://masonmark.com/stuff/2008/America.pdf), and I even used it to create the CV which helped land me the awesome job I have now (http://www.fivespeed.com/mason/resume/mason_resume.pdf).
According to rumor, the principal guy behind OmniGraffle had a fairly unusual employment arrangement and wasn't typically seen that often in the halls of Omni — I don't know the details, or even his name, but as an OmniGraffle-dependent user I'm wondering with some trepidation if he was part of these layoffs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.
As a consumer of software there are three MAJOR problems with the subscription model: 1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising. 2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.
As a consumer of software there are three MAJOR problems with the subscription model: 1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising. 2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers…
The JetBrains model is good because I'm able to keep using a version without paying for upgrades (but I have kept up anyway as the annual fee is so cheap for what I get).
The points you've made are why I don't typically get software that is truly 'rental only' or hits your other points. That said, I've not run in to too many in the past few years that are affected by those issues any more. Are there some in particular you're thinking of that have those problems?