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It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

calpaterson.com

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Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#131

Post by DJBunnies »

Ballu wrote: post #99

When I moved to US in late '90s, my mentor told the Milk distribution story/change (NY/NJ). During his grandfather times (I am sure around 1950/60s, Milkman used to enter the home and check how much milk is needed and change the bottle. With time, few crimes and privacy concepts started coming into picture, the milks bottles were left outside. And now Amazon wants to enterr your home to do exactly what milkman used t…

I don’t want Amazon in my house, but this is contrived.

Determining what you need replaced and fulfilling it != secure delivery of what you ordered yourself.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#132

Post by derefr »

zizee wrote: post #62
glenngillen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shops offering printing-as-a-service are one of the most common things found in every small town, all over the world. FWIW, I live in the outer suburbs of Melbourne in Australia. By no means a small town. It’s a 20min drive to my closest place that does printing, which is apparently out in an industrial estate. There’s absolutely nothing in the 3-4 most accessible shopping/retail areas. These types of places have b…

I too am in Australia, but 15 minute drive into a small town without a print shop. Perhaps Australia is a oddity, and most people/places worldwide do in fact have easy access to a local print shop, but I am guessing the grandparent is seeing things from the perspective of a north American and in my experience it is a relative safe bet that the north American experience does not usually translate to the rest of the wo…

> I am guessing the grandparent is seeing things from the perspective of a North American

No, I’m basing this on extensive travel experience in Africa, South America, and South Asia. If a town has anything resembling a hostel, then it is also 100% likely to have a copy shop or an Internet cafe with a printer.

—————

I think the actual failure of shared model here, is that there are people here who think something being 20 minutes away by car is “inconvenient.”

Folks, where I used to live, the nearest thing other than a farmstead was an hour away by car. And I still would have had my photos printed in town rather than owning a shitty inkjet printer (that would have been used so little that it would have required maintenance before every print.)

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#133

Post by derefr »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #61
glenngillen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shops offering printing-as-a-service are one of the most common things found in every small town, all over the world. FWIW, I live in the outer suburbs of Melbourne in Australia. By no means a small town. It’s a 20min drive to my closest place that does printing, which is apparently out in an industrial estate. There’s absolutely nothing in the 3-4 most accessible shopping/retail areas. These types of places have b…

I'm in Tasmania's second largest city, Launceston. The closest printing shop with extended hours, which I need because I'm just a lowly blue collar working who needs to work 12 hour days to make ends meet, is Officeworks, and there's exactly one of those here and it's 8 kilometres from my house and shuts at 7pm. I'll just use my second hand Brother colour laser, cheers.

Or, presuming you don’t work 7 day weeks, you could just go during working hours on the weekend.

Again, who needs glossy photo prints with a 24 hour deadline? What for?

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#134

Post by matheusmoreira »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #58

He mentions "Smart TVs". I always thought you could just buy a SmartTV and not connect the internet and have a dumb TV. Nope. HDMI changed that. I bought a TV a few months ago and it started showing adverts because it was connected to the internet through my ROKU via HDMI. That's right, you can't even have a dumb TV anymore. Someone needs to make an HDMI internet filter, stat. But Adobe? That smells like extortion.

Why can't the device the TV is connected to simply block its internet access?

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#135

Post by noisy_boy »

tempest_ wrote: post #11
askvictor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the older double-edged safety razors were designed around such a model, but at least there is a 'standard' for those, with plenty of different companies producing interoperable consumables. Would it be fair to say that any product with consumables that are proprietary to the vendor, is a subscription?

I actually shifted to using a double edged safety razor when the cost of the disposable blades felt like too much. It isnt quite as easy, and I still cut myself from time to time but I also am still using the variety pack of 100 blades that I bought two years ago for like 10$.

I have basically stopped shaving and just use my Wahl trimmer. Even though it can't match a close shave, since my work environment doesn't demand a super clean shaved look, it works out for me. No foam needed either. Must have saved hundreds of dollars by now.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#136

Post by matheusmoreira »

> My favourite example of this are the "smart" televisions that one day decided, all on their own, to start showing their adverts: a new, recurring psychic cost for their subscribers, who had thought they were owners.

Nice perspective, never thought about it that way. My hate for the companies that do this has been renewed.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#137

Post by coldtea »

gruez wrote: post #87
dexterdog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about the Staples print kiosk being hacked so they can steal a copy of everything that is printed.

He is? Who needs to print "financial documents" in color? Also, the part about "4 viruses written to the boot sector" suggests the kiosk is also dropping malware onto the USB.

>He is? Who needs to print "financial documents" in color?

Nobody. Some still do out of ignorance.

The same thing can happen when you print them in black and white from a similar kiosk.

And the financial documents could be in the same usb next to documents you did want to print in color.

>Also, the part about "4 viruses written to the boot sector" suggests the kiosk is also dropping malware onto the USB.

He's trying to make a point, even if that wasn't the case in that particular instance, it's something that can very easily happen too.

There's a lot of losing the forrest ("people sticking usbs to commercial kiosks to print is bad security") for some less significant detail trees in those questions...

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#138

Post by hug »

Danieru wrote: post #128
hug wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a weird derail, presumably because you don't like the idea of the Playdate, but it's worth pointing out that the subscription, in the case of Playdate, works much like milk: It's better as a subscription. But Playdate is both parts. It's a device built to host a subscription, but the subscription itself only works to support the device. The device is built with deliberate constraints to provoke creat…

> The thing is that no one is buying a Playdate without being aware of what they're getting. Nonsense, no one knows anything about future subscriptions aka "what they are getting". How can consumers be fully informed when nothing is announced? The PlayDate will have an astronomically small install base. Amortizing a dozen game's developments over such a small install base without subsidy from Panic will surely lead t…

No one knows anything about the financials of the thing but you do know what you're getting: A unique little handheld, with 21 unique-to-the-platform indie games, at known price point, and a promise that they're gonna try to put out seasons of games.

What you might get thereafter being entirely unknown (other than it being a device-bespoke set of games for some price) is exciting.

Maybe the subscription will be too pricey to stomach. Maybe they'll go tits up. Maybe it'll be a complete commercial flop.

Maybe, on the other hand, they've already sold 100,000 devices and manage an attach rate of 65% at $5 a month and they make that million a quarter to fund games. Maybe it's $20 a 3 month season and they've got even more in their pocket.

Who knows, but I'm still excited.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#139

Post by fy20 »

tempest_ wrote: post #11
askvictor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the older double-edged safety razors were designed around such a model, but at least there is a 'standard' for those, with plenty of different companies producing interoperable consumables. Would it be fair to say that any product with consumables that are proprietary to the vendor, is a subscription?

I actually shifted to using a double edged safety razor when the cost of the disposable blades felt like too much. It isnt quite as easy, and I still cut myself from time to time but I also am still using the variety pack of 100 blades that I bought two years ago for like 10$.

I also switched a few years ago, and found I actually cut myself less than the Gillette I had befote. When I do cut myself it bleeds more though :-)

I usually use Bic blades which you can get in pretty much any supermarket in Europe for 50c a pack. The blades are steel and the packaging is paper, so much better for the environment too.

The reason why I switched is worth mentioning. I was working abroad in another Western European country and couldn't find the blades for my specific razor. They had plenty of other Gillette blades, but not the one I needed (of course the blades are not interchangable with the head). I tried a few other supermarkets and it was the same. I figured ok let's buy a complete new razor, and in the supermarket there was a safety razor next to the other razors for the same price, so I figured I'd give it a try.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#140

Post by dangrossman »

Danieru wrote: post #73

Semi-Off-Topic but related to Opex vs Capex: One of the weird aspects of Japanese tax law is the Capital Assets tax. Every year your local city taxes any capital goods at 1.5%. What is a capital good? Anything which takes multiple years to deduct. A couple examples: Cars, Machines, Factories. A couple odd examples: desks, chairs, TV, elevators. In the past other first world countries had such capital goods taxes but…

My US county (Wake County, NC) has such a tax... worse even.

Each year I have to catalog every pencil, pen, paperclip and ream of paper in my office. The desk, tables, shelves, printer ink, bottle of windex, each of my books, even individual USB cables all need to be listed. I need years acquired and purchase prices for every little object owned by each of my 4 businesses.

Each summer, a tax bill shows up for my personal property.

I generally don't mind taxes. I really don't. But this one I hate. It's such a colossal waste of time that I can't even hand off to an accountant.

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