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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#161

Post by rpep »

There are a few things I subscribe to, but they’re pretty few and far between now as I deliberately try and keep it to a minimum. For e.g. I use Google Photos and Gmail so I pay to upgrade my storage to 100gb, and I have a Spotify family subscription, but I think that’s it for ones I plan to keep.

I have a LastPass subscription but I’m planning to migrate off of that when the next renewal comes around as I don’t think the cost is justified compared to OSS options and I’m concerned at the recent issues they’ve had.

I used to subscribe to Evernote, but when I left academia I lost the need for that, and I was getting fed up with it getting slower and slower too.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#162

Post by openlowcode »

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, whereas I could perfectly afford buying, say, a dozen or so $50 software a year.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#163

Post by [deleted] »

AlexandrB wrote: post #56
crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

It's so much worse when a subscription business fails. You can lose access to your data with very little notice to migrate. At least standalone software keeps working for a while after the company maintaining it is gone.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#164

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

hyperhopper wrote: post #132
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #52

A heuristic for somewhat ethical subscriptions it's probably to decouple subscriptions from the calendar. Instead of $X/month, which must be paid even if using intensively, barely, or not at all the service, to have $X for Y amount of "no expiration date" minutes of service. Just want to try the service, pay $0.X for 10 minutes. Really like the service, pay $X++ for 1,000 minutes and not worry about it. Of course, th…

I don't understand paying for APMs. Paying for actions makes sense, do X, get charged Y. But is paying for APMs only charging you if you do actions faster? Or paying for minutes and you get a certain cap of actions? None of these are intuitive or reasonable.

Was thinking while typing. Yes, probably you don't need the unit of time at all, simply buy for $10 1,000 click actions, Clicks as a Service (somehow sounds more menacing); the unit economics needs to be worked out on a service basis.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#165

Post by OkGoDoIt »

crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

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 far as I’m concerned. Especially when they phone home and realize you’re not on the latest version and refused to work until you update. I don’t generally want to update. Stability and muscle memory is way too underrated in the tech world.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#166

Post by themadturk »

I can live with subscriptions, though part of me rebels at it. But I really dislike software that makes me pay ahead of time to even try it. This isn't exactly common, but it is seen at least on the Apple app store. In a world where subscription models are so common, what makes it hard to give me a 7 or 30 day trial before I have to put out money? I've had to ask Apple for money back three or four times, and that is both a drain on my time and attention as well as (possibly) some poor schmuck at Apple.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#167

Post by nathias »

Property is one of the basis of autonomy so this shift that makes economic sense and scales for large corporations will probably many very undesired societal effects. It's the missing link between the optimism of early web with the dystopias of cyberpunk, if everything is a subscription not a product you have no control over it, and can be easily banned from it. Infrastructure as a subscription is the royal road to tyranny.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#168

Post by lapcat »

solardev wrote: post #131
lapcat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time. > Owning software is worthless to me because their effective lifespans are so short anyway, usually just a couple years, before the ecosystem has moved on and left them behind anyway. I find it strange that these two sentences are in the same comment.

How so? Tech is moving so fast across multiple fronts that software obsolescence happens much quicker than before, not due to the developer themselves, but I mean things like Windows changing driver models, Apple changing silicon, Android APIs constantly evolving, web technologies mutating like a cancer... old versions quickly become useless without active maintenance. Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep…

> old versions quickly become useless without active maintenance.

I think this is somewhat exaggerated. Not to mention that if you're using older versions of 3rd party software, you can use older versions of the OS too. In fact, many people don't like to update their OS version. If it ain't broke...

> Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep pace with one another and stay compatible because most users are on the latest version.

How is this different from upfront paid software? The latest versions of that stay compatible too. You may have to pay an upgrade fee, but that generally doesn't happen every year, unlike subscriptions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#170

Post by dmitrygr »

crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

> I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates

Who needs that? I use office 97 with Microsoft’s office converters package for modern formats. Super fast and does all I need

I use photoshop cs2. Local. Fast. Offline

Software can easily reach “good enough”.

What is it with people today that makes them think that no updates or no recent changes is bad?

I WANT my tools to be stable and not change from under me.

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