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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?

#331

Post by lapcat »

duckmysick wrote: post #330
lapcat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, for the second category I mentioned: "require perishables for a regular maintenance". 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.

Could you explain how clothing needing to be cleaned is relevant to subscriptions? After all, you don't have to buy the cleaning products from the clothing manufacturer. Same for car tires, etc. So the clothing companies and car companies aren't making any extra money from this.

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

#332

Post by prepend »

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…

> because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version

Really? How many companies did you see do this? Because I see lots of companies still around who have been selling software for decades. Because the marginal cost of software is near zero it’s possible to make money off upgrades and new products because it’s not a linear function of labor to customers.

I think it’s more profitable to charge as a service. Adobe and Microsoft weren’t at any risk of bankruptcy when they switched to subscription.

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

#333

Post by Silhouette »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #306
Silhouette wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't actually stop working, it just means you're much more vulnerable to malware. The biggest threats haven't come from direct external assaults on the OS for years. I expect a typical consumer device is more at risk from an out of date browser than any other type of vulnerability now. The biggest risk for most of us as personal users is someone stealing our data via a hack, which often doesn't require root/admin…

It has been several years since WannaCry, but absolutely nothing guarantees that another such vulnerability does not surface.

Ransomware, like the old data trashing viruses of the past, is trivially defeated by having backups.

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

#334

Post by phrom »

fleddr wrote: post #327

A note taking app or password manager in the modern sense is not a product, it's a service. Your content is stored and this costs money. Not only is it a recurring cost, it's also a growing cost as content keeps getting added and rarely removed. It's not illogical that a recurring fee is asked. It's very much possible that a large company subsidizes these costs or runs ads, thereby making it "free". But the costs are…

You are making a subjective judgement on what a modern note taking app or password manager should be like. They could be developed as local desktop apps, just like the office and image editing programs are.

Personally, my notes are not going on anyone else's servers.

Part of the problem with being tired of subscriptions is being tired of applications that would be perfect to run locally being instead developed as a web app, for the benefit of requiring a server and justifying the subscription.

I hate using a phone and its small screen. I don't need my data to sync with other devices. So there's nobody "modern" making software I'd like to use.

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

#335

Post by mhitza »

jimkleiber wrote: post #243
bytehowl wrote: post #145

Ignoring all the issues around ownership, corporations being untrustworthy, etc., I think one of the biggest problems is that subscription costs aren't flexible enough and require too much micromanagement. You use a program 24/7 for a month straight? That'll be $10. You need to use a program just for a single 5-minute task in a whole month? That'll be $10. You literally don't touch a program for a month? That'll be $…

I've been exploring a pay what you want model for a subscription. Would you prefer something like this? Or more about just putting in more options for selecting based on one's usage? something else?

Something like what AWS does seems reasonable, charge per consumption/usage not fixed priced per user/feature. For example, if you average user spends 10 hours a week using your software, bake that time into the price point, unless usage is correlated with load/compute on your backend, in which case use measurement metric to price things.

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

#336

Post by syntheticcorp »

MisterSandman wrote: post #325
rincebrain wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's IDA?

It’s a good disassembler that is fairly expensive. https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro/

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

#338

Post by Gigachad »

franga2000 wrote: post #290
Gigachad wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true for most things you "subscribe" to. If the gym closes down, they aren't required to provide a new location near you. If your office building gets demolished, there is no recourse. You just have to deal with it and sort out your own alternative.

Just because there are other situations that suck, doesn't mean this one has to. Allowing users to use software if a company goes bankrupt or kills a product costs next to nothing. A big difference is also that many other subscriptions are much more fungible - I can easily go to another gym or rent a similar office in a nearby building, but I can't go play Sadia-exclusive games on another cloud gaming provider or mov…

I disagree that the situation sucks. You gain value while paying. If it goes away in the future, that doesn’t take away from the current value. Just make sure your data is portable which it should be by EU laws and you are ok.

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

#339

Post by BenjiWiebe »

gog wrote: post #318
flandish wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what happened with Stronglifts 5x5.. yep.

What happened? Isn't that just a body weight exercise routine?

I don't know anything about it, besides knowing that my dad and brother used to use that app but switched away from it for some reason.

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

#340

Post by class4behavior »

least wrote: post #253
lozenge wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any improvement in Spotify in years. Still can't organise songs in any meaningful way, can't rate songs, playlists suck, shuffle is broken, and they keep pushing podcast content when I never listen to podcasts. 1Password also used to sync to Dropbox for free and even had an HTML version that could serve from Dropbox.

Spotify still hasn't reached feature parity with Spotify when it first came out. Only recently did something as basic as lyrics return. It's still not extensible like it once was.

There were no lyrics all this time? Either it's really hard to get people to pay attention to alternatives like Deezer and Tidal or there is little demand for lyrics.
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