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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?

#431

Post by throwoutway »

closeparen wrote: post #348
37 wrote: post #59

>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…

Cars are funny. The automakers pretend they are simply selling an object for a pile of money, but in the real world of the dealership & lending ecosystem it's all 60-72 month loans and service contracts and warranties. And it's all pretty smarmy compared to what people would accept from a reputable national brand. If cars are subscription products anyway, then having the automakers internalize & centralize that part…

Not accurate exactly. The bank finances the loan, the dealership gets the money right away. The dealership gets a small commission from the bank for being the sole proprietor of the financing. The warranties are the dealership though

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

#433

Post by winternett »

pdntspa wrote: post #309
lunarplague wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how come you get podcast content pushed to you, and I have to actively search for podcast content and can't find anything outside of the bubbles I listen to without going to external sources. Also, arguably, shuffle is not broken, it is working as intended, as there is an intended method to shuffle the songs according to popularity, right? Unless they changed that.

> shuffle the songs according to highest streaming royalty for Spotify FTFY

It also happens with my music player when playing my own library of music, it has actually gotten that bad that even random no longer works as it should.

This is why I kept all of my old CDs, Mp3s, and DVDs... One day we're going to have to boycott everything and it will be painful for those who only had subscriptions on entertainment & productivity apps.

I'll load up windows 98 if I have to! I'll do it again!

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

#434

Post by tored »

solardev wrote: post #126
thot_experiment wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck subscription models are you using? In my experience the software gets broken over time and you can't do anything about it, including RUN THE OLD VERSION WHICH WORKED. There's no longer as much incentive for companies to improve because they'll get paid anyway instead of payment being contingent on actually delivering something useful. Yes subscription models are good for developers, no this doesn't make…

Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.

Spotify, IntelliJ (Phpstorm), Postman is definitely getting worse.

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

#435

Post by paultopia »

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 don't think this is correct. Two points against it:

1) Upgrades aren't all that valuable in lots of cases. Why should software require constant upgrades to work right? Lots of rarely upgraded software works just fine. The easy example here is Sublime Text. One of the best text editors, bar none. It had how many years between major upgrades? And old versions work just fine.

Maybe for security sensitive software constant upgrades are important, because there are adversarial actors trying to break it. But that doesn't apply to things like Photoshop.

2) My best guess is that the real reason for companies moving to the subscription model is effectively as a form of seller-provided financing. Remember how much Photoshop used to cost when you could buy it? After googling around, I see prices in the $700-800 range. Now it's like 20 bucks a month, so Adobe makes the same amount after a few years of a subscription, but in addition probably gets a lot more casual users who don't quite realize that the monthly payment still adds up over the end.

(Edit) Also, one other point on the whole notion of software companies going out of business because people didn't buy the next version. Isn't that just the same thing as planned obsolescence in the non-software world? Don't we get mad when non-software companies insist on forcing people to re-buy their products over and over again in order to make money? Also, how do non-software companies manage to pull it off? Honda cars last a famously long time, yet we don't see people shedding tears for them because once you buy a Civic you don't have to buy the "upgrade" in a year.

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

#436

Post by userbinator »

I can't believe no one has posted the infamous quote yet:

"You will own nothing, and be happy."

The WEF posted that article on their site in 2016, deleted it sometime later after it got a LOT of understandably negative attention, and tried to call it a conspiracy theory, but it's clear what's going on. (You can still look in the web archive for the article). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820

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

#437

Post by paultopia »

phrom wrote: post #140
solardev wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.

Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows is getting worse by moving towards ads.

Although TBF office and windows have gotten worse with every version at least since the 1990s.

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

#438

Post by winternett »

phrom wrote: post #218
TingPing wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a choice not to upgrade Windows, not practically, it will go out of support and you can't do anything about it other than hope Windows Next will be more to your liking.

True, because of how necessary OS updates / security fixes are, sooner or later you're forced to upgrade, even on a "buy once" model. But in that model, at least there was still a chance of an effective user boycott. When Windows Vista and Windows 8 released, people got mad, and enough of them stuck to Windows XP and Windows 7 that Microsoft had to address it, for example by going back on the Windows 8 start menu. No…

The key is to also keep your old hardware conveniently offline until they drop pushing forced updates to it... It works surprisingly well when no patches are applied, and documentation is usually quite thorough.

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

#439

Post by class4behavior »

least wrote: post #407
class4behavior wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotify's killer feature at this point is probably that they have an ad-supported tier while none of the other services (that I'm aware of) do... unless you count youtube? I think lyrics was a bit of legal hurdle so Spotify had to get rid of it. I imagine they brought it back recently as they worked out a legal way to provide them again.

Nonsense. Most of them do. Deezer even offered a bigger music archive in the beginning. Tidal started as sub only but added a US only free tier, instead it pays its artist much better.

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

#440

Post by winternett »

themacguffinman wrote: post #233
TingPing wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a choice not to upgrade Windows, not practically, it will go out of support and you can't do anything about it other than hope Windows Next will be more to your liking.

It may not be advisable, but tell that to the XP-for-life or 7-for-life people. It won't actually stop working, it just means you're much more vulnerable to malware.

Eventually after an OS passes it EOL... Even security threats decrease as the OS falls out of popular use. I ran a totally offline NT server for many years after EOL and it was glorious, CD-ROM and all.
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