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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?

#641

Post by 2143 »

gyulai wrote: post #540
2143 wrote: post #524

I don't mind newspapers being a subscription, because every day they have to do a lot of work to come up with a new version. However, I find subscriptions super annoying for things that already exist in its entirety and doesn't cost the service provider anything to give more of. Something I find unacceptable is the subscription situation coming up in the car industry: Some examples include: * BMW heated seat subscrip…

I agree with you. I simply have no words for how much this pisses me off. I'm seriously considering importing my next car from Russia or India or some country where consumers aren't as easy to abuse and defraud as they are in the west. But getting it certified for the road might be difficult, and I'd basically be on my own regarding maintenance. I live in rural Germany with close to zero repair shops close by that ar…

> I'm seriously considering importing my next car from Russia or India

I'm highly familiar with India. So, keep the following in mind:

(All of this is w.r.t European cars in India; situation is different for Indian, Japanese, Korean, and American car companies)

1. Cars manufactured in India (including Mercedes/BMW/VW/Skoda etc) are set up for right hand drive (steering wheel is on the right, and cars are driven on the left side of the road).

2. For high end brands you don't get as much configuration options as in Germany; limited choices with interior materials and colour. The flip side is, the time from booking a car to its delivery is relatively short, provided you buy a model that's relatively widely sold. ie., a Mercedes C200 shouldn't take too long to deliver. But the AMG models might take longer.

3. German cars are crazy expensive in India.

4. For most German brands, the parts are imported from Europe and assembled in their plants in India (this is called the "CKD - completely knocked down" route). Would be inefficient to then move that car back to Germany.

5. Higher end German cars (like, BMW M models, Mercedes AMG models etc) are directly imported into India from Europe. Direct imports have extremely high taxes. Again, would be inefficient to ship it back to Germany.

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

#642

Post by iggldiggl »

everyone wrote: post #249
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.

Windows 10 LTSB will be supported for about 10 years from now. (with 0 feature changes)

Although one possible problem could be if your hardware breaks down in five years and you want to take that as an opportunity to upgrade instead of doing a simple like-for-like replacement – drivers for then current hardware might not necessarily support old LTSB versions.

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

#643

Post by Ylpertnodi »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #539
phrom wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That hasn't been my experience. Windows 11 has more features any any version before it, and same goes for Office.

Funny, I wasn't thinking the same when I installed the Old Classic Calc[ulator].

https://winaero.com/classic-calculator-windows-10-creators/

How can you f* up a simple calculator on a very complex one?

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

#644

Post by watt »

flandish wrote: post #371
gog wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, but the app migrated from purchase to “life supporter” to subscription with each prior tier getting less. Now, “buy version 1.3.0” I can get not including updates post 1.3.x. But “life supporter” faded to “subscribe” after more time went by. Much like the mirc thing really. I kinda miss the days of “buy version X. Get X. X always works… tease with upgrades to get user to buy upgrade.”

Of course you do. It was fantastic while it lasted. It's not a great model for software developer though. I have no idea how Beyond Compare guy (scooter software) survives, for example. I paid for it once, maybe 10 years ago?

He should've taken more money. I paid for Sublime Merge, but it's nowhere as useful or great (so far) as Beyond Compare.

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

#645

Post by TeMPOraL »

xg15 wrote: post #622
TeMPOraL wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Data locked up in some software" in practice means strictly SaaS with cloud storage. If you have the data locally, you can always migrate it - whether manually, through the software that made it (e.g. if the app isn't supporting your new OS, then run it in a VM with an older OS to export to a more forward-compatible format), or through third-party converters. If enough people are in this position, someone will write…

> or through third-party converters. Assuming those exist.

They tend to for any software with non-negligible user base. The more so if those users suddenly all need one. Worst case, you can make one yourself. But none of that is even a possibility if the data is locked away in someone else's cloud.

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

#646

Post by Ylpertnodi »

ratorx wrote: post #629
ryandrake wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never understood this desire to keep having sortware get updated over and over. Ideally, I want to buy a working version of a software once and never update it again. I want that software to work the same way as it did when I bought it, forever. I don’t want to worry about waking up one day and finding that, because the company’s chief designer needed to do something to justify his salary, the whole UI of my sof…

Having the ability to do seamless frequent updates means that bad software can cause excess churn. They are not intrinsically linked. The problem with not having solid infrastructure for updates is security issues. Of course, there is a class of software where this is not a problem, but determining whether software falls into that category is pretty difficult given the structure of modern OS and the propensity for th…

>that implementing robust, dependable and user configurable auto updates with easy rollbacks etc. is a complex problem

So very true, but the complexities can be considerably reduced by not forcing updates - whether security, dependability, or UX. So many updates I see nowadays are the very 'churn' you mention.

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

#647

Post by Silhouette »

bruce511 wrote: post #425
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…

Your hardware point is interesting in the sense that it represents the non-saas model, but also appears to not be working. So I get it, they bought the hardware with a one-time purchase. The maker moved on. One day the OS moves on. But the hardware company is predatory for not writing a (free?) driver for their obsolete hardware on a new OS? Surely if the model is "buy once" then there's no expectation to return to t…

But the hardware company is predatory for not writing a (free?) driver for their obsolete hardware on a new OS?

The rest of the world deals with this problem by adopting standards. There are plenty of peripheral makers in the PC world who could perfectly well have followed or established standards too and then their equipment might be useful indefinitely through generic, long-lived drivers. In reality many of them chose to use proprietary protocols with no public documentation available instead. Building in artificial obsolescence is certainly a predatory business model.

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

#648

Post by gyulai »

2143 wrote: post #641
gyulai wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I simply have no words for how much this pisses me off. I'm seriously considering importing my next car from Russia or India or some country where consumers aren't as easy to abuse and defraud as they are in the west. But getting it certified for the road might be difficult, and I'd basically be on my own regarding maintenance. I live in rural Germany with close to zero repair shops close by that ar…

> I'm seriously considering importing my next car from Russia or India I'm highly familiar with India. So, keep the following in mind: (All of this is w.r.t European cars in India; situation is different for Indian, Japanese, Korean, and American car companies) 1. Cars manufactured in India (including Mercedes/BMW/VW/Skoda etc) are set up for right hand drive (steering wheel is on the right, and cars are driven on th…

I wasn't contemplating a re-import of a car from a German manufacturer as sold in India back into Germany. I also wasn't thinking "luxury".

I was rather thinking of getting a Tata or Lada or whatever the locals drive in India or Russia or some country where manufacturers are still more or less forced to serve the needs of the less-well-off consumer.

It would have to be something of much lesser complexity than a German luxury car. There are still lots of car mechanics around whose shops are not under contract by any particular brand who are more than happy to fix just about any car for you. ...provided the car manufacturer hasn't gone out of their way to make that difficult for them to do. Which all the modern brands with any presence in the West actually have done.

For example, usually only a VW dealership will have proper VW diagnostic software to read out error codes. If I ask them to fix my Honda Civic, I'm shit out of luck. If the only dealerships close by are VW dealerships, as is the case in rural Germany, then I'm basically forced to buy/drive a VW.

Now, that would be a different story if I had a Lada Taiga and had it serviced by the guy around the corner who fixes cars in his shed on weekends and who only takes cash.

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

#649

Post by i_am_toaster »

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.

Tell that to my graphics card. Had to update to 10 from 7 about 1-2 years ago because my graphics card started making very scary loud sounds when playing games.

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

#650

Post by gog »

MisterSandman wrote: post #328
gog wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep a Keepass compatible password database file in my iCloud folder so I can access it from my computer and my phone with appropriate apps.

So it's still SaaS, except you're using it for storage and sync and doing the password stuff yourself.

My passwords are encrypted without a SaaS, they way I want to sync them is using a SaaS, but a different, one of my choosing.
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