Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Little Snitch Mini

obdev.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 276 posts

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#251

Post by Zetice »

hh3k0 wrote: post #246
Zetice wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a saner way to live be to judge the value you get out of something to determine how much you're willing to pay for its use? Just seems needlessly limiting to act like this out of principle.

As far as I am concerned, subscriptions are an unreasonable hassle. You need to keep track of what subscriptions are active and where you can manage them. And when subscriptions are running, a “did I remember cancelling all the stuff I’m currently not using” is always in the back of my mind somewhere. That’s just annoying noise that I can easily avoid by not using subscription services.

I just find caring about any of that to be a waste of mental energy. I prefer to use the tools that make me effective enough to out-earn the problem.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#252

Post by mattl »

jiveturkey wrote: post #250
mattl wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t contain the mini product

The parent didn't want the mini product. He wanted the full paid version (what you get if you do the IAP in the mini product).

That’s still the mini product, just the paid version of it I believe

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#254

Post by newaccount74 »

lockhouse wrote: post #108
latexr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let’s stop comparing software subscriptions to coffee. It misses the point about the recurring cost and lock in, and not everyone lives in the USA and pays high prices for coffee every day (or ever). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32738791

I don't like subscriptions either, but what is the sustainable alternative income source for app developers?

"Pay once" is sustainable as long as people keep buying your app. Which works out just fine, since you are never going to saturate the market as a small app developer. There's always going to be new people who buy your app.

I've made a living from non-subscription app sales for a decade, and revenue is pretty constant. As long as your app stays useful, people will continue to buy it.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#255

Post by krono »

Zetice wrote: post #61
sneak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I pay for LS. The whole point of the software is to avoid nonconsensual phone-home; if it does it itself, how or why would you ever trust the developer? I'd literally rather pay for proprietary software than maintain a fork of LuLu.

It's not nonconsensual, you can literally block it with itself.

It transmits telemetry non-consensually before you even get a chance to tell it not to. That is, unless you know of this beforehand and are also tech-literate enough to understand this can be circumvented by disabling your internet connection before you first open the application - something you cannot reasonably expect from all users, seeing as how this telemetry gathering is not advertised anywhere and had to be found in the source code.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#256

Post by manuelmoreale »

lockhouse wrote: post #248
manuelmoreale wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, and I'm asking because I want to know your take, not because I'm trying to be a dick: why should an app developer have a sustainable income stream from a single app no matter what? Isn't it possible that an app is simple enough that doesn't justify getting a full salary out of it? Again, I'm not trying to be a dick here, I'm just trying to figure out what is the reasoning behind the subscription mode…

I completely agree, many apps don’t justify being a subscription. It depends on the complexity, the frequency of expected updates and new features. Also if there is a cloud storage or paid API component to the app, then a subscription model is practically essential to keep an app running due to the developer’s own recurring costs. I think like many things it’s not one size fits all. In this particular case, I think t…

Well, I was looking at the change log of the non mini version of this app and the releases are dated

- October 12, 2022 - May 2, 2022 - April 25, 2022 - November 17, 2021

Just to grab the most recent. Reading the change notes a solid % is bug fixes which is expected.

This looks like a “traditional” piece of software. Doesn’t require constant new features that could be eventually bundled in a major paid release and the updates are primarily big fixes.

And in fact the non mini version of little snitch is not a subscription. As it should.

I agree with you that if an app has running costs (cloud storage or other services) or it requires constant work then a subscription is justified. But these days developers are trying to convert everything into a subscription.

Every minor utility app wants to be a subscription. Which is just insane.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#257

Post by alexvoda »

Terretta wrote: post #225
alexvoda wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one more reason 3'rd party stores should exist.

If you think corporations will buy from the third party store that isn't built into the Apple Business Manager (plus MDM of choice) that lets you open shrink-wrapped Macs and hand them to the employee with all their apps self-installed, think again.

Maybe not, but competition will put pressure on Apple to improove and offer more options for business models other than 1 and 3.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#258

Post by hayst4ck »

Cort3z wrote: post #195
hayst4ck wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with you so I looked it up. In-App Purchases: Yearly Subscription $13.49 Monthly Subscription $1.49 That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. The real question is, is little snitch rent seeking? Given what happened after Catalina, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt at the moment. Paying for updates before receiving them def…

> It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload. Wait, is this true? Do you have any resources backing this up. This would be a good protection mechanism if you can distill it to the minimum footprint to trigger this self destruct on viruses.

For windows it is true. I don't know if there are mainstream osx trojans, but I don't see why they wouldn't have the same behavior.

There are services like crowdstrike where you can upload a trojan, it will then run the trojan in a VM to try to see what it does. In response, trojans try to detect if the system they are on is a vm and if it has sufficient power (lots of ram, lots of cpu, age of installation/uptime) rather than minimal power as well as try to detect of the machine is capable of malware analysis or detecting it through installed tools (is python installed, etc.).

From first hand experience manually reverse engineering some e-mail trojans for fun, I can tell you it is true that at least some e-mail trojans will:

  1. Check the resources of a machine to be reasonably confident it is not a honey pot/profiler
  2. Check what is installed to be reasonably sure the owner is not technical
If you want to do the same, go to your spam folder and find a VBS trojan and start reverse engineering it. It's surprisingly easy and kind of fun, I estimate that an engineer with 1 year of experience and a solid handle of the command line could probably take apart a simple trojan in 1-8 hours.

I tried to use google to find a nice article to read of a breakdown of a trojan, but google seemed determined to return general population level results rather than technical/professional ones.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#259

Post by hayst4ck »

WA wrote: post #162
hayst4ck wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell. Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money? Licensed base…

A subscription model is not rent seeking . Most developers continue to work on their products and continue to provide customer support etc. If they don’t, you can simply stop paying your subscription. The lifetime value per customer isn’t infinite either. Most people don’t use a single software forever. A subscription kinda slices the LTV up and puts a premium on it for long-term users. It is an increase in price, he…

I didn't say it is rent seeking, I said it incentivizes rent seeking. It incentivizes taking money without creation of new value. Subscriptions weaken the relationship between receiving money and creation of value. Money is received whether value is created or not.

You can look at the app store to see all kinds of rent-seekers, so it is happening. Not all subscriptions are rent seeking, but I have a hard time imagining how someone would rent seek without charging via subscription.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#260

Post by jamesgeck0 »

Terretta wrote: post #224
jtbayly wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some devs make each major version its own app in the App Store. It has drawbacks, I suppose, but it works.

See e.g. 1Password 7, 1Password 8. See the apps like PDF Expert from Readdle Docs. See ... no need to itemize, as tons of successful app vendors make this work. It's not a real problem.

The macOS version of 1Password 8 isn’t on the App Store, presumably because of draconian pricing rules like this.
Post reply on HN