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Just Pay the Subscription

uncommonapps.nyc

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Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#101

Post by zzyzxd »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

My water heater once emitted a cryptic warning light. I called a local contractor, the person came and spent 10 seconds inspected the appliance, then start dialing the appliance vendor's support number. Support asked him to press some buttons in a fixed sequence and the tiny display on the water heater showed an error code. Support said "yeah, that means part X is not working, but we don't know why" and the solution was replacing that part entirely.

"Wouldn't it be nice if the water heater comes with hundreds of sensors monitoring each part and emit metrics? You can diagnose with historical data and see what was working and at what time which part showed anomaly". As a person doing SRE in my day job, this was what I had in my mind at the time.

I am not saying that I want spyware in all the appliances in my house. But if I am an appliance manufacturer, I would always want the capability to manage appliances just like how software engineers managing software lifecycles.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#102

Post by bee_rider »

RulerOf wrote: post #62
bee_rider wrote: post #35

Interesting take. In my gut I hate subscriptions mostly because keeping track of them is annoying. But I’m semi-convinced. I mean, aligning the interests of the developer and the users is a nice benefit. Something Apple could do is allow iOS to handle some of this stuff automatically. Establish a sort of “small app subscription” account. Keep track of which apps had been opened every month, only pay the subscriptions…

> Keep track of which apps had been opened every month, only pay the subscriptions for the ones I’ve opened, and allow me to set monthly limits. That turns app icons into land-mines though. Idk what the happy medium is, but there's gotta be something between "buy this kids game once" and "pay $13 a month until he gets sick of it," and I don't think we've quite found one that's equitable for all parties yet.

That’s true.

A difficulty is that making the billing time more granular could reduce the landmine factor, but also would incentivize developers to keep users in the app for longer than necessary. We’ve already seen in social media that that incentive is… quite bad.

I guess it remains to be figured out. I dunno, maybe my framing is wrong, maybe development bounties are a better ongoing revenue stream or something.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#103

Post by bdcravens »

I have no issue paying for subscriptions, and I pay for many. However, usage-based can quickly outpace value. For example, we do a lot of background tasks that integrate with third-parties. A small change over something we have no control over can explode the number of events sent to a bug tracker, even though event 100,000 is no more valuable than event 1. Yet at a certain size, you're paying hundreds of dollars a month to track those 99,999 extraneous events. The common answer is configuration, but honestly, it's easy enough to just spin up one of the many self-hostable options like GlitchTip and call it a day.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#104

Post by marssaxman »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #67
FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

Because your fucking bananas aren't connected to servers in a datacenter that require you to pay monthly bills and engineers need to get paid more than people stacking rocks for living.

I'd prefer that my software isn't connected to servers in a datacenter that require me to pay monthly bills, either!

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#105

Post by kmfrk »

In my experience, every good paid iOS app eventually gets copied by someone who releases the clone for free; with games, this was basically a given even eons ago. That being said, a lot of people have been bitten by a paid app that transitioned to a subscription-based app. It's happened to more of my apps than I can count; thank goodness for some grandfathering.

I guess there's less frustration about sunk cost with a subscriptions, but we're also used to so many dark UX patterns that any subscription seems sinister. And I really hate all the apps mandating a trial you have to cancel to avoid getting charged, just to try a damn app.

And lately, we've also seen AI companies demonstrating how fluid a subscription "plan" really is, with features coming and going, and the way credits are counted and spent being unreliable.

If the UX got streamlined, I'd probably feel better about it. Maybe the problem isn't a lack of money, but that all our trust has been spent at this point.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#106

Post by MintPaw »

everdrive wrote: post #41

No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way: - Get the user hooked into their ecosystem - Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time - The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise. Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change…

This is way too absolute a point. There's services like water and internet service you're effectively subscribed too that don't get worse. There's obvious efficiencies that can be gained from regularizing demand with subscriptions. Amazon Prime is another example of a something I've been subscribed to for over a decade and I don't feel has gotten worse.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#107

Post by morgoo »

MintPaw wrote: post #106
everdrive wrote: post #41

No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way: - Get the user hooked into their ecosystem - Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time - The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise. Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change…

This is way too absolute a point. There's services like water and internet service you're effectively subscribed too that don't get worse. There's obvious efficiencies that can be gained from regularizing demand with subscriptions. Amazon Prime is another example of a something I've been subscribed to for over a decade and I don't feel has gotten worse.

One of the earliest lines in the article:

> I believe subscriptions for mobile apps are the best thing that has ever happened for both indie developers and iPhone users.

The article isn't extolling the virtue of paying for a utility!

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#108

Post by morgoo »

Brendinooo wrote: post #85
inexcf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As I said in a different thread[0], the fact that some subscriptions are predatory doesn't mean subscriptions are necessarily predatory. "Some" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Subscriptions are structurally designed to extract payment for non-use. the whole point of the model is to be predatory. You pre-pay for some allotment of resources but get nothing back for unused resources. And the main profit comes…

>You pre-pay for some allotment of resources but get nothing back for unused resources. I dunno. This just doesn't quite compute to me as some universal principle. I paid $30 for a year of Strong (an iOS fitness app), for example. What do you see as the "allotment of resources" there? They're delivering maintenance upgrades and feature releases periodically that I'll use any time I log a workout; the app runs on a ph…

You're actually using Strong as an example? It's practically abandonware nowadays!

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#109

Post by Gud »

everdrive wrote: post #41

No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way: - Get the user hooked into their ecosystem - Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time - The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise. Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change…

Then how do you pay?

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#110

Post by drivingmenuts »

Brendinooo wrote: post #85
inexcf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As I said in a different thread[0], the fact that some subscriptions are predatory doesn't mean subscriptions are necessarily predatory. "Some" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Subscriptions are structurally designed to extract payment for non-use. the whole point of the model is to be predatory. You pre-pay for some allotment of resources but get nothing back for unused resources. And the main profit comes…

>You pre-pay for some allotment of resources but get nothing back for unused resources. I dunno. This just doesn't quite compute to me as some universal principle. I paid $30 for a year of Strong (an iOS fitness app), for example. What do you see as the "allotment of resources" there? They're delivering maintenance upgrades and feature releases periodically that I'll use any time I log a workout; the app runs on a ph…

Why is your data stored on their server where they have access to it at any time for any purpose they choose? For that, they should be paying you, no the other way around.
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