Be warned that the headline is neither sarcastic nor even ironic. That's all you need to know about this post. Don't waste your time with it.
Just Pay the Subscription
111–120 of 121 posts
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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!
What do you mean?
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
It's stored there so I don't have to think about managing it.
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#114"I believe subscriptions for mobile apps are the best thing that has ever happened for both indie developers and iPhone users."
Not at all.
Users hate subscriptions, will therefore not subscribe to your product. I sure as shit won't (and I frankly don't know anyone else that will).
Users particularly hate subscriptions they don't use. How many of us have paid for an Adobe subscription, or an AllTrails subscription only to find months (years?) go by and you barely if ever used said app?
It creates a kind of anxiety: I am paying for apps with a subscription but not using them.
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#115No, 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.
Subscriptions are giving the seller permission to dip into my bank account every month whether I used the product or not.
At least when I pay monthly rent my stuff (and usually me) are actually in the unit the whole time.
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#116No, 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…
I’m with you. I generally refuse. There are way too many things that I’d like to use extremely intermittently that beg for recurring revenue. I just opt out for the most part, aside from a tiny subset of indispensable apps.
Yep.
"But the subscription is so low!"
We're being nickeled and dimed into poverty.
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#117No, 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 feels backwards—if the service gets worse, simply cancel your subscription. If it were a one-time purchase, wouldn't that encourage the service provider to make it worse over time because they've already taken your money?
I have not hiked this month. Note to self: cancel AllTrails subscription.
I might hike this coming weekend. Note to self: reinstate AllTrails subscription.
etc.
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#118Every 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 people expect: 1. bug fixes and updates 2. Services to work in the "cloud" If you bought a piece of software, received precisely that version and never got updates, and didn't expect your data to magically follow you around, then we could have that model, as evidenced by that model working well back when software largely did work that way.
If I bought Adobe Photoshop I expect the OS to fix anything change they might have made that broke Photoshop. This is how it used to work. (Ho, ho, the Mac OS source base was well known to have workarounds to keep, for example, Microsoft products running.)
I can manage my own documents cloud.
Affinity got my money for years for not having a subscription strategy. (And for their apps being pretty badass.)
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#119No, 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?
For mobile apps? I don't. Mobile apps are generally worse than anything you can get on a real computer. I use as few mobile apps as possible. I certainly don't add additional mobile apps unless there's no other choice. (ie, OTP app from work)
Re: Just Pay the Subscription
#120No, 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…
As I said in a different thread[0], the fact that some subscriptions are predatory doesn't mean subscriptions are necessarily predatory. > If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you. Then I can move on and find something else. If I really think I can't, then it's probably providing me with something I find valu…
This problem is doubly worse if you have a family. No one keeps track of their subscriptions. I found out my wife had a NYTimes game subscription she'd forgotten about. She never used it and it cost us an unknown (but likely $100-$200) before we figured it out. Is this the end of the world? No, but we wasted money because these things intentionally obfuscate themselves and received no benefit whatsoever. When was the last time you paid $200 for software? It's been a while for me, but we paid a bunch of money for some stupid subscription that escaped our notice.