261–270 of 329 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, and the old way let you choose your upgrade cycle, rather than letting the company choose how often they’d like to make you buy.
Outside of [possibly] amateur hobbyists, who isn't upgrading their software/hardware at least every ~3 years?
I have to disagree. It all depends on the value I receive which some are a bit better than before. For example for Office365 Home you get 5 licenses including 1TB of OneDrive all for $99/year. If I had to pay for just one Office Suite License(word, ppt, excel) would be around $200(low end). If I needed 5 that would be $1000. Now divide that $1000 over how many years you would probably use before wanting upgrade which…
This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…
This didn't happen by accident. Apple still refuses to add a paid version upgrades feature to the App Store. And by providing software like Numbers/Pages at a loss (for free) they normalized a zero or near zero cost of software in their ecosystem. At this point I'm pretty sure this is an intentional strategy of "Commoditizing their Complement"[1] on Apple's part.
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
So far the list:
1. Fantastical
2. Unread
3. Notability
4. 1password
5. Infuse
6. 1blocker
7. PocketCast
8. Ulysses
I'm well aware that some grandfathered their previous paid licenses after a lot of noise (Notability). But I don't care, this subscription hysteria is actually having the unintended effect of saving me a lot of money on apps that are one time purchase. All I can think is that it's a matter of time before they all become a subscription service, so I don't even bother anymore buying new apps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Blame the victim? We din't get any impression, as we don't set the prices. The companies set those prices. For example Adobe customers never got or set any impression that "software should be free/low price". They paid 100s to 1000s of dollars for each update or package r…
This is not blaming the victim as there are no victims. OP’s is wrong that SaaS is rent sending. Software should not be free (in cost), yet always receive new features and updates. Indeed, the alternative is the ad-tech surveillance state.
One way to increase recurring revenue when you have a captive audience (i.e. they can't refuse an update) is by adding adware to your software. I think SaaS is the driving force behind the ad-tech surveillance state, not the thing that will save us from it.
This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…
> or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really would pay for. Largely enabling that is why they moved to the subscription process because people like me would use IntelliJ 18 for five or so years then update for OS support or whatever. €100/yr is way more than I used to pay for intelliJ, €240/yr is way more t…
From a technical standpoint, SaaS has forced so many companies to invest more time and energy into their software engineering practices. Since being able to respond to customers with new features _fast_ is a big part of what makes SaaS so lucrative, any company choosing to go this route had to start thinking about how to write, test, and ship software in days or weeks instead of months or years. SaaS has also accelerated the uptake of distributed systems and platforms to support them, like Docker containers and Kubernetes, since being able to have development teams own smaller domains in toto instead of a huge monolith that requires an entire company to manage is huge in shipping software fast. Reliability Engineering is also huge now thanks to SaaS. It's one thing to host your own instance of a thing; it's another ballgame to host many instances of a thing for other people!
All of this has made software engineers and sysadmins who are SWE-adjacent significantly more valuable in the market (and we were already valuable before!)
From a financials standpoint, the subscription model makes it possible for more active users to subsidize the cost of less-frequent users, much like purchasing airfare tickets. The subscription model is why I can pay $8/month to get a best-in-class password manager stored in infinitely-large storage (to me) with an amazing API and CLI (1Password!) instead of having to use `pass` or something hand-rolled to avoid paying $300 or whatever a perpetual license would cost. Best of all, since I'm not stuck with a contract, I can (theoretically) switch to Dashlane, iCloud Keychain, or whatever tomorrow if I don't like it.
The alternative to SaaS was pirating and waiting until the next golden release a year later for cool features. That world sucked IMO.
Do I miss something shutterstock also offers on demand bundles?
I dislike Software as a Subscription as much as the next person but the two examples OP gives do miss the mark imo.
Would be more "fun" to target the likes of Adobe imo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example, 1Password. I’m happy to pay for a new version if my current version stops working. OS or browser update broke the app? I’ll pay for the new version. But they are trying to force me to pay every month, therefore they remove my ability to use the app at all unless I pay for their cloud storage which I neither need nor want.
Honest question: Why use 1Password rather than a modern browser’s built in password management? Side note: Daring Fireball has had some discussion recently about 1Password moving to enterprise for employee password management and adopting the SaaS model in order to make this transition, alienating current client base in the process. A ballsy move!
This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…