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Coming changes to Apple's App Store

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Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#271

Post by Spivak »

emptybits wrote: post #215
veidr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscriptions are immoral, but not for those reasons. It's an immoral business model because its success is based on bilking people -- cheating them into paying for 'service' when they don't want to. The mechanism is simple: the slight inconvenience of cancellation prevents a huge number of users from cancelling as soon as they want to. This is why getting your customers to set up automated and recurring payments is…

> Try putting a confirmation screen in your app that makes the user press "Renew" each month before the app charges them again. That would move you toward the moral end of the spectrum, but it would gut your sales. I like this experiment. If I had to bet, I think you're right that it would reduce revenue. OTOH, to be fair, try this approach in the old-fashioned model... take the standard (large) transaction up front,…

> your app with two buttons: "Refund Now" and "Continue Using".

I wonder if a service could actually function based on this idea. Sure, eventually all the initial money would be refunded but while you had it you profited by investing it in a fractional-reserve manner.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#272

Post by soylentcola »

matt2000 wrote: post #37

One interesting side effect of this might be that reasonably priced single-payment apps might seem desirable again. If a lot of apps switch to a $0.99/month subscription, then even a $4.99 one time payment might seem ok, whereas right now it would considered expensive by most users.

One recent example on the Android side (don't use iOS very often) was an app that regularly publishes curated watch faces for Android Wear. There are literally thousands of free, user generated ones out there and I can make my own without too much trouble but I liked quite a few of the ones on this app.

Additionally, they allow designers to submit their own watch faces and share the revenue which I thought was cool. It helps combat the glut of "brand" knockoffs that fill many of the free/user-generated sites.

Originally, they offered a "pro" version that gave you access to all current and future watch faces for a subscription fee. I was not very keen on this because, like so many, I tend to forget to cancel these things when I stop using them. I mentioned this in an app review and so did many others. We requested a one-time IAP for the "Pro" version and soon after, the developer did just this.

So I paid $10 and every week or so I check out the new watch faces available for download. I like that some of the money goes to the platform and some to the designers. I like that the designs are high quality and don't include any knockoffs or blatant copyright infringement. And I like that I could just buy the full app after trying out the free options.

I've done the same with similar light-verion/paid-upgrade apps but this was the first one I'd run across that offered both a subscription or a one-time purchase.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#273

Post by gurkendoktor »

veidr wrote: post #190
chasing wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to address two things, here: 1) You're absolutely right: Pricing matters. If I charge you $10/mo for my app that sends you a text message every time there's a full moon, that would be way too expensive and you'd be well within your rights as a consumer to spend your money on something else. As far as I'm aware, Apple will not force you to subscribe to any apps. 2) "... subscriptions are immoral..." Bullshit. A…

Subscriptions are immoral, but not for those reasons. It's an immoral business model because its success is based on bilking people -- cheating them into paying for 'service' when they don't want to. The mechanism is simple: the slight inconvenience of cancellation prevents a huge number of users from cancelling as soon as they want to. This is why getting your customers to set up automated and recurring payments is…

> It's an immoral business model because its success is based on bilking people -- cheating them into paying for 'service' when they don't want to.

I'm sure that happens. But when I buy an iPhone app for a fixed price, the incentive for the vendor is to make the app look fantastic at a first glance, and then to never fix any bugs or incompatibilities. Because why bother? Everyone who notices these problems has already paid, and getting a refund is even more troublesome than cancelling a subscription. How is that more moral? As a consumer, I generally prefer subscriptions for everything that I plan to use for a year or longer (which is most software).

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#274

Post by forgetsusername »

veidr wrote: post #262
forgetsusername wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that don't actually want it. Why is it the company's responsibility to determine if a user "really wants it" or not? If the subscription is live, the assumption is that the service is desired. Personal accountability.

Totally, bro!!! BTW, can I interest you in a franchise opportunity? We at "Veidr's Payday Loans" are always looking for local owner-operators who understand "personal accountability".

>Totally, bro!!!

So edgy.

I don't understand your point. If you're incapable of cancelling a subscription...maybe you shouldn't be subscribing to things? But that's up to you, bro; don't count on others to do it for you.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#275

Post by rpgmaker »

dntrkv wrote: post #264
rpgmaker wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, subscriptions are immoral because the end result is robbing users of any sense of ownership. I don't know why people allowed this transition from software ownership to subscription to happen (although they really weren't given the choice). It's ridiculous that the customer is giving away his MS Office ownership in exchange for the marginal improvements that MS has been doing in the last couple of…

You think $150 is too expensive for a piece of software you use ~8 hours a day to do a $100k+ salary job? Go ask a mechanic or carpenter how much money they spend on their tools for a job that pays significantly less.

It's expensive if after shelling out that amount I still don't own the software. I wouldn't complain if I could pay a onetime $500-$600 if in the end I at least owned a copy.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#276

Post by rpgmaker »

Androider wrote: post #254
rpgmaker wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, subscriptions are immoral because the end result is robbing users of any sense of ownership. I don't know why people allowed this transition from software ownership to subscription to happen (although they really weren't given the choice). It's ridiculous that the customer is giving away his MS Office ownership in exchange for the marginal improvements that MS has been doing in the last couple of…

IntelliJ IDEA is crazy cheap if you're being paid as a software developer or have developers on your payroll. I wish there was more software like it that can just instantly make all my developers more effective. The cost is so minuscule compared to what it actually costs to keep a developer's butt in the chair, I'd be a complete idiot to try to save a few bucks on the tools they use.

I can make anything look cheap if I compare it with something substantially more expensive but that isn't the point. I think it is expensive because after shelling that amount I end up without a copy of the software that I can call my own.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#277

Post by spacehome »

bad_user wrote: post #92
chasing wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mindset change that needs to happen is this: Apps are a service. I would actually prefer to pay developers of apps that are truly useful to me a monthly amount so I know they can continue to update and improve the app. If an app saves me $1000/yr in headache, I'd prefer to spend $30/yr on a subscription rather than lose the app entirely because the developers can't keep the lights on.

There aren't many apps that can save you 1000/year. I keep hearing this, but that's nonsense. If a "service" is not producing money and isn't saving you time allowing you to produce money, then it's not worth paying for. Yes, I have subscriptions for IntelliJ IDEA, for Dropbox, for FastMail and for a DigitalOcean VPS. All these are producing money for me. But the list ends here. Because here's the thing: $5/month her…

$5/month is $60/year. That's already serious money for some of us. The list of software I'd pay $60 for is pretty short.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#278

Post by NEDM64 »

dcw303 wrote: post #205

Apple's revisions to the App Store reinforce that they consider it a rival to the World Wide Web. Google cornered Web search. Reaction: As they own the walled garden, Apple completely control search within the App Store. Adwords owns Web Advertisitng. Reaction: Apple will launch paid search in the App Store. Companies like Netflix, Blizzard, and Salesforce have direct lines to their customer's wallets through subscri…

Yes, the company that succeeds in the WWW is the company that has a monopoly in it.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#279

Post by NEDM64 »

bad_user wrote: post #92
chasing wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mindset change that needs to happen is this: Apps are a service. I would actually prefer to pay developers of apps that are truly useful to me a monthly amount so I know they can continue to update and improve the app. If an app saves me $1000/yr in headache, I'd prefer to spend $30/yr on a subscription rather than lose the app entirely because the developers can't keep the lights on.

There aren't many apps that can save you 1000/year. I keep hearing this, but that's nonsense. If a "service" is not producing money and isn't saving you time allowing you to produce money, then it's not worth paying for. Yes, I have subscriptions for IntelliJ IDEA, for Dropbox, for FastMail and for a DigitalOcean VPS. All these are producing money for me. But the list ends here. Because here's the thing: $5/month her…

There aren't many Apps that can save you $1000 a year because there is no money to make them, because people aren't buying $100 software packages on the AppStore.

It's a chicken and egg problem.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#280

Post by NEDM64 »

veidr wrote: post #194
detaro wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see how Apples interface will look like. With a centralized marketplace like this they have a perfect opportunity to build interfaces to work against this, the question is if they will. (e.g. nice overviews, options for time-limits, notifications for not-used subscriptions, ...)

Yes, this is something where Apple's own interests and the customer's might be aligned. Even just having a central place to cancel subscriptions is significantly better than having to do it individually -- and Apple almost certainly won't allow developers to get too obnoxious with the 'customer retention' hoops we need to jump through to actually cancel.

There's already a place for those cancellations: the home screen. Delete the App, and subscription goes away.
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