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Your app subscription is now my weekend project

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Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#301

Post by mr_mitm »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #233

You too can implement a slither of the features you need right now in an insecure form without hosting, support, maintenance or future development. This reminds me of the people who think they can build docsend in a weekend. No, you cannot. You can build a wee throwaway app with some of the features of docsend. But that is not equivalent to what people pay docsend for. Businesses and SaaS aren’t just a bunch of stati…

Being able to self-host is a plus for me. And being able to support myself avoids being told "no" for a feature I want.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#302

Post by carlosjobim »

sevenseacat wrote: post #279
kylecazar wrote: post #2

Yeah. Part of why this is possible is simply that there are tons of subscription apps out there that were never really justified in requiring a recurring payment and are actually fairly trivial. It used to be that you offer subscriptions only if there are ongoing costs, and a one-time payment if not (utilities, local, etc). SaaS kinda ruined that. I'd welcome a boom in DIY vibe-coded utilities for personal use.

Most users expect everything to be cloud these days. In the cross-stitching community (which is mostly older non-technical folk), the amount of people that get mad every day because the most popular app is local-only, is phenomenal. What do you MEAN they smashed their device, bought a new one, and all their WIP projects aren't there anymore?

> Most users expect everything to be cloud these days.

No way. Maybe most Linux users. MacOS, iOS, Android, and probably Windows users are all app-first.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#303

Post by ryandrake »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #223
Bishonen88 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most apps rationale for subscriptions is "Ongoing development" without an option like jetbrains etc. to fall back to a perpetual license. In practice, regardless of whether an app needs ongoing development or not, this is the best way to try to guarantee continuous income and make a living off of a project I guess. Perhaps LLM's will force developers/companies to change their stance and to stop users from recreating…

I just don't understand this naive argument against subscription. If I have to pay same amount of money, I will pay in subscription than paying one time. So let's say average subscription time is 2 years, they can make $400 onetime or $20/month to get the same revenue. As a consumer I will prefer the second option. For $40 product, I will rather pay $1/month than $40 once. It keeps the incentive aligned. I think most…

> So let's say average subscription time is 2 years, they can make $400 onetime or $20/month to get the same revenue.

Does the software stop working after the 2 years? If so, I’d go subscription (or find another product that doesn’t explode). If it doesn’t, I’d pay the $400 assuming I want to use it for more than 2 years.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#304

Post by ryandrake »

trinix912 wrote: post #297
fragmede wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now be the teenager with no college degree that you were before you ever made $100/hr. Most of your options then paid The vibecoded threat isn't from Devin, the threat is from 15 year old nerds who no mortgage, partner, or responsibilities. Powered by insecurity, pride, and spite, plus a generous amount of teenage hormones. I would love to see What I could have built if I had Claude back when my reflexes were still p…

Exactly. Most people are also not in the position to easily make $100/hr and be able to just burn money to "save time" with subscription apps. There's another competition, your average folks who end up using physical notebooks, stock Notes/Calendar/... apps and Google Sheets when they figure the subscription isn't worth it anymore / they can't keep up with all of them due to rising CoL.

One’s time is only worth money if they would otherwise be making money. If they would otherwise be playing video games or watching Netflix, then the app they spent an hour on cost them nothing in opportunity cost.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#305

Post by JKCalhoun »

dghf wrote: post #280

Are many people really paying dozens of dollars a month for things like Markdown editors?

Markdown editors specifically? I think the general idea is people are paying dozens of dollars a month for all kinds of crap that used to be one-time purchase. And some people, fed up, are pushing back.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#306

Post by JKCalhoun »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #286
robotsquidward wrote: post #67

Just sucks that instead of buying a piece of software now we're going to send $100/mo to an AI giant so we can build our own crappier bespoke apps.

I agree that spending money on claude code is stupid. But the default opencode models are free. I used one last night to replace the ad-filled alarm clock android app I use with a 90% ai written one.

Yeah, I've vibe coded a few apps using just the free tier.

Running out of "Pro" tokens just means, "Time to set the coding aside for today and get a few other things done around the house."

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#307

Post by specproc »

The article tells us as much about coding as it does AI.

The author cites Loom and a transcription service as their projects. They've just stitched together screen record and a video editor, and made a nice front end for Whisper.

Not diminishing this, quite the opposite. Something I love about coding in the 21st century is that there's so much to build on! A lot of work is about finding two or more cool things that work well together, packaging them up nicely and creating something that's greater than the sum of its parts.

I've mixed feelings about AI, but it's great for this sort of work flow. It's great for writing the tedious glue/GUI around established libraries.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#308

Post by davidmurdoch »

I had this realization some time last year that subscription apps pricing is a race to the bottom: free.

Will have to find ways of providing value outside of technology, as the technology parts, AI not included (it will cost money), will be free. We'll probably need to sell some sort of human connection/personality or tangible goods to make money in apps.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#309

Post by JKCalhoun »

rukuu001 wrote: post #19

> I’m still skeptical of vibecoding in general. As I mentioned above, I would not trust my vibecoding enough to make these into products. That’s the whole point - there’s no need for it to be a product when you can do it yourself, and it’s the death knell of products like this.

"Death knell" is, I think, putting too fine a point on it.

At the same time, Apple better wake up as the quality of the App Store (such as it is) is about to get much, much worse as a flood of vibe-coded apps make it onto the store. These will likely crap out in spectacular ways and, as I say, bring user's experience with the App Store in general way down.

It's like when Amazon intermingled drop-ship sellers on their platform.

(Oh well, not my problem.)

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#310

Post by Temporary_31337 »

bandrami wrote: post #208
flexagoon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until vibecoding agents somehow develop the capability to sign up for a cloud storage API and pay for it on their own, you can probably be pretty sure about that.

An exfiltrator would have a blind upload box sitting somewhere the poisoned prompt knows about

..so they would pay so the see the blog post a little earlier thna you do? Math doesn't work out on this
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