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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#361

Post by brandonjm »

always_good wrote: post #58
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

One-time payments for software amount to a pyramid scheme where you benefit from the money of future users. That's not without its downsides either, where your userbase grows indefinitely yet doesn't pay for its own support-email rent. There's obviously a middle ground, like being able to at least use the version you paid for indefinitely but having to pay a smaller price to upgrade. But which direction a pricing str…

> Of course you can find examples on each end of a spectrum.

A good example is the Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection which was so expensive to buy in Australia that it was cheaper to fly to the US, buy a copy and fly back. Now, you can get a years subscription to Creative Cloud for 'All Apps' for about 1/5th of the price of what CS6 MC was in Australia. It is still expensive, and after 4 or 5 years you will have spent more but thats significantly longer than Office 365 which costs about 2/3rd the price per year of a copy of Office 2016 outright.

Re: Subscription Hell

#362

Post by twblalock »

haglin wrote: post #337

What we need is a cryptocurrency capable of handling microtransactions. Then we need web browser support (a standard) for a cryptocurrency wallet. When you visit a web page, you can pay for the content by clicking Yes in a dialog box. When you don't have money in you wallet, you can fill it up using your credit card, or some bank solution. The price is shown in your currency of choice, but all the transactions happen…

Good luck getting normal consumers to start using a cryptocurrency for this. Most of them will give up in utter confusion when they try to set up a wallet.

I see no reason the US dollar is unsuitable for microtransactions.

Re: Subscription Hell

#363

Post by CM30 »

wpietri wrote: post #240
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

A model I really like is the one IntelliJ uses. They encourage you to buy a subscription. But when you buy a year at once, you get a "perpetual fallback license" such that you can always keep using the version that is current when you buy: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... That means I always will have access to my projects and to the level of functionality I start with. But I keep getti…

Isn't this basically what a lot of paid software with licenses used to do anyway? It's still how paid forum software and CMS plugins tend to work, with the rule being that anything released while your license is active you have access to forever and anything released after it expires you have to upgrade to get.

Why can't all subscriptions work like those old license schemes do?

Re: Subscription Hell

#364

Post by oliv__ »

makecheck wrote: post #177

“Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format.” Oh come on, NO I do not want that! One of the biggest problems with ads, news sites and other stuff is that almost any of these “experiences”, especially with video, are a drain on data plans and implemented terribly. Give me an article . If that article has some simple images…

Ok, YOU do not want that, but who's to say the majority of users don't want that? HN readers most likely don't represent their typical users.

Re: Subscription Hell

#365

Post by phil248 »

The article seems to focus on the worst offenders (aka outliers) and some recent cost increases (when inflation happens to be going up after a decade of stagnation).

I currently have 7 different subscriptions ranging from $5 to $15 per month. They add up to $61/month. That's less than I used to pay for a standard cable package. And combined they provide me so much more of what I actually want, at an overall higher level of quality.

As a bonus, I spend less time viewing advertisements now than at any other time in 40 years.

I'm living in subscription heaven!

Re: Subscription Hell

#366

Post by ryanwaggoner »

komali2 wrote: post #270

>One way we could fix that situation would be to allow subscriptions to combine together more cheaply. We are starting to see this too: Spotify, Hulu, and Scribd appear to be investigating a deal in which consumers can get a joint subscription from these services for a lower rate. Setapp is a set of more than one hundred OS X apps that come bundled for about $10 a month. I understand the attraction to this, but it ma…

My point is that should this concept of the author's take off, we'll just be in some new decision-lock hell, where you'll never be getting"the best deal" because to do so would require solving the most insane graph reduction problem ever conceived.

This is exactly how I feel about "travel hacking". Not the earning points part, which is fairly straightforward, but the redemption part. If I want to go to Bogota on vacation for specific dates and I have hundreds of thousands of airline miles and rewards points spread across a half dozen programs, the number of options is ridiculous. I can book with cash, pay with reward points, or book via dozens of different airlines and partner airlines with various fare classes, stopover options, etc. Worse, if you're fortunate enough to have a lot of flexibility around when and where you travel ("I want to go to South America sometime this summer"), the complexity skyrockets even further. It's just frustrating because even when I do piece together a deal, I can't help but feel that I'm still paying double what I would if I looked at the options differently.

Re: Subscription Hell

#367

Post by zenhack »

Reedx wrote: post #295
gkya wrote: post #154

> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence that, given the same content,…

Well, they say they researched it: "Yet, all of our research shows people want high-definition images with their stories, instant loading of articles on the site, and interactivity." They understand how much more expensive an image and JS heavy site is to develop and host, so they must have good reason to go through the trouble?

Without being able to see what research they actually did/scruitinize their methodology, I don't find the claim that they checked very compelling. Humans are crazy-hard to study -- research that's not even peer reviewed is basically worthless.

Re: Subscription Hell

#368

Post by wpietri »

rolleiflex wrote: post #277
wpietri wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A model I really like is the one IntelliJ uses. They encourage you to buy a subscription. But when you buy a year at once, you get a "perpetual fallback license" such that you can always keep using the version that is current when you buy: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... That means I always will have access to my projects and to the level of functionality I start with. But I keep getti…

One thing that always rubbed me wrong about this is that, logically speaking, if you buy a license for a year, the perpetual fallback license should be the version you had at the end of the license, not the one that was on the market at the beginning of it. It doesn't really make sense the way they do it, and it feels like a particularly hamfisted attempt to grab an almost negligible amount of money, so I'm puzzled.

It makes sense to me as removing the choice between, "Do I buy one-off license or a subscription?" If you get the subscription, you get a free one-off license at date of purchase.

Your way also makes sense, but they both seem reasonable to me. And I don't really care much, in that I renew when I'm regularly using their product, as I want to support them. If I just had to open an old project for something, then I don't mind exactly which old version I'm using. (And if I somehow did, I could just put it in 30-day trial mode.)

Re: Subscription Hell

#369

Post by mmel »

zerowellies wrote: post #312
hk__2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many products need constant feature updates? Aside from security/compatibility there are plenty of products that already meet everything required of them (to near everyone). How many new features does a file manager need? An PDF reader? Do you have any example of file managers or PDF readers with a subscription-based model?

Adobe Acrobat Pro, Foxit Phantom PDF. I'll concede I can't think of a file manager though.

>can't think of a file manager though

http://dopus.com/ not exactly subscription, but you buy a major version, and each new major version is a new purchase.

Re: Subscription Hell

#370

Post by [deleted] »

gravity_123 wrote: post #284
coldtea wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mobile app stores killed that model, when they made continuous, perpetual updates the norm. Continuous, perpetual updates are definitely NOT the norm in mobile apps. Some get some bug-fixes and the occasional new feature, but any major update lands a version 2.0. Far more (the "long tail") are just abandoned (like all those thousands of 32-bit apps being deprecated in the iOS store).

Both apple and google don't support 'pay for upgrade' model. Its either subscription or pay once. Of course, you can roll out your own payment gateway(which apple has further issues with) or re upload the app under a new v2 name, but those are not very satisfactory solutions.

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