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AI is going to kill app subscriptions

nichehunt.app

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Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#41

Post by marcuskaz »

I just did this at work, I was working with Postman testing an API and wanted it work in a slightly different way and be able to do some bulk testing, saving responses, all slightly different then how Postman worked. I clone just the features I wanted in about 15 minutes and now have my own API test tool that works exactly how I want. It is not something I would ever release or need to share, just a local tool for me to use. If your software doesn't provide a service, like sync, storage, availability, if it is just local, it'll be a tough market.

This also got me thinking about open source might be dying. For this tool, there is no reason for me to open source it, anyone can create the same thing in minutes. I didn't add anything, the only maybe interesting part would be to share the prompt, but then someone else can create their own prompt to have their tool do what they want.

Software world is really getting weird.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#42

Post by [deleted] »

yellowapple wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really simple - actually writing the software has never really been the hard part in most SaaS apps. So long as you're moderately disciplined and organised it's easy to build what most SaaS apps are e.g. a CRUD-app-with-a-clever-bit. The clever bit is the initial challenge that sets it apart from the rest, but encoding that in software has never really been that difficult. Having the ideas necessary to know wh…

On top of that, it's one thing to write the code, whereas it's another to actually run that code with maximal reliability and minimal downtime. I'm sure LLMs can churn out Terraform all day long, but can they troubleshoot when something goes wrong (as is often the case)?

[deleted]

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#43

Post by nativeit »

jackhab wrote: post #32

Good luck making your own clone of "simple" file sharing and synchronization app like Google Drive!

I’ve been running NextCloud with MinIO storage for several years now. If that didn’t kill subscriptions, I highly doubt whatever very brittle, low quality knock offs an LLM would produce will.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#44

Post by oceansky »

yellowapple wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really simple - actually writing the software has never really been the hard part in most SaaS apps. So long as you're moderately disciplined and organised it's easy to build what most SaaS apps are e.g. a CRUD-app-with-a-clever-bit. The clever bit is the initial challenge that sets it apart from the rest, but encoding that in software has never really been that difficult. Having the ideas necessary to know wh…

On top of that, it's one thing to write the code, whereas it's another to actually run that code with maximal reliability and minimal downtime. I'm sure LLMs can churn out Terraform all day long, but can they troubleshoot when something goes wrong (as is often the case)?

Sounds like a fun experiment, let AI completely control an infrastructure, from application layer to load balancing and databases.

I bet it would burn a lot of money very fast and not just on tokens.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#46

Post by anonymous908213 »

dist-epoch wrote: post #34
camdenreslink wrote: post #7

Counterpoint, why do current state of the art generative AI companies, with the ability to use models that the public can't even access, and the ability to burn tokens at cost, still pay for very expensive Saas software?

Opportunity cost. Cloning Slack and wasting ultra-expensive engineers on that might be more expensive, and it's not your core mission.

Why do you have to waste ultra-expensive engineers on it? You have agents. And verifying your product works as it is claimed should absolutely be part of your mission. How can you possibly claim that your models are revolutionising software development if you haven't even used them to revolutionise your own software development in-house? Not only that, it would produce a huge marketing coup that would immediately lead to a flood of enterprise spending if you could demonstrate that your agents actually do what you constantly claim them to do.

PS. If you're claiming that coding an application is ultra-expensive, you are already entering the argument on the side of the comment you're arguing against, which is making a counterpoint to the article, which claims in the first sentence:

> The math is simple: if it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. And if cloning is free, subscription pricing dies.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#47

Post by juanani »

ant6n wrote: post #28

I think AI is going to kill my sanity. But mostly, because the websites are so bad. It's just a chat interface, but apparently nobody knows how to write those anymore. They use 1GB of memory per instance, slow to load, UI constantly crashes. Then Gemini loses all context when you stop and edit a reply. Then the bots themselves with their hallucination, their gaslighting, their covering up of mistakes, covering up tha…

[dead]

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#48

Post by adventured »

It's software eating everything that it can as capabilities and reach are added. This has been going on since the earliest software programs launched.

It's identical to Craigslist hollowing out offline classified ads. Classified ads used to be a hyper lucrative market for newspapers (both local and national). That market imploded from ~$17 billion ($32b+ adjusted) in 2000 to $1-$2 billion last year. Once it could, it did.

AI should enable software to touch more things more cheaply (more efficiently in many cases). As it can, it will. Expect a lot more wipe outs.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#50

Post by barnabee »

mettamage wrote: post #4

> The math is simple: if it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. And if cloning is free, subscription pricing dies Yes and no. I have created 15 small apps that solves all kinds of things for me. However, at the department I work full of non-technical people, most of them don’t even know lovable exists. And for the one that does know lovable exists, they tend to build stuff w…

They know ChatGPT exists and soon enough that'll probably be enough for many use cases.
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