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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#421

Post by around_here »

brandonjm wrote: post #354
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…

I bought a copy of Office 2016 when it came out, it has now lasted me 2 years and I paid about the same as 2 years worth of Office 365. I intend to keep using it until it is no longer supported at all and I am sure I will have saved quite a bit of money for effectively the same product.

I got Office 2003 and it works for all of the home based stuff that I do now. I paid $70 on a sale. If I had been doing 365 since then at $48/year, I'm looking at $720.

Re: Subscription Hell

#422

Post by bscphil »

siidooloo wrote: post #259
madeofpalk wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe has had cheaper competitors for ever - basically the only move it’s competitors have is to be cheaper. Adobe still exists.

In the past Adobe’s competition wasn’t as good. Now, the competitors products are just as good. In the past PS competitors lacked features pros needed like PMS spot channels/CMYK/LAB. Not anymore. And Resolve is very compelling in the video realm. Many of Adobe’s core products have languished at the same time as many of the features that set them apart in the past are become less differentiating. The photo editing/ve…

Which is the "just as good" alternative to Lightroom? I've found its tools to be astonishingly high quality. Adjustments have exactly the effect you expect them to, instead of something closely adjacent to what you expect. The spot remover is basically magical. RAW handling is top notch.

I haven't seen anything at all that comes close on a cheaper model.

Re: Subscription Hell

#423

Post by bscphil »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #50
ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…

One con of the pay per article is that it siphons money into the money making kinds of stories. The sports and celebrity pages can do a lot of funding for the slow grind investigations that are important for holding those in power accountable. It’s not like an a la carte model couldn’t also fund profitless journalism, but I think it might push things even more in that direction. I think they do understand what people…

I don't think this is right. Even if a site goes for a subscription model, it will still be obvious which pages people click the most on, and so they will have a strong incentive to increase sports and celebrity reporting to bolster their subscriber count. The exact same incentives are there with pay-by-page. You still have to charge enough for your writers to eat, and you have the exact same incentive to tell them to write clickbait.

Re: Subscription Hell

#424

Post by around_here »

zerowellies wrote: post #304
cube2222 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say I actually love the subscription model that is becoming the de facto standard. If you sell a one time license to somebody there is no incentive for the seller to keep making the product better, to care keep caring for you. With a subscription model - especially a non-annually-paid one, they have to keep working to keep you. It's also a way more sustainable business model and probably the only thing which c…

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? For Facebook - I don't think forced subscription would work. People would be forced to think about how much they value the service (a less ubiquitous one at that).

Not too mention when the features just become some massive bloat and ruin the core features of the product. Chat applications are pretty much the worst offender for this kind of thing.

Re: Subscription Hell

#425

Post by hiram112 »

around_here wrote: post #421
brandonjm wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a copy of Office 2016 when it came out, it has now lasted me 2 years and I paid about the same as 2 years worth of Office 365. I intend to keep using it until it is no longer supported at all and I am sure I will have saved quite a bit of money for effectively the same product.

I got Office 2003 and it works for all of the home based stuff that I do now. I paid $70 on a sale. If I had been doing 365 since then at $48/year, I'm looking at $720.

I agree that office 2003 has enough features and is good enough for 99% of the things I use. In fact, starting with 2013, there are anti-features (integration with OneCloud, online docs) that I'd prefer were not included.

Unfortunately, Office 2010 already has issues opening files made with 2013, 2016, etc. Most of my PCs are on 2013 as I was able to grab several HUP licenses at the time. I seriously doubt 2013 will be 100% compatible in another year or two, and 2016 will be the minimum version one needs in a work environment where you're collaborating on docs made with newer versions.

I have no doubt that Microsoft has employees on the payroll who have no other function than creating annoying incompatibilities to encourage users onto the 365 treadmill.

Re: Subscription Hell

#426

Post by Reedx »

hdra wrote: post #381
Reedx wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

While that sounds reasonable, I wouldn't bet on it. I have seen too many inane bloat that was implemented simply because the designer/developer/project manager thought it was a cool thing to have or because they read it on some growth-hack thoughtpiece somewhere.

Indeed, that's all too common. It could also be a fluid thing. Huge images and lots of interactivity are in now, but it'll go too far (arguably has) and people may want to swing the pendulum back.

Re: Subscription Hell

#427

Post by bscphil »

eliblock wrote: post #216

I'd like to throw in my pay-per-minute concept for video content. It's been tried before but I think it's the business model for media monetization that will win in the end. Basically a platform like Youtube could charge users a penny per minute and distribute to content creators after taking a platform percentage fee. Starting something like this would have a huge chicken and egg problem though because no content cr…

This really isn't a bad idea. Of course they'd have to have a wallet you deposit into, and disable ads completely for anyone using it for there to be buy-in, but I like the idea of paying the people I watch directly.

1c a minute seems like exactly what I'd be willing to pay, as well. Just for an example, a relatively small livestream I watched last week would have made $1200; there's no way they're making that much on ads. If that's the case, channels would market it as an upgrade too - "join our supporter's club, and get a badge".

Re: Subscription Hell

#428

Post by slavik81 »

lultimouomo wrote: post #280
rolleiflex wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's not the negligible amount of money that matters. The trick is that at the end of your yearly subscription you have already upgraded to a newer version, so falling back to the perpetual license means downgrading, which is both often a practical problem and (perhaps most importantly) something that I think many have an emotional aversion to. I'm pretty sure that if the fallback license was to the most recent versi…

> falling back to the perpetual license means downgrading, which is [...] something that I think many have an emotional aversion to.

They're playing on loss aversion and the endowment effect. It feels worse to lose something than to never have it, so people are more willing to pay to keep it than they would be to pay to buy it if they were never given it in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Re: Subscription Hell

#429

Post by Illniyar »

daveguy wrote: post #403
rolleiflex wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense, thanks. In the end, though, when I discovered this was how it worked at the end of my PyCharm subscription, it left me quite a bitter taste in my mouth, and I just stopped purchasing any JetBrains products. These kind of details are akin to trying to trick people via putting stuff into EULAs nobody reads, and for me at least, it gives the distinct feeling that they're trying very hard to screw me ov…

Would it have been better if you "purchase the current version and get temporary upgrades for a year for free." Essentially the same thing, but up front and not implying that you get more than you do.

It'll be the same only if at the end of the year your version is rolledback.

Re: Subscription Hell

#430

Post by dnomad »

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #218
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content.

>Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content. Since you clearly haven't put much thought into this comment let's just start listing things that are funded by ads - News - content creators on youtube - music - twitch - search - blogs - websites with tutorials - a thousand different things which I have missed and then facebook, snapchat, instagram, and twitter which…

BTW, I agree, but I think the opposite is the case. I strongly suspect that in fact we'll see more content as the ad economy collapses. People don't understand just how much content is driven without ads for other reasons (like HN itself) and once more and more content gets locked behind subscription walls that indeed opens the door for free content to thrive. Combine this with strong, pervasive ad blocking and what you have is a recipe for the return of the free web.
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