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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#491

Post by WA »

jwr wrote: post #487
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…

> the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments illustrate, that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the software As a software (SaaS) developer, I find this comment outright bizarre. I find it is hard to make a living with $50/month subscriptions, if you write niche software (and believe me, you DO write niche software, you are not…

> that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the software

Furthermore, only devs complain about the "proportion of providing the software". Didn't especially Indie devs here on HN take their time to learn the lessons of value-based pricing?

I do charge monthly for my app. It's 30 bucks a year for a B2C app. Expensive some might say, fair for others. But I can at least confidently tell that most users use my app every single day. And people who won't use it for more than a few months came away way cheaper than if the one-time-fee was 30-40 bucks to start with.

Oh and providing an app as a one-time-fee for $5 or some ridiculous undervalued price that is considered "acceptable" simply doesn't work in niches.

Re: Subscription Hell

#492

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

> 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.

This logic applies to literally any one-time purchase that includes a warranty, yet the consumer goods sector has managed it somehow. What's really happening is a deterioration of the idea of "owning[1]" software. I'm sure it's great for the publisher, but it's almost all downside for the user. I'm still using an email app that was acquired and shut down by Google in 2012 and it continues to work just fine. On PC I use WinRAR from 10 years ago with no issue. I can't imagine having to pay for all of these little apps on a subscription basis and then having to find alternatives when the creators get acquired/go bankrupt because the subscription is no longer supported.

Edit: To add to that, if the cost of the subscription is to provide me with superior support, will publishers selling me these subscriptions be removing the warranty disclaimer from their EULA? Probably not, right?

[1] Yes, you never "owned" it, but licensed a copy - but in practice it was similar to owning a physical good.

Re: Subscription Hell

#494

Post by marklgr »

chii wrote: post #475
marklgr wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one cares what the product costs to make The production cost is one of the metrics customers use to decide if a price is fair or not, to them. There are other metrics, like the time that can be saved by using the product (ie. some way to quantify the product "use value"), but the production cost is often quite useful to detect abuses--and boy, aren't there a lot of attempts of such abuses.

> production cost is one of the metrics customers use to decide if a price is fair or not only approximately, and only if the consumer really knows the cost. Think jewlery (like diamonds), or expensive brand name goods like designer clothing. The production cost for those goods is "low", but the charge is in marketing and status symbol representation (which is modified via marketing).

It could be argued that those two examples are good cases where the customer could be concerned about the value they get, even including the status factor. Diamonds are notoriously high-priced because of a quasi-monopoly, and high-end clothing is pretty often of poor value, quality-wise. If you like designer clothes--and you're not on unlimited budget--you eventually learn what designers/brands to avoid, because the value is just not there, even for that industry.

So this looks like a case in point, where having a rough ideas of the production cost (some parts hand-made, made in France/Italy/England, expansive material like quality cashmere etc.) is important.

Re: Subscription Hell

#495

Post by BlackFly »

chii wrote: post #479
Sylos wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU, the GDPR will make data takeout APIs (or some guy exporting as CSV and mailing it to you) mandatory.

> data takeout APIs the data will be useless other than as a source of information. If you have data for an online vector editor, the vector data can be legally taken out via a common format (such as json), but there'll be no importers for this shape of data. Any business can easily construe a common machine readable format that's also completely custom, and unimportable anywhere else, to satisfy the letter of the la…

That is a rather cynical take. More pragmatically, while it may be true that companies don't immediately jump at the opportunity to export in a common format (or there may be too many standards to export as), there is suddenly a market for data adapters if the companies do not import from their competitors, and a missing feature on a product sheet in any case.

Re: Subscription Hell

#496

Post by AlexandrB »

cube2222 wrote: post #323
zerowellies wrote: post #304

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? 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 only feature updates. Also everyday bug, security updates and also operating costs. 1. Operating system 2. Programming IDE 3. Password Manager 4. Well I pay subscription for Netflix and Spotify but that's not really for the updates. Partly for new content, partly operating costs. 5. Facebook (I'd prefer to cover the operating costs by subscription, I really dislike ads) 6. Email - same as above Also, actually I'd…

> 3. Password Manager

This one is a total non-starter for subscription pricing. I'm not willing to use software that will potentially cut access to all my accounts if I stop paying them monthly.

Re: Subscription Hell

#497

Post by glenneroo »

majewsky wrote: post #464
glenneroo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding bag tax, I have trouble believing this is more than your own anecdotal observations, do you have any sources to back up that claim? Most cities in Europe charge a lot more than 0.05 per bag (Austrian supermarkets generally charge between 0.25-1€) yet most people just bring their own. I buy the more expensive variant (cloth material) which survive about a year.

> which survive about a year What are you doing with those? I have one reusable bag which is 11 years old now. I just throw it in the laundry about once a year and it's as good as new.

I use them for everything... they often end up as bags for recyclables (e.g. bottles, metal with sharp edges, paper) so they get chewed up fairly fast. Even if I only use them for exclusively shopping, I go 1-3x per week (~100 excursions/year) and when it's warm we throw a lot of BBQ parties so some of those trips are overloaded with heavy stuff which ends up cutting corners in the sides.

Re: Subscription Hell

#498

Post by vladdanilov »

QAkICoU7IDNkpFu wrote: post #477
vladdanilov wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are glaring optimization issues. Over 6MB of those 10MB is just one bloated photo [1]. It can be compressed down to 1-2MB. Moreover, if it was a proper responsive image, it would not be larger than 100-200 KB for most readers because a good JPEG compressor can pull 2 bits per pixel [2]. Ironically, image optimization apps don't get that much coverage. [1] https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/vikbaj…

I just took that image (which is 3300 x 2200), resized it to 50% and got 1.05 MiB, instead of 5.85. Threw it through JPEGMini (a paid product, mind you) and got 729 KiB. Guetzli is nice, but it's slow as balls. JPEGMini is a decent alternative. (I'm a happy customer of JPEGMini, BTW. No other affiliations.)

I'm making something in between [1].

That image is a good example for any perceptual encoder. At 50% size it's 600KB (487KB with current master), and there's still a lot to be unhappy about, e.g. a hidpi image like that can be compressed a lot harder.

[1] https://getoptimage.com

Re: Subscription Hell

#499

Post by AlexandrB »

dgudkov wrote: post #264
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…

Many economical models (including working 9 to 5, btw) came from the times of physical labor. At that time the part of labor was relatively small in the cost structure, and the part of materials was big. And since materials is a one-time expense, it was natural to have one-time pricing. In the knowledge-based industry such as software the cost of labor has the biggest share in cost structure. And unlike materials, th…

A less charitable analysis is that the software industry has failed to deliver reliable software so spectacularly that it requires constant upkeep from a team of professionals to maintain a text editor like Ulysses.

Re: Subscription Hell

#500

Post by gaius »

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,…

Designers design for other designers. They are barely aware of users, and wouldn’t care even if they were.
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