51–60 of 150 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having peek at the feature set I cannot imagine how this to cost more then handful of subscriber of revenue to run~ They do not host any media -- The volume of post searching fulltext is so small single PSQL instance can take over -- your listening progress is a single integer ...
Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
> You were a pay-once app. Released in 2011, pay once each for Android, iOS, and Web and keep for life. You know. I approve the pushback on enshitification. But there’s something weird about righteous fury over an app which literally costs money to run didn’t provide free updates for literally decades on what probably cost like $5. I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
I don't think they're complaining about a lack of updates
Release Pocket Caste 2 and they’ll complain. Sub and they’ll complain. Don’t update and they’ll complain.
HN is highly sympathetic to the plight of the open source dev who rage quits because people demand too much for free. This is basically the same thing.
I know this will get downvotes. But I’m not wrong.
> You were a pay-once app. Released in 2011, pay once each for Android, iOS, and Web and keep for life. You know. I approve the pushback on enshitification. But there’s something weird about righteous fury over an app which literally costs money to run didn’t provide free updates for literally decades on what probably cost like $5. I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
I don't personally have the "righteous fury" of the article's author (I'm more just annoyed and disappointed that a nice thing I liked is now noticeably less nice, for complex social and economic reasons outside any one person's control), but I can certainly understand why a person would be mad enough to fork a repo and write a couple hundred words in a blog post.
> You were a pay-once app. Released in 2011, pay once each for Android, iOS, and Web and keep for life. You know. I approve the pushback on enshitification. But there’s something weird about righteous fury over an app which literally costs money to run didn’t provide free updates for literally decades on what probably cost like $5. I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
It's reasonable to feel that reneging on the deal is wrong, while also recognising that $5 for 14 years (and counting) of value is far too low a price. There's no good answer here. The company is stuck in a bad place where the most loyal users, probably those getting the most value out of it in the long run, aren't paying for it. Subscriptions for newer users are one way, or trying to upsell existing users, but this…
* Links on the web to your app die since the links go to the old version, people who see your app recommended click the link and think the app is gone.
* You can't keep supporting users of older versions with simple bug fix releases without leaving the app live on the store, which confuses users into buying the old version of the app.
* You can't sell upgrades at a discount price (which is common in any other software market)
* Just user confusion in general. They go to reinstall the app, search the App Store "didn't I already buy this? I says I haven't!" The App Store also doesn't give developers any access to customer info so you can only guide these users to the right place in the App Store to find the old version and hope they figure it out.
I switched to Pocket Casts because the official Apple app changed their UI to a recommendation feed instead of a plain timeline. I only listen to podcasts on a single device, anyone have suggestions for alternatives? I don't mind paying a one time fee, but this should really be a mostly (completely?) cloud-less app.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants. You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.
They could do what other apps have done and release a new SKU for a new business model or with a new feature set that justifies asking for more money. Reeder has done this, for example.
I think JetBrains has one of the most fair and honest subscription schemes where you pay for a subscription but when you stop paying you’re free to keep using the last major version that released while you were subscribed. I think that’s much harder to do on mobile app stores, though.
Give me a good 3y or 5y deal, then we're friends.
To play devil's advocate here, clearly there are hosting costs and maintenance costs beyond a one time mobile app payment 14 years ago. Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against t…
> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
To play devil's advocate here, clearly there are hosting costs and maintenance costs beyond a one time mobile app payment 14 years ago. Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against t…
> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants. You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.
Why they feel entitled to the thing they paid for is not hard to see. A good question is why an app that worked fine over a decade ago apparently still costs $800k per year to support.