Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

news.ycombinator.com

601–610 of 710 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming 1Password has declined is unfair at best. They release a steady stream of updates, and when I discovered a UX issue earlier this year their team were on it like a rash.

Yea I don't understand all the recent hate over their new version. I installed the new version on my devices, and while the keyboard shortcuts seemed to change, once I looked them up it worked better than before. I just use the cmd+ shift+space shortcut for everything now.

> I just use the cmd+ shift+space shortcut for everything now.

Whoa, I didn't know that one. Was that functionality around in earlier version?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#602

Unpopular opinion probably, but the move to subscriptions 'backfired' on me; Being a software developer myself in the past, I used to spend quite some money on all kinds of software. But since about 2 years i started a 'zero subscription' policy. I now only have subs for video and music streaming, that's it. Since most companies don't really offer a (sane) 'single purchase/upgrade once in a while' pricing model anymo…

This. I have a server just to run all the open source tools I would have used subscriptions before.

Monitoring, backups, health checks, some automations, ..

Honestly often the free OS alternatives are more then enough or turn out to be the better solution when I integrate them deeper later. Also I never get emails that the API changed and I have 2 weeks or my product breaks anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#603
I kind of understand online services or games being a subscription, because you have to keep paying for infrastructure and devs etc etc, but apps that don't have online functionality (looking at fitbit right now...) or had its functionality forcefully replaced by an online one is just a joke.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#604
I agree with the sentiment in this thread that there's not enough purchase choice when it comes to online services.

So this thread inspired me to offer more purchase choice of my online free SaaS once I've set up collAnon.app as a self-hosting software too.

In a couple of weeks you'll see :)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.

You’re kidding abiut 1password right? It has significantly gone downhill since they sold out its hsers and went subscription. I have a shell alias to kill off al of 1password’s processes and use it 2-4x per day. Thrree or four times a week I have to clear my sessions and close safari to get 1password yo work, which means lost productivity. Im also quite worried about privacy with their shit tastic hosted vaults and s…

time to migrate to self hosted bitwarden...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#606
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modicum of security these companies offer are better than the nonexistent security practices at the places I've worked for, lol. I trust them way more than the average user or small business.

ya got me there. but still, we can do better :)

we can, but the average user not!

if you are tech savvy, like to keep up to date on security and are ok with the hassle of setting up a NAS, sync stuff and know how to keep it secure, perhaps. If you had to pay me to do it for you, a few dollars service fee might be much cheaper...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#607
Yes. For all the reasons. I want to own stuff, I want my stuff to be mine, forever, to do with as I please.

I want physical things to mess about with, I want to be able to experience things as I did when I first got them.

We're in a cultural dark-age.. The hoops you have to jump to experience "new" artefacts are something else...

How bad WAS the initial version of the new sim city game? How do I even run that?

What about that TV-Show that said something that upset people.. That episode is offline again.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#608
post #39
post #27

I would say this is Wall Street's fault. Wall Street values recurring revenue much more than one time revenue. It's causing companies to shift to recurring revenue when they have no reason to, like how BMW is charging a subscription to have seat heaters.

yep. is the problem with capitalism. if you are not growing in profits then you are dying. the happiness of the people be damned.

In capitalism, the market can decide to want software purchase options beyond just subscriptions. Plenty of people in this thread have been offering examples of great alternatives like how JetBrains does it. But I do agree that there should be a bigger pushback against making things a SaaS that don’t need to be a SaaS.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#609
I heavily dislike the subscription model, but I don't feel like it impacts my life. I have only used two services so far: Netflix and Humble Bundle.

I picked Netflix because after hearing about it for years and having some people swear by it I decided to finally try it out. It wasn't worth it, most of the content I was interested in was on other services so I stopped and went back to TPB because every other streaming service has the same problem and I refuse to partake in such a broken system.

Humble Bundle was a quite good deal for a while. While there's a subscription it's not really a classic subscription model, as you get to keep the games. They even had a pause option so it was possible to skip months that did not interest you. Unfortunately at one point they lowered the price and started shifting the billing days in order to confuse the clients. They've billed me twice for the stuff I didn't really want and after that I've realized I have been pausing Humble Bundle for the past year or so, so I just unsubscribed. I don't miss it at all.

The rest? I don't really need Spotify, I'm building back a curated stash of MP3s like it's the early 2000s and for everything else YouTube is good enough for me. Each other piece of software I use is either free or open source. I can't recall any moment in the past 10 years where I would think something along the lines of "a subscription to X would make my life so much easier".

The only software I feel like I might be interested in that is subscription-only might be Adobe products. The problem here is that the prices on their page are either in EUR or USD and none of this is a currency I earn money in. This means the pricing is very inadequate considering the average purchasing power of Western Europe or the USA, so it feels very overpriced. It doesn't help that this kind of pricing is bound to exchange rates, which means there's no real way to calculate the exact cost.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#610
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows is getting worse by moving towards ads.

That hasn't been my experience. Windows 11 has more features any any version before it, and same goes for Office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_11

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

Support for Android apps sounds nice, but you can't even reposition the taskbar anymore.

Post reply on HN