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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

#91

Post by rmoriz »

TZubiri wrote: post #80

I have no idea where this theory that SaaS is dead because vibe coding came from. My best bet is that some NYC traders take on agents was to post the same bullish take a million times in order to drive tech stocks (which make up the most of the market cap), and buy them for low.

I don’t want to speculate who is behind that. Clearly some SaaS shops are way overpriced but this is in no way the end of the business modell. Some contrarian will find the right timing to counter play and become more wealthy…

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#92

Post by markbao »

Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc…

The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisions instead of paying $5 a month for someone else to do that work. Comparative advantage doesn’t just apply to the cost of writing code, but also the effort of making product decisions.

Edit: I don’t mean that a grocery app should cost $5/month, the grocery app was a toy example and the $5/month refers to an example of a separate app you’d pay for with much more value.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#93

Post by SoftTalker »

markbao wrote: post #92

Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc… The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisi…

Some things are just not suited to an app. It's still easier to jot down a shopping list on a piece of paper than to use an app and a janky mobile phone keyboard. And bonus, nobody gets to sell your shopping preferences or blast you with ads as you're trying to use it!

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#94

Post by xnx »

markbao wrote: post #92

Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc… The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisi…

Or is the claim that someone will write the app and sell it for $5 one time or give it away free?

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#95

Post by cruffle_duffle »

Dansvidania wrote: post #88
neya wrote: post #60

> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and every…

Vibe code to production perhaps not, but vibe code for regular personal use doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility already. Unless there is inherent complexity in the problem (and assuming subscriptions don’t get pricey soon) I can see nontechnical people getting into designing their own apps. It makes me think of 3d printing. A lot of people got into 3d modeling because of it. And a lot of people publish cute…

3d printing is something I think about. LLMs do their best work against text and 3d printers consume gcode. I’ve had sonnet spit out perfectly good single layer test prints. Obviously it won’t have the context window to hold much more gcode BUT…

If there was a text based file format for models, it could generate those and you could hand that to the slicer. Like I’ve never looked, but are stl files text or binary? Or those 3mf files?

If Gemini can generate a good looking pelican on a bicycle SVG, it can probably help design some fairly useful functional parts given a good design language it was trained on.

And honestly if the slicer itself could be driven via CLI, you could in theory do the entire workflow right to the printer.

It makes me wonder if we are going to really see a push to text-based file formats. Markdown is the lingua franca of output for LLMs. Same with json, csv, etc. Things that are easy to “git diff” are also easy for LLMs…

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#96

Post by SoftTalker »

colesantiago wrote: post #89
neya wrote: post #60

> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and every…

I vibecoded an app for my business and didn’t need any engineers and it is currently in use for our customers. I think this is great for everyone to be a developer, the gatekeeping has now been removed and we will see a creative explosion of apps that everyone can build. The security and maintenance aspect of apps is just a claude skill away to be a solved problem.

I think you overestimate the ability of AI to write perfectly secure apps. Humans can't do it, and AI is trained on their work.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#97

Post by markbao »

xnx wrote: post #94
markbao wrote: post #92

Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc… The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisi…

Or is the claim that someone will write the app and sell it for $5 one time or give it away free?

Yes, that’s a possibility! And for app types that have a limited ceiling of how much value they can provide, that will definitely be a thing as an AI app can saturate all of that value.

But for apps that have a lot of ceiling, people will still gravitate to apps that have had more care and attention than someone vibe coding it once and throwing it on the store, just like how people choose those well-built and maintained apps today over using their built-in Reminders app.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#98

Post by wiether »

neya wrote: post #60

> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and every…

> see if it falls apart after handling one request per second

Most of the problems you talk about are problems if you intend your software to be used at scale.

If you're building an app for yourself to track your own food habits; why does DB, framework, best practices matters?

People used to do this in an Excel sheet.

Now they can ask Claude to make them a nice UI similar to MFP or whatever.

Data can be stored in a single JSON file.

It's going to take years before they see actual performance issues.

And even though it becomes an issue, right now an AI Agent can already provide a fix and a script to migrate the data.

My only concern really is about security.

But a private VPS only reachable through Tailscale and they're ahead of 99% of the rest.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#99

Post by SoftTalker »

informal007 wrote: post #67
dzonga wrote: post #33

I guess for the author's limited worldview - "apps" are only available through the app stores. could be an unfortunate thing of the author growing up in an era of gated ecosystems. however much of the software out there - is via web - and some desktop - some internal use - some external - some shit without ui - some billed yearly, some billed by subscriptions but I guess tell us how AI is gonna kill subscriptions

I think it depends on what percentage of apps need a website. Most users use apps on their devices, for me, I don't want to open another website when I need an App if it's avoidable.

Thats interesting. For me, I don't want an app if a website is available.

Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions

#100

Post by noelsusman »

markbao wrote: post #92

Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc… The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisi…

A grocery list app is the perfect example of the kind of thing that AI will make obsolete. Why would I pay $5/month for a list app when I can pay Claude $0.30 one time to make it for me?

I in fact did just that. I used Claude to reverse engineer my grocery store's API and build a grocery list app that automatically pulls in the aisle information for each item and sorts it by how I typically walk through the store. It's the kind of thing that would be incredibly difficult to scale but works just fine when you only have one user. No SaaS grocery app can hope to compete with me being able to tailor my own shopping list app to my exact preferences.

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