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The reason subscriptions are not such a great idea
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Posted by Jeffery Smith
Oct 23, 2019 at 04:25 PM
I bailed out of Adobe, but seriously miss PhotoShop and Audition.
Posted by Ken
Oct 23, 2019 at 05:20 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
A little corner of the world without politics, culture, or opinion about
>anything other than outliner software is welcome.
I am feeling the same way. I know there are important issues going on in the world, but there are places to discuss them with all of the passion and intensity they deserve. I am hoping our “little corner” can continue be a respite from issues not related to outliner-related software.
-Ken
Posted by Alex
Oct 23, 2019 at 05:29 PM
Yeah guys, it’s not a politics forum. Cut the crap, please.
Back to the topic. Subscription model is pushed down on customers by the business for mainly one reason: money. It’s the way to generate constant guaranteed revenue. Yes, subscription services may appear to be more convenient to the customers, but using them carries certain risks and drawbacks. For instance:
1. The service can be terminated at any time on behalf of the owners.
2. You generally, can’t opt-out of the changes to the service if you don’t like them.
3. There’s constant privacy risk to the customers’ data.
That’s why, after being burnt once, for the purpose of PIM I’m leaning towards off-line standalone applications. I want to have full control of my data. I don’t want deal with the problem a closing service (or dealing with new changes I don’t like), which means somehow exporting the data, finding another service, and importing the data there. I don’t want to fear for the privacy of my data. I don’t want my life to depend on some remote services I have no control of. Standalone software doesn’t have these issues. You can stick with a version you like and keep using it for a long time.
Posted by tightbeam
Oct 23, 2019 at 05:38 PM
No one wants to discuss politics here or read about anybody else’s indignant pontifications (righteous or otherwise) about same. You’re not going to convince anyone else of your views, and all you’ll accomplish is to drive people away. The subscription-based model is a valid topic - but I could not care less about why Adobe is doing whatever it’s doing in Venezuela.
Posted by Hugh
Oct 23, 2019 at 07:52 PM
Developers need working capital, if only to get started. Lenders and providers of capital - the bank, the man next door, Aunt Agatha - need predictability. As is so often said, they hate surprises. Compared with one-off charges dependent on the development cycle, subs provide more (though of course not total) predictability.
They may deter buyers. But someone here once pointed out that in a slightly different industry it had been estimated that even if subs deter 80 per cent of previous buyers, with subs the businesses can still keep their revenues stable and make money. So I can see why some developers are turning to subs.
I can also see why many consumers of apps don’t like them: if we buy apps at the same volume as before, we’ll pay more, probably quite a lot more. The situation where I have three very similar writing apps or four equally usable PIMS or a huge bunch of seldom-used utilities on my hard disk - and quite a lot of fun playing with each one - is in the future unlikely to be so financially viable (although mitigated by the possibility of inexpensively trialling sub-based apps for, say, a couple of months and then discarding those I don’t like).
Having been on both sides of the producer/consumer divide in small and medium-sized businesses (though not in app development), I have sympathy with each.