Its a mixed bag. Some types of apps may be better suited for a
subscription plan. Media for example.
But there are many that should remain one-time purchases. For every
100 developers that jump on board, we probably see more than half drop out.
In preparation for a new iPhone and iOS 11, I purged many apps. Over
2 dozen were no longer in the app store and quite a few of those were
paid apps.
I reckon we will see how things shake down.
From E.T.'s Keyboard. . .
"God for you is where you sweep away all the
mysteries of the world, all the challenges to
our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off
and say God did it." --Carl Sagan
E-mail: ancient.ali...@icloud.com
On 8/16/2017 6:52 PM, M. Taylor wrote:
9to5Mac - Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 6:41 AM
Opinion: Are subscription-based apps the future, or will they implode?
The decision of the popular writing app Ulysses to switch from a one-off
purchase to a monthly or annual subscription has attracted a great deal of
criticism. Here's a sprinkling of views from the comments.
Subscribe to a text editor? I'm out.
I bought this on iOS last week. As far as I'm concerned, that was a total
waste of money now they're moving to this subscription model.
This "rent your software" crap needs to stop, and people need to stop
defending it.
Ulysses is a great app and I wish the developers all the best, but I'm out,
looking for alternatives.
Read: "Popular iOS and Mac writing app Ulysses Digs Its Own Grave and Gets
In"
The company, of course, has its own rationale .
We want to make sure the app will be around for years and years to come. We
want to heavily invest in its development, and this requires the right
setting for our team, our families and our users. Writers want to rely on a
professional tool that is constantly evolving, and we want to keep
delivering just that.
The company says that anyone who bought the app when it first launched has
now received nine major updates at no cost, and that this isn't sustainable.
And, of course, Ullysses isn't the only app to have switched to a
subscription model - nor the only company to come under fire for doing so.
The highest-profile example is Adobe. The company first started offering its
subscription-based Creative Cloud service back in 2012. At that point, users
could choose between buying individual apps, buying packages - or signing-up
to a monthly or annual subscription.
But just a year later, the company announced that it would no longer sell
its Creative Suite software outright, and that the only way to get the
latest versions would be via subscription. Even for apps you could still buy
outright, you didn't get the same functionality as the subscription version.
We're seeing the same trend everywhere. Right now, you can still buy
individual TV shows and movies, but iTunes popularized the idea of renting
them instead, and companies like Netflix take things further with a fixed
monthly subscription for all-you-can-eat streaming access.
And, of course, Apple Music now gives us the option of renting, rather than
owning, our music.
The idea of renting rather than owning isn't without its benefits, of
course. Developers get a steady stream of income, which enables them to keep
updating apps and adding new features, while users get access at a more
affordable up-front cost.
And for some apps and services, it makes sound financial sense. Take music
as an example. Back in the days when the only option was to buy albums, many
of us spent thousands - sometimes tens of thousands - of dollars over the
years. A young person today can lay out ten bucks a month and get instant
access to more music than any of us will ever own in our lifetimes. Having a
$10 cost of entry to almost all the music commercially available is quite an
incredible thing. If I were starting out today, I honestly don't know
whether I'd choose to own any music.
In software, Adobe was able to get away with it for much the same reason.
Outright purchase of a suite of its apps could again cost thousands, and you
knew it was only a matter of time before you'd need to pay to upgrade to the
latest version. Indeed, many photographers found themselves forced to
upgrade when they bought a new camera as the RAW converter for it would only
be available for the latest version of Lightroom. An affordable monthly fee
was a decent alternative.
In TV and movies, renting rather than owning can again save you money. Many
have dispensed with traditional TV packages, and buying movies outright, and
instead pay just $8-12 per month for a Netflix subscription. Provided the
shows you want are available, that's a great deal.
Some people even effectively choose to rent their iPhone. In the old days,
you did this as a hidden cost in your carrier's plan, now you can do it
through Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program. That's again a way of turning a
large lump-sum payment into a more manageable monthly one.
But there are, I think, four reasons why many of us feel reluctant to switch
from outright purchase of apps to a subscription model.
The first is purely psychological. We're used to paying a one-off fee, with
maybe an occasional and optional major update fee some years down the road,
and that being it. The idea of instead being forced to lay out cash every
month for continued access to an app feels somehow wrong. Many feel they are
being taken advantage of, especially if it's an app they've used for years
and come to rely on.
The second is the lifetime cost. I can't even remember now what I paid for
my three versions of Lightroom, but from memory the last one I bought -
Lightroom 3 - cost me about $150 back in 2011. I'm still using it today. If
I'd instead been paying $9.99/month, that same app would by now have cost me
$720 - and counting. Sure, the subscription includes updates, but the
version I have does everything I need.
Third, there's the sheer weight of a growing number of monthly payments. It
used to be that we had a mortgage or rent, a car payment, our household
bills and maybe a loan payment. But these days, it seems everyone wants to
charge us a monthly fee for everything. Each of them may be individually
small - $5 here, $10 there - but they add up. In a still-difficult economy,
when many want to reduce their fixed outgoings, more and more companies seem
determined to add to them.
Finally, there's the discomfort may of us feel with recurring payments in
general. It's all too easy to sign up for something - be it a free trial or
a service we use for a while - and then forget to cancel. We all have apps
cluttering up our devices that we haven't used in ages. If those apps were
charging us a monthly fee, we could well be paying not to use them.
The first objection may be merely a case of getting used to a different
model, but the others are, in my view, substantive reasons to dislike
subscriptions.
I do, of course, see the developer viewpoint. The money we spend on an app
pays for the work they did up to the point at which we bought it. The work
needed to update it to keep it compatible with later versions of iOS and
macOS, and to add new features, is effectively only covered by the revenue
from new customers. Unless they can keep growing their market, they can't
cover the ongoing development costs.
But a subscription isn't the only way to do this. To use another popular
writing app as an example, Scrivener provides dot updates free - paid for by
the income from new customers - and charges for major updates. Paid updates
are very infrequent. Scrivener 2 was released more than six years ago, and
Scrivener 3.0 will again be a paid update later this year.
I don't begrudge those paid updates in the slightest. If they are infrequent
(say every 2-3 years at most), cost less than buying from scratch and are
justified by new features, I will smile as I hand over the cash. In the case
of Scrivener, it's an app I couldn't live without, and it's clear that a
huge amount of work has gone into the upcoming version.
To my mind, that's the better approach. It's less expensive. You can see
what you're getting for your money. And you don't feel exploited because
upgrading is optional - you can pay for the new features if you want them,
and not if you don't. (Granted there may be times when an iOS or macOS
upgrade will break an app, but those are optional too.)
I can't help feeling that the whole subscription model is at some point
going to implode. Some people will simply refuse to get on board at all -
like those who say they are done with Ulysses - while others will eventually
reach breaking point. One or two low-cost subscription apps, well, ok,
maybe. But what happens when it's ten? Twenty? At some point, people are
going to say enough is enough.
Do you agree? Or do you think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? As ever,
please take our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.
Original Article at:
http://9to5mac.com/2017/08/16/opinion-subscription-based-apps-future-implode
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