SketchUp Goes Subscription-Only
blog.sketchup.com
blog.sketchup.com
In any case I can't stand all that false statements. Let's take this one for example:
> Subscription demands constant improvement of our product and enables us to make $Product better for you — faster.
In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe. Or maybe CAD/BIM products, like Revit from Autodesk. The only thing that was new in this years version was slanted walls (!). Something competitors have for ~20 years already.
So for me subscription basically is equivalent with the opposite. As soon companies decided to switch from the possibility to let me buy their software, as in "I own this thing and I can use it indefinitely." to "rent" their software, progress came to a grinding halt most times.
The reason why this doesn't work like in the PR statement above is the way things work in real life. First you lock them customers in: all their files are now in your proprietary format. The presumption from above is, that you won't renew you subscription when you don't like the new yearly version – but then you can no longer access your files you need, since you do business! So cancelling of subscriptions basically never happens, turning your company into a gold mine.
Yearly realases are bad btw and nobody likes them. Except shareholdes maybe.
I bought GraphicConverter [1] a zillion years ago, and I just upgraded to their v11, and so I paid them probably more than I've ever paid any other software -- BUT, they always come up with a list of improvement 5 pages long, and I've been using that stuff on/off for 20+ years.
I have no problems pushing money their way, I know where that money is going ultimately. It certainly doesn't go in shareholder or marketing drone's pocket.
Its just the latest business fad.
Well from some points of view, they're right - I had an Adobe CC subscription for a little while, and after six months of no improvements, I abandoned Adobe products entirely.
Historical Adobe releases were years apart but you're unhappy with a couple of months because it's a subscription? I can't follow this logic.
Below history is just Photoshop, and if anything it looks like change velocity has increased since it became subscription-based.
https://adobe.fandom.com/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_histor...
Because they were new versions and they had to sell you on the upgrade.
Presumably one of the advantages of subscriptions is they can make ongoing improvements regularly as opposed to big releases. They release updates now, they just don't have many new features.
Presumably the advantages of a subscription is to cater to the meme “free == fascism”.
The feature cadence over a 2-year period doesn't look any different to me. The only change is you're getting piecemeal changes faster vs. a large number of changes all at once.
I was unhappy with the overall product/service. Since I was paying on a subscription basis, I'd spent less money over those months than I would have on a full release, so had more money to switch to an alternative. There's also no psychological burden of a sunk cost on the status quo - you feel free to switch at any time there's a better alternative.
My problems weren't that Adobe hadn't made general improvements in the six months time frame, it's that I had specific issues that they didn't address, and I didn't want to keep paying a monthly fee to be having those specific issues.
So let me get this straight. Adobe has adopted a payment model that allows customer to more easily switch to alternatives (thanks to no large upfront cost), while simultaneously making more changes overall to the software over the same fixed-period of time, but because those changes didn't match your exact needs in the moment you had them you switched to an alternative?
How is Adobe the bad guy in this situation? Not necessarily saying your comment is painting Adobe negatively, but that seems to be the general feeling towards Adobe's subscription model in this thread.
It seems like a pretty good deal to be able to minimize your investment in a software product.
Combined with Sketch, another non subscription product, it provides everything I need for the little UI design I do.
And there ain't a darn thing you can do about it other than switching to Open-Source.
I don't know why you think it hurts R&D. The alternative is a dead company.
Because before they had to make the product a lot better to sell you on an upgrade.
> The alternative is a dead company.
Were software companies dead before 2013?
Of course, it is legal and fair for them to run this particular business model. The other poster is just expressing that as a consumer they like it less.
Conversely they're not charging you a massive one time update fee. They're charging many smaller fees for smaller updates which is more representative of the development costs of the product, where you'd have to split next years development on updates and bug fixes for customers that would never give you another dime.
This is unsustainable for many software shops which is why many of them died. We're seeing such growth in SaaS today because pricing based on how much value your product creates for users, on a schedule that reflects how much it costs to deliver it is much better for everyone involved.
Like Adobe is a good example of this. Their products are much better today than they used to be and more affordable for everyone. The real trouble is the CC runtimes which are just shitty software, the pricing model is not a problem.
However, any 'new' customer will not let themselves be trapped. It's happening with Adobe Photoshop and stuff, where they've been skinning their customer base for years, but quite frankly who would now as a new potiential customer decide to shackle themselves to that? I know quite a few people who will use inferior tools JUST so they don't have to hook up to Adobe blood-suck.
Say Adobe Lightroom. Super product, but updates started to slow down and slow down and WOW now look it's all ONLINE baby for a price. I bought all updates until LR6, but now I know it's a lot cheaper to archive my machine with LR6 in a corner and use it for my photo edit than switching to the 'super value online thingy' for $$$/year. I don't use it that much to want that, and next time I want to use it, it actually might be incompatible with /whatever is in my chain of hardware/ anyway.
I'm sad to say Sketchup is doing this, if they had a $100 upgrade price every year or so, I'd pay happily -- however here's lies the other main problem: these companies don't WANT to invest in R&D enough to have a 'valid' reason to have a new major version every 12-18 months, they actually think people will just keep paying.
Well guess what, perhaps some people will, but no NEW people will. In the case of sketchup, whatever the marketing blurbs have spattered about, NOTHING IS NEW for like 10 years, I mean, they try to add 'hooks' here and there, but the main program is exactly the same, same bugs for that long. I suspect the devs who know how to do matrix multiplication have long left after google dumped the product, and they are now left with a handful of webheads.
Do I want to pay for that?
Hmm wait until I clean the coffee off the front my t-shirt.
Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good behavior.
Edit: to clarify I'm not saying you can't be professional and use sketchup, it's more that it's hard to really pull the subscription bait on switch on non corporate users on a niche product like this. Especially a niche that has alternatives.Maybe sketchup is actually used in business now though.
At some point it will stop working with macOS the way CS6 did, but I also flipped the bozo bit on Apple so my plan is to switch to Linux and DarkTable, which is making great strides.
This is for making quick rough concept models only. For any serious engineering or 3D printing, I recommend Blender, Autodesk Inventor, or Solidworks.
Do not waste your money on SkethUp. You will waste a lot of time working around bugs and you will need to buy extra pluggins to do basic tasks, many of which are barely supported by their owners (there are exceptions). It's a product that had great potential, but has simply devolved.
But it is really quite good for planning interiors, where no other tool I have found is as easy to navigate and change a model in broad and in detail in one fluid movement.
The latest version is the best, least buggiest version I have used in the past 5 years at least. It is well with buying a classic licence before they shelve it in November.
But though I easily get the value from the cost of subscription, the fact that you cannot access your models in the event it expires is really shit. (Well, you might be able to access your models on the web version, but mine generally weigh in at 150-200mb, they just don't load.)
Plus at least half the value of sketchup is in extensions from people like thomthom, fredo, or eneroth (and being able to their in your own script here or there). Do these even work on the web version?
I hate subscriptions, for a lot of the reason others have said (ex. getting locked into a piece of software that holds my data hostage), but I got a few others. Its been a royal pain in the butt to have a bunch of subscriptions during this time. I have a lot more outgoing cash and living closer to the paycheck since others need the savings. Companies are just lazy about subscription scheduling.
It must be paid on the first day of the month or a fixed day. For the most part, people pay rent on the first. I wonder how many creators on Paetron would make more money if the timing could be changed.
Let's say you have a product that is used by seniors in the USA. You might want to seriously consider doing a bit of work an allowing them to schedule to pay you on the third Wednesday of the month or the Thursday following the third Wednesday of the month.
The common refrain is that you shouldn't be buying product X if this is a problem for you. Well, maybe, but dips like this are a pain and not getting into a situation where accidents happen would be nice. Accidents resulting from a bank fee is just a pain.
The other problem is now you are a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Utility, and Rent competitor. There is a big difference between a one-time purchase and signing up for a continuing cost along with all the others.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=using+blender+2...
Being able to work in 3d is like a superpower that is just laying there waiting for you :)
The only reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual access to software that you rely on is for you to own a copy of the source for that software.
We can have additional conversations about open source licenses and funding, but if you don't have the source, you will eventually be fucked.
Wholeheartedly agree, but it's worse than that: it's not perpetual access to the software that matters, but perpetual access to your own damn work.
Anything you create with proprietary tools is on a guaranteed path to bitrot and not being readable at some point int the near future.
Also they will be more likely to stay in business due to the recurring business so you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because their demand dries up.
Subscription aligns objectives. They want your continued business and you want that a product that does something you need is not abandoned when you reach a point where upgrades do more harm than good.
Now you have to fear it much more. With perpetual licenses, you never lose access to your work and your files. Maybe you have to keep a computer working with current version of Windows, because the software does not work with the next one. But you can continue using the software, well, in perpetuity. Many people are still using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. Some people are still using Lotus Agenda and WordPerfect.
In contrast, with subscription software, if the company does not do well and goes out of business, or does moderately well and gets acquhired, or if for any reason loses interest in continuing providing the software, you get an email about their incredible journey and how proud they are and oh yeah, the service will stop working in 20 days and your files and years of work locked in a proprietary format will become inaccessible.
Since the long term survival chances of businesses based on permanent licenses are a lot lower, then your odds will be better with freeware, open source or pirated software.
Is there a good alternative (free or reasonably priced paid) for very simple and casual 3D modeling?
1. Freecad https://www.freecadweb.org/
2. Blender https://www.blender.org/
http://solvespace.com/index.pl
Here's a good tutorial:
Just today I encountered an issue with some bad mesh and I was thinking "you know, I like this product, I might just give them money, at least I'll get a perpetual license out of it".
This makes me reconsider that. I really think JetBrains went the right route here for their subscription/license and I was excited to see Trimble follow in their footsteps, until now.
And also this marketing copy is just a giant slap in the face. Give me the numbers!
Subscription pricing is an absolute deal-breaker as far as I am concerned, so I am glad to learn this so I can avoid SketchUp. I have largely switched over from Adobe CS to Affinity (only Lightroom remains tricky to migrate from, even though I’ve done 4 DAM migrations before).
They may want to rework those sentences to be less absurdist. Those lines are more akin to "Cancel your subscription? - we'll still always give you the latest version! All bits must go!!"
They even released a stripped down free version with a more sketchup like interface called BricsCAD shape.
1) open-source 2) subscription
Is just a way for companies to sell you the same shit repackaged with only minimal effort. You don't seem to grasp the fundamental principle of a corporation is to give you the LEAST possible service for the highest possible price. AKA it's fuck you I got mine.
99% of the time Software as a service preys on gullible people and flaws in your psychology you aren't aware of. Best to stay away.
Piracy actually put pressure on companies to innovate because you could get the complete version for free there was some incentive to improve the product to make it better than the pirate version, as strange as that sounds. Piracy is actually good for competition because most people are honest, if that wasn't the case Microsoft, EA, Valve, etc couldn't have become rich pre-internet where it was trivially easy to pirate everything by just copying the files.
Modern DRM is literally holding files hostage using the internet as a dongle and using encryption.
So no software as a service preys on gullible people to sell you last years with minor tweaks at inflated prices.
Check out the revenue for mobile, it's insane because it preys on mass stupidity and tech illiteracy.
https://newzoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Newzoo-2019-Gl...
Either way many segments of software you can be sure are making insane profits like Overwatch, league of legends with selling flags for skins.
The internet has given tech companies 24/7 access to the super rich, the super gullible and super mentally ill.
Think about that for a second, before the internet people with brainless spending habits had no direct access to companies they got their products through intermediaries. The internet is a game changer for software companies because they can trap software inside "the world sized PC" we call the internet.
The internet remember, is the worlds biggest motherboard, and whoever programs the motherboard owns the motherboard. That's how we ended up with steam drm, uplay, origin, etc. We've been getting hacked software and slaughtered on the privacy freedom front because the average consumer is retard level stupid when it comes to technology.
Many software companies are getting away with the crime of the century. I'll see if I can't poke around and find some helpful guides for you to decode corporate speak.
And as a consumer you want to get as many goods as possible for as little price as possible.