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Comment by Doches | Hacker News Reader

> Honestly, Panic and Omni and other old school Mac developers really, really need to adapt to the modern era.

A counterpoint: how intense would the outcry be if Panic were to make the next versions of Transmit & Coda subscription only (the Mac versions, that is, not their baby iOS counterparts)? I'm probably almost a model Panic customer -- I've paid for every major version of both at release, along with Prompt & Coda for iOS -- but even I'd balk at paying a subscription for a code editor. A paid upgrade every few years? Sure, take my money (see also: Jetbrains). But a monthly subscription for a tool that updates only semi-frequently (e.g. Transmit)?

Yeah, I'm out. Developers (and tech folks in general) are the cheapest, orneriest market. How can I justify to myself a monthly sub to Transmit & Coda when scp & VSCode are free?

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> A paid upgrade every few years? Sure, take my money (see also: Jetbrains)

JetBrains has all but deprecated this AFAIK. I pay for my JetBrains tools annually and I'm perfectly ok with that. If I ever want to stop paying then I just fall back to the version of software at time of renewal [0]. I'm more than happy with this situation as it lets me get the newest features ASAP while giving JetBrains the "guaranteed" income stream. Major versions every year or so lead to a feast/famine situation for the developer and I'd rather get a feature right away instead of having to wait till they have enough features to justify a paid release.

Can subscriptions allow bad actors to act poorly? Yes, but then I can just cancel my subscription and find someone better. Maybe I'm in the minority but I don't mind subscription-based things if I feel like I'm actually getting value out of them. It lowers the barrier of entry, encourages/incentives continuous improvement, helps developers plan for the future better, and it lays stark the realities of development (if you want ongoing features/fixes you need to pay for them).

[0] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...

I pay for Jetbrains subscription as well. They offer a bargain compared to many others. There are products I pay 66% of the amount I pay to JB for far less overall functionality. I don't mind subscriptions but I am weary of some of the higher prices. I also don't want to subscribe to everything some things one and done is what I want. No updates just buy it and move on and it continues to work.

Yes. Though I recommended subscriptions, I do have a price limit. I really like the interface of Cinema4D but it’s over $100 a month! No thank you.

I also think there just are hard limits in what’s a sustainable business. E.g. Small, indie, bespoke notes apps probably can’t support even one person long term regardless if it’s a one time purchase, subscription, paid upgrades, or any other pricing model.

I'm ok with subscriptions as long as I get to keep the latest version forever. I'm not ok with being locked out of my work when I can no longer pay for the subscription.

Now if I'm working for someone else, then sure! But, say, an author, who can no longer edit their old works for a republication? Not a chance.

Unfortunately this model can't be implemented on iOS

Your app updates go to everyone, even if they've stopped paying their subscription.

So it becomes really tricky to sell a subscription on iOS where, once lapsed, the user can continue to use the latest version available at the end of their subscription.

One way to do this is to have feature unlocks based on a timeline (Working Copy, an iOS git client, does this). Where users continue to receive a subset of features but some new features are locked behind a yearly upgrade payment. This requires littering your codebase with checks that certain features are unlocked based on the user's latest yearly purchase.

I'd love official support for the JetBrains / Sketch subscription model on iOS. As a developer, I would feel bad locking my paying users out of features they paid for just because they stopped subscribing. But I also really can't be bothered spending months developing a robust in-app-purchase feature locking mechanism to work around Apple's limited set of purchase options

I completely agree with everything you've said. The big problem (as I see it) is even if there was a way for Apple to provide the infrastructure for "hasPaidForSubscriptionInPast" or "lastSubscriptionActiveDate" or similar, the limiting fact is that Apple only allows 1 version of your app to exist in the app store (under the same identifier, obviously you could release seperate apps). The whole thing breaks down if you need to ship a nasty bug fix for a previous version.

Sure, Apple could stop letting users get updates if they stop subscribing but then you have no way to ship ANY updates to that user on an older version. I'm honestly not sure if JetBrains ever ships bug/compatibility fixes for older versions but for apps that are half-free/half-subscription this would be a huge problem. How can I convince people to restart their subscriptions if from their perspective the app has been stagnant since they stopped subscribing? And/or do they even have the option to go to the latest version and just use the free features? Now we are back into the "littering your codebase with checks"-hell that I agree would be terrible to maintain. I'm not giving Apple a pass in the slightest, but I'm having a hard time coming up with what the "gold standard" would be where you could support something like this.

Adobe had an intense outcry when they moved to a subscription model, and it worked out great for them. You are basically changing your customer base. People who would happily spend $20/month for a good code editor will love the change to a subscription model in the long run, because it lets you invest more effort in making the product great. And I think there are a lot of those people - if you spend hours and hours every day programming, and you make good money at your job, aren't you willing to spend money to use the best tools? People who don't want to buy a subscription will be angry, but in a couple months they won't be your customer any more so it won't matter that they're angry.

For some crazy reason Photoshop users are so crazy loyal to that product they're willing to pay for it. I'm totally guilty of this, just yesterday I needed to scale and crop an image and I had to download the whole Creative Cloud installer to my new laptop and install Photoshop. I'm positive I could have done this in a number of different tools even built into the OS, but for whatever reason I'm just hooked on Photoshop.

FYI If you’re on a Mac you can do that right in Preview

Some people have been working with Photoshop for decades, it's integrated into industry wide workflows. For me some complex 4-key shortcuts (the legacy save for web claw) are second nature. It's the devil we know very very well.

I'm probably missing it. I've used Photoshop since version 1 and owned a personal copy since version 3 (mid 90s). When new features were added i'd evaluate if I wanted them. I generally upgrade every 2 versions for $199 or which is ~$50 a year.

Subscriptions raised that to $240 a year, a 480% increase. Further, since subscriptions were added no features I want have been added. But, I can't just stop and use some version, stop paying and the software stops working.

I see no evidence that Adobe's subscription model has let them invest more effort in making the product great. In fact it's the exact opposite. Before they had to add some features to entice you to pay for the upgrade. now they can just do nothing because you're "renting" the software.

> I see no evidence that Adobe's subscription model has let them invest more effort in making the product great. In fact it's the exact opposite.

It's hard to define cause and effect, but Adobe's R&D spend is definitely increasing:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/794840/research-developm...

Because their competition is catching up.

Figma is crushing Adobe. Alternatives like Affinity are eating much of the casual user base.

Figma is crushing Adobe XD, not Adobe. But we will never know the exact reason for the increase in R&D spend - but without the increase in revenue they would not have been able to afford this investment in R&D (R&D is approx 60% of their revenue).

Again it's impossible to define cause and effect, but OP's claim that they are investing less in product after introducing subscriptions is spurious - R&D has dramatically increased almost exactly in line with revenue.

stop paying and the software stops working

This is the major problem. I do know indies who have used workarounds just so they aren't held hostage. I wouldn't use subscriptions for my own personal creative work. So, yes, the customer base is indeed changing- to those who mainly work for others.

Adobe's products are not trivial.

And yet they have ported them not only to iOS but also to M1.

Just because you don't see changes in the UI doesn't mean there hasn't been significant engineering effort spent.

Porting is a feature, and they already charged for it under the pre-subscription model.

> Adobe had an intense outcry when they moved to a subscription model, and it worked out great for them

That remains to be seen, actually. There used to be an "Adobe pipeline" where kids in high school and college would pirate Photoshop, become familiar with it, then be ready to use it when they got a real job. That pipeline shut down when Adobe moved to a subscription model: now all the kids use Figma instead. It'll take a little while to bubble up, but eventually all these design shops are going to find that their new hires know how to use Figma and not Photoshop, and start wondering whether Adobe software is worth the cost on top of retraining.

None of this shows up in quarterly reports but it's a real phenomenon and it will catch up to Adobe sooner or later.

>now all the kids use Figma instead.

This is only true if in your entire world bubble Photoshop only exists to design mobile UIs. Figma, like Sketch before it, is a simply a part of Photoshop's total market. There's no replacement for Photoshop yet for creative agencies, photographers, and content studios.

Give Affinity Photo / Designer a try. It's a fantastic photoshop replacement, many of the keyboard shortcuts are even the same.

Yeah I've seen designers switching to the whole suite.

nothing is stopping any of these kids from pirating photoshop in 2021

> People who would happily spend $20/month for a good code editor will love the change to a subscription model in the long run, because it lets you invest more effort in making the product great.

That’s almost double what I pay for Jetbrains’ stuff and I figured the forced subscription from Jetbrains was 3x what I had been paying by skipping 1-2 versions between updates.

You’re right about changing the customer base though. All the suckers that can’t figure out prices just when up 3-4x seem to love subscriptions and financially flippant people like that are probably the best customers to have.

And Jetbrains is the only subscription software I’ve used that doesn’t keep adding bloated trash features to justify their subscription.

> [...] but even I'd balk at paying a subscription for a code editor. A paid upgrade every few years? Sure, take my money (see also: Jetbrains).

Funny you bring that up - Jetbrains only switched to its current model after a massive outcry. Their original plan was to completely brick your IDE when your subscription lapsed. That did not go down well[1]. Fortunately, they abandoned the plan within a day

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170089

There is an amazing plugin for Visual Studio that makes searching blindingly fast almost instantaneous and the price was $10 for the longest time (now $20) and trying to get developers to buy that thing was a chore. They didn't want to pay for any software tools. This is in the US not somewhere that $10 is a huge price and yet they balked. I have to ask why anybody who makes a living writing software is so repulsed by the idea of paying someone else for software especially something cheap and time saving.

Cause that's free in Linux and you kinda resent paying extra for something that should be built into something like visual studio. And now even vscode does it out of the box.

What does "that's free in Linux" even mean in this context? You're talking about an IDE plugin that's "free" in an operating system?

In Linux updatedb and locate are built in so you can do the search on terminal and it's instant so putting a gui over something like that should really be part of visual studio imo to begin with.

I think Nova is already on a somewhat similar model. You can buy it and use it forever, but you only get support/updates for a year. A subsequent year is (I think) $49.

If iOS supported this model I think most devs would be ok with it, pay upfront X amount, and then a slightly smaller amount yearly for continued support/updates/development. I wonder if we'd have more 'pro/dev' iOS apps if the App Store supported models like this?

Jetbrains default way is a subscription model that leaves you with a one year old "perpetual fallback".

If you thought scp and vscode were perfect replacements for transmit and coda, they already lost ;-)

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