Hacker News Reader

Apple clearly must have some strategic reason for continuing to resist this model year in and year out, but there is a proven middle ground between subscription-only and one-time-purchase licensing. Software in a handful of fields (Sketch in UX design, Bitwig Studio in music production, Jetbrains in software development) has adopted it, and it's simply where you gate updates rather than access by subscription.

It's the fairest model there is: Developers get a recurring income stream so long as they maintain the software, while customers aren't forced to rent software ad infinitum.

I wish there were some way Epic V. Apple could force Apple to implement this. It would solve so many problems on the App Store.

There are apps that do something similar.

They release a new major version every X years and stop supporting the old one. The old one will keep working until it doesn't. If you want the new one, you buy it and upgrade.

Airmail used to do this and I believe Tweetbot still does it.

Airmail messed it up and I stopped using it altogether after years. I talked to friends that I know used it and they also moved away from it when they messed it up.

It's similar to how Jet Brains does it.

Tweetbot has moved to a subscription model as well in the latest version.

Well, there goes that.

It’s 6 flipping dollars a year. For an app that relies on a third party API and needs fairly regular updates. While I am not a big fan of subscriptions, feels like a good fit for Tweetbot.

It's _yet another_ 6 dollars a year subscription for an app.

Someone else mentioned that they're being charged on the new API they're being forced to move to. Seems like it's needed.

However, I'm curious what other apps will do and if that will cover desktop and mobile apps.

We'll see.

Twitter sadly didn’t give them an alternative to that. They charge for the usage of their new API.

It's incredibly difficult to migrate even engaged users to the new, different app. Apple should really provide a better route for major version upgrades, especially on the Mac App Store.

Mention it and let them make the decision.

If there's anything missing, they'll migrate. If not, they don't need it or don't care about it.

That's what I do every year when I have to renew my JetBrain products.

Do I need it? Will I actively use it? Is it just worth keeping the current version?

I'm not sure how your experience with JetBrains products, which have a dedicated, good flow for easy upgrading thanks to not being limited to the app store, is a good counter to the point that this model could use better support on the app store?

> Tweetbot still does it.

They moved to a subscription model with Tweetbot 6. At least Tapbots is not being dicks:

- Twitter makes them pay for the API 2.0

- The Tweetbot subscription is shared across the family

The former means I get access to Twitter without ads, kind of like the oft asked "I'd pay to have no ads", and I get a usable UI in the package.

The latter is so rare I didn't know this was even possible until that last update.

I think the issue for Apple with this is that they really want all apps on the latest SDK and all phones on the latest iOS version.

If updating to the latest version of iOS breaks some of your apps forcing you to buy them again, people will avoid updating the OS.

iOS's backwards compatibility for apps built with old SDKs is mostly pretty solid. It tends to be things more like architectural changes (e.g. dropping 32 bit) which are an issue

Also new features for the iPhone wouldn’t be supported across all apps unless people paid to upgrade - and Apple fundamentally makes most of their money by selling phones.

Wouldn’t it be possible to emulate this in a somewhat contrived way with in-app purchases? Make the app free, and then have a new in-app purchase each year: “2020 features”, “2021 features”, etc. Every year would include all the features of previous years, so new users on year N don’t have to pay N times as much to start using the app.

I think that this would complicate maintenance and code itself. Plus, people who paid for 2020 features would still wanted you to fix bugs.

This seems a bit convoluted. Another is the drop to 15% for subscriptions after the first year. I believe this only affects developers doing $1M or more in revenue. But still

I believe apple only gives discount to developers doing less than 1m in revenue not more than 1m.

I confused my self. The 15% across the board is for under $1M. While 15% after first year of iap subscription would only benefit $1M+ Devs as the others are already at 15%.

In other words I complicated it. It’s 15% for all in app purchase subscriptions after a year for all developers.

"Agenda" on iOS does something very similar.

I've never really gotten into it but still paid once or twice because I loved the idea so much :-)

> Apple clearly must have some strategic reason for continuing to resist this model year in and year out

Subscriptions make for more services revenue, and services is their growth driver now. That's all there is to it. If there was an option to stop paying and keep what you have they would make less money. Same reason you now get what are essentially ads in the Settings screen "reminding" you about AppleCare+, Apple Arcade etc. Services services services.

As a long time fan of Apple hardware and software it's pretty sad to see.

> I'm now hesitant to install, and become dependent on, any new apps.

You should be hesitant to become dependent on anything that does not provide you unfettered access to your data in a usable format.

The problem is that you find out that you don't have unfettered access after you update, when the app announces that the export feature is now crippled. (One way to fix this would be to export all data before every update, but that seems unreasonably cumbersome.)

Well, yes. I wouldn't call an export feature ‘unfettered access’; it's just a little leniency by the Lord App that he can withdraw on a whim.

To me, as long as it's available, export to an open standard is all I need; but I agree that, if it's revocable, then it's hardly unfettered. How would an app allow unfettered access in an irrevocable way? That is, if I were an app developer (I'm not), and wanted to provide this service to my users in a way that wouldn't require them to trust my good intentions, then how would I do it?

You don't have to apologize for that.

Everyone has to figure out a marketable skill until their rate of labor is exceeded by their rate of capital. If they fail they fail, whoops.

I make no claims about how anything should be. This is what it is.

> "Everyone has to figure out a marketable skill until their rate of labor is exceeded by their rate of capital. If they fail they fail, whoops."

That is a surprisingly insightful one-liner, thank you.

> This is exactly what I expected to read when I started reading. So many apps have done this to me that I'm now hesitant to install, and become dependent on, any new apps.

To provide a little context: Most developers have no choice but to do this. I've seen a lot of developers for the App Store getting broke because of Apple's refund policies. People are quick to click refund, but then the developer has to pay for Apple's 30% of the fees (and transfer costs).

Say, you sell an App for 10.00$. Apple gets 3.00$ of that when a user buys the App, and the remaining 7.00$ go to the developer's account. When the user is now unhappy with the app they can get a refund for the costs.

User gets 10.00$ back, but from the developer, which means the developer now has a net negative of -3.00$ (ignoring the accumulative bank transfer costs)

And no, there's no limit in how many people can scam an App developer on the App Store, which means that you could literally use millions in the case of a social justice thing that goes viral, which happened to quite some Indie game developers I personally have worked with and was a target of in the past because the target audience (kids, teens and the like) doesn't realize the damage they're causing with this. Kids think it's funny and it forces the Game developers to implement the features they so desperately want, but the result is that the developer is broke and legally so indebted that they won't be able to recover from this anyhow; certainly not when they are a private developer.

Do you have a source for this?

I've seen claims that this is the case and then people responding that it isnt. See: https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721

And discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750

Apple may have in the terms that they could do this, but rarely do.

My indie game dev days were from around 2010-2014, so this might have changed. European App Store (Germany).

As you might guess, I didn't use any Apple product eversince and kind of ditched all ideas to develop an app or game for iOS.

This seems to be a pretty well researched article that links to the specific clause in the developer's contract [1] and [2]

[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/9789/updated-appstore-refund-polic...

[2] https://kotaku.com/apple-putting-the-squeeze-on-iphone-devel...

> I'm genuinely sorry, but I'm not paying a subscription for an app that doesn't do a lot of back-end work (that's valuable to me)

What does count as "a lot of back-end work" that's valuable to you?

> I know that developers need to earn a living but I'm not willing to sustain it on the back of 10 or 20 or 30 "low annual price of just $9 or $15 or $25 or $49 per year!" subscriptions

Why are subscriptions bad and what would your solution to this be?

> What does count as "a lot of back-end work" that's valuable to you?

By way of examples, something like a weather application or access to content. Weather data is, at least until the end of humanity's existence on Earth, ever-changing and in need of update.

> Why are subscriptions bad and what would your solution to this be?

Because I do not want to wind up in a situation where an app developer suddenly turns on subscriptions and hides features of an app behind it, on the back of an opaque update. Plus, for most apps I am quite happy to pay for a particular version and be done. (I have no problem with paying for applications.) I want the finality of the transaction, that I've given my $5 or $10 or $20 or what-have-you a single time and our business is done. Application makers have done this since time immemorial, sometimes releasing complimentary bug fixes, other times not.

I just don't like the idea that in order to retain access to a program that does all of its work on my device, I have to keep paying rent for it. Like the app at issue here, where it was doing what the user wanted and then poof, a change that cannot be reversed.

I also understand that the current model on the app stores is not conducive to one-and-done application purchase transactions. Apple doesn't make it easy to do upgrade-by-version pricing, for example. In-app purchases are available, but they're not (by default, or nearly as widely) sharable on the family-level like outright purchases are.

My example is RSS feeds sync. No need for Feedly, Reeder 5 has just landed iCloud support so now it sync through iCloud whatever backend mechanism API it provides and boy was I glad to pay 7.99 AUD for that.

Oh that’s nice. I might switch to that.

Subscriptions to services are fine.

I dislike subscriptions to apps[0] because:

1. If I ever stop paying, I get nothing, no matter how much I've spent on the software over the years.

2. It shifts a lot of the risk of developing the new version onto the customer. I'm paying in advance for the next version, instead of being told what the features are and being able to make an informed decision. If I hate the new version, see (1).

3. It's more winner-take-all. If I'm spending $Y/mo on an app, that's $Y/mo I'm not spreading around to other apps. All-in-all, it feels like a clear win for the developers that 'win', but it feels lose-lose to me as a customer. I get all the joy of (1) and (2), but also I get less variety, both in my own purchases, and probably in available choices in the long run.

[0] - To be clear, I'm talking applications which require subscriptions for basic functionality, 'extra' functionality that was clearly removed to push subscriptions, or include useless tacked-on functionality like cloud storage (also clearly to justify a subscription). I'm not talking about apps for which there are recurring costs associated with my continued use of the app.

Edit: An addendum: I also like that I don't have a contract that explicitly states what I'm getting for my money each month. Usually it's just access to the app. Then they'll have language about how the subscription allows them to work on new features, offer support, etc. But they're not contractually obligated to provide me with any of that. (I don't have any levers at all, except not giving them more money, which doesn't help much.)

> 1. If I ever stop paying, I get nothing, no matter how much I've spent on the software over the years.

The Zune music service actually had a great fix for this: every month they allowed you to download a couple DRM-free tracks that you could keep forever. So if you ever cancelled, at least you had those tracks.

That was nice, but at the same time I disagree that when you stop the service you are left with nothing. In fact, what you got was access to the service. If I ever stop paying for Spotify, I'm left with nothing... except for all the hours I spent listening to and enjoying music on Spotify without ads. Isn't that something?

I used JetBrain on another comment. I like their license.

If I pay for a year, I get to keep access to that version.

Regarding Spotify, for Spotify, while yes they have an app, you're mainly for the music streaming from the service. They mention that subscription to services are fine.

If you stop paying for Spotify, your account just gets downgraded to the free version with ads.

But that’s why I pay for it, to not listen to ads. When I stop paying, I don’t suddenly lose all the minutes I didn’t have to spend listening to ads.

You’re talking about a service. Every time I use Spotify, it costs Spotify money. This cost is why I specifically excluded subscription services from my criticisms. It makes sense for services with recurring costs to have recurring billing.

Spotify the Application, is just the means of accessing Spotify the Service. It provides me with cheap access to a library of data that I don’t otherwise possess.

By way of analogy, I understand why I have to pay for a magazine subscription: they send me information on pieces of paper every month and that has a cost. But I wouldn’t pay a monthly fee to the manufacturer of my toaster. Whether I toast a thousand slices or let the toaster collect dust on the counter, the manufacturer incurs no additional cost. Leasing a toaster would be absurd, but that’s the expectation some developers of pretty basic applications expect.

One of the related posters mentioned JetBrains. I agree JetBrains get it right. You get to keep your toaster when you unsubscribe. If you stay subscribed you get the latest toaster if that’s what you want. And the incentives and risk are on them to make sure they make the next model toaster compelling.

You said “To be clear, I'm talking applications which require subscriptions for basic functionality”

That’s exactly apps likes Spotify. They restrict downloading, skipping, and bitrate unless you pay for premium, which I would say is basic functionality. You get access to the music whether you pay or not. I’m not paying for the music, I’m paying to skip ads and download to play offline.

> You said “To be clear, I'm talking applications which require subscriptions for basic functionality”

You're taking that statement out of the context of the post in which I said it. I began my post with "Subscriptions to services are fine." Everything in the post after that, including that quote, is specifically and explicitly not talking about services like Spotify.

You're not understanding my point. I'm saying that Spotify is actually closer to the model you decry than to a subscription service of which you approve. An example of a subscription service would be Netflix. When I pay for Netflix, I get to watch Netflix. When I stop paying for Netflix, I don't get to watch Netflix anymore.

Spotify is different. With Spotify, when I stop paying for Spotify I still get to listen to the music. But I lose the basic functionality of the app, like the ability to save songs to disk, or to skip tracks. To me, this seems like the exact model you're saying is bad. They have removed basic functionality in order to push a subscription.

No, I didn't misunderstand your point. I understand the distinction you're making between Spotify and Netflix in terms of how subscriptions are motivated. My post is about the distinction based on recurring versus fixed costs.

My footnote is not part of my argument. It's only meant as a clarification for which types of applications (not services) I'm discussing. You also mistake what I mean by 'basic functionality'. I maybe should have said required functionality. Spotify is perfectly usable without download, skip, or bitrate. Instead, I'm talking about applications like an RSS reader (again, an application only, not an online service) that will only show you sample feeds if you're not subscribed.

> > I'm genuinely sorry, but I'm not paying a subscription for an app that doesn't do a lot of back-end work (that's valuable to me)

> What does count as "a lot of back-end work" that's valuable to you?

Perhaps functionality that's not easily recreated using built in tools like shortcuts ?

In the case of the app in question, a simple shortcut in the shortcuts app or in i.e. Pythonista that adds a record to a spreadsheet, or even directly to a .csv file, would take <1 hour to write.

Another example is apps that provide some kind of backend. Of course keeping infrastructure running is not free. For the app in question it's not providing that.

> What does count as "a lot of back-end work" that's valuable to you?

Overcast handles a full index of pretty much all podcasts, with specific metadata. For example, it learns how often a podcast updates. Is it a weekly show? If so, what day does it come out on? etc.

Just the part where it syncs where I am in each episode is just a bonus, I'm happy to pay for the feed database.

I moved off Fantastical for this reason - I used to recommend it to my friends and coworkers but I kind of feel affronted that features disappeared behind a paywall that I'd paid a license for previously (several times actually).

I really wish Flexibits had created a different app without the cloud features and let this one languish. Clearly they needed a "teams" version for families/small enterprise that they felt they could monetize. That they bundled it into their main app annoys me.

Same with 1password - but in that case, I felt it was worth my subscription (family for several users, admin capabilities worth it alone).

What features did you lose in Fantastical?

I wouldn't recommend it anymore either because of the subscription model, but I don't see any functionality missing compared to the previous version.

The only drawback for me is that the UI takes more space.

You can't even see the date in the menu bar without paying. Those who don't pay see a menu item that has no date. That was egregious. However, previous versions also had the "travel time" feature that's already an macOS Calendar.app feature.

Finding out that macOS/iOS Calendar is perfectly fine for me.