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Comment by mortenjorck | 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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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 :-)

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