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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

I think it's reasonable to complain about the loss of the native app when one of the key selling points (imo) is the pleasant UI. I don't really understand the almost-automatic hatred of subscriptions.

if an app has ongoing development that you benefit from, it seems entirely fair to pay a subscription. the fair alternative is a one time payment for a lifetime license with few patches priced in. I would probably prefer the latter for something like a word processor, but would you really want to use the same version of a security-critical program like a password manager for the rest of your life? if not, how do you expect them to fund development/maintenance indefinitely?

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The hatred comes from their proliferation. With what seems like damn near everything moving to a subscription model, it's more money out of my pocket for usually what amounts to rent-seeking (i.e, demanding more money, more often, whilst providing no additional value).

That last bit I don't believe applies to 1Password, because there are certain things you can't do without some kind of centralization, and the article makes that case.

...but look at something like Adobe CC, what exactly does moving from a purchase to a subscription benefit me? And let's not forget about the more subtle effects, like losing the right of first sale, silent T&C changes, mandatory updates, etc - things that are only to the vendor's benefit.

> what exactly does moving from a purchase to a subscription benefit me?

It keeps the vendor financially healthy, stable and willing to keep developing the stuff you use.

Would you want to dedicate your work into a product for meagre & sporadic standalone payments pressuring you to endlessly churn out marketable feature upgrades with little time for maintenance work just to barely make ends meet? No? Then why on earth do you expect other software vendors to do that?

Even Bitwarden pushes subscriptions.

I'd love to see how many developers who complain on HN about subscriptions actually make a living primarily from selling standalone software to consumers.

This is a lame justification; software companies were quite capable of sales rather than subscriptions and have been throughout most of their existence.

This model is simply more lucrative and strips customers of a number of their rights which are inconvenient for corporations.

> what exactly does moving from a purchase to a subscription benefit me?

Trust that the company which provides something you need is far more likely to continue to be around. Suppose you tell your employer that you're taking a 1-week vacation. How does it benefit them for you to do that?

ultimately? less guillotines in the parking lot.

> if an app has ongoing development that you benefit from, it seems entirely fair to pay a subscription.

Agreed. Though, this latest development – the move to Electron – is a negative for me, so it leaves a part of me wondering what kind of development I have been paying for. I imagine I am not alone with such a sense of disappointment.

You are not alone. I will be looking into alternatives/competitors to see how good they are, if nothing else.

> I don't really understand the almost-automatic hatred of subscriptions. if an app has ongoing development that you benefit from, it seems entirely fair to pay a subscription.

I don't _want_ the ongoing development. Photoshop from 5 years ago is perfectly fine for me. Same with Lightroom, etc. I mean, I've only paid Apple _once_ for Logic Pro and have been getting upgrade after upgrade for no cost -- a nice bonus, but I'd be perfectly happy if logic's code had been set in stone at the moment of purchase, too.

The consumer-friendly option is to let the consumer decide if they want upgrades. Or for a security-focused app like 1password I'd have believed something like "we don't want to be responsible for security problems if you decide not to upgrade, thus you must buy a yearly license" but that wasn't the message at all.

They did. They offered standalone licenses and subscriptions for an entire version's lifecycle and 97% (or something crazy high like that) of the people who downloaded went for the subscription. I've been a standalone user since v3 and finally upgraded after realizing that buying a license for Windows, Mac, and Linux would cost me more over 3 years than just paying the subscription.

Let me tell you, as someone who used 1password since 3.x .. when I went to buy 7.x standalone it took me over an hour to find the page that let me buy standalone over three sessions.

Why did 97% buy the subscription? Because they hid the other version in a locked filing cabinet in a basement with a broken staircase.

No, they didn't. Subscriptions happened when version 6 came out and that's the time period they're referring to when they're talking about those stats. There was literally 2 giant boxes of equal size asking if you wanted to use an account or a standalone vault. 97% of people chose the subscription.

If every single utility and app start charging $3 or $5 per month then it becomes a problem. Software as a service is a good concept for something that is truly changing all the time, but I find it absurd that a Photoshop subscription or a huge IDE cost as much as these utilities thst used to be shareware in the past.

The old business model works but you have to keep innovating and diversify your product line. Microsoft was the best example with things like Encarta, Age of Empires and other tools like Project.

This new trend of doing these apps once, with far easier programming languages in a connected environment with plenty of docs, crash report data and things like stack overflow really makes it look that we are talking about cheap people trying to make a quick profit not unlike those free to play games.

This is kind of ridiculous. Photoshop doesn't benefit from being a subscription the way that 1Password does so it's only a problem if you decide to actually buy those for what they're asking for. Something like 1Password does truly change all the time to keep up with security practices, browser updates, and site updates so it fits with what you're describing.

For this use case, a subscription makes a lot of sense. I have no complaints, though I currently do not subscribe to this application. I would, if I felt the need.

My take on the hatred boils down to these things:

Utility type applications built as a service offer an inexpensive purchase of some kind, or are AD driven, etc... Then, features are changed, roadblocks added, user experience degraded to create problems that subscriptions pay to remedy, often poorly.

Noisy subscriptions. It's not enough to send a few bucks a month. ADS, various pitches, in app sales happening, all contribute to what might otherwise be a simple, worthy experience and solution.

It can be hard to cancel. -->if this happens to someone even once, the hate can be visceral afterword. Everyone else, no matter how well they do business is impacted to a degree.

Subscription apps / services going away on short notice. What were people paying for?

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