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Comment by aluminussoma | Hacker News Reader

Hardware is also turning into a subscription-like model. You can't upgrade a component on your iPhone or Android without needing to purchase a new phone. With Macbooks, you can no longer update the hard drive, battery, and RAM. You must purchase a new Macbook. Remember the recent story about BMW charging for heated seats in South Korea, another hardware as a subscription idea.

I read that Apple is considering a subscription model for iPhone devices. That will formalize what is already implicit.

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This is nothing like a subscription. I have a MacBook Pro that is over 8 years old and I'm still using it. It still works just as well at doing what it does as it did when I bought it.

I even have an old iPod touch that still does its thing just fine.

I don't know about other countries but in Poland we have subscription based phones for ages from mobile operators. You get the phone for 1PLN but you pay for it with the bill for 1-2 years, when you get another phone with new agreement. I don't know about you but I call that subscription for device.

Right but you get to keep the phone after these 1-2 years. Once it's paid, it's paid and it's yours.

It's more like a consumer loan than a subscription in my eyes.

Ha, yes, you get to keep the phone, they even have to unlock it (remove the SIM lock), but you also still pay the monthly installments because it is a subscription. They just change the name of the line item to some other service.

It's supposed to incentivize people to move to a new fixed term contract. But people often simply just keep paying.

I only learned about that recently since I always buy my phone separately.

It already exists.

https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program

This is not quite the subscription based model I envisioned, but it is a big step in that direction. For example, you still need to make payments on the existing phone for 12 months before becoming eligible for a new device.

That sucks for apple users I suppose, but I don't think that's the direction the rest of the industry is taking outside of luxury brands.

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