Buying a dollar for pennies always feels good, sure. However, using products of unsustainable businesses means you can't depend on it. For some products that's not a problem, for others it can become huge problem when you find yourself locked in maintaining old version of an OS or a companion software. The effect of not getting updates is very pronounced in professional or industrial software where to this day some people are forced to secure floppy disc supplies and deal with Windows XP.
In college we had a lab of really old PCs which run a very old version of AutoCAD because the school purchased that version and it wouldn't run on modern machines, I was told. There was another lab in similar situation with Adobe products.
After the subscription model raised to prominence, people get the latest version of the software and pay only as long as its useful for them. It's a win-win because the developer has the incentive to provide the best possible service in order to retain customers.