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It’s not the $10/mo that bothers me. It’s the nature of essentially leasing the software.

Before it was a subscription, you bought a version and could use _that version_ in perpetuity, possibly with some number of well-defined upgrades.

If you didn’t want to upgrade, your software still worked. The value proposition of the software was clear.

Now I need to decide whether paying the subscription, possibly forever, is worth the value. This just feels bad.

Doesn't seem any worse than deciding whether paying a huge sum upfront is worth the value in the long run. The old way wasn't like that though, it was 90% of users pirating Adobe.

I don't pay for $5 coffee. I make my coffee at home, from my own grind, with just some half and half. Sure, I splurged and paid for maybe a $100 grinder or something, but that is being used for years, meaning the cost per cup is abysmal.

It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5.

> It seems very odd we normalize coffee being $5.

What does this mean, exactly? "We" didn't normalize it. People sold it for that - because they also have to pay rent, labor, etc - and people said "sure, that works for me, especially since I like the coffee you're making, I'll likely hang out here a while vs getting something cheaper elsewhere."

You can still get cheaper elsewhere.

Nobody "normalized" that, it just happened. You could say it's weird that people didn't complain, but... well, they did? It's a cliche at this point. But for a lot of people it's cheap enough to be fine ($5 is not a life-changing amount to add into your savings even if you're avoiding it once a day). If you really think it's a ripoff and nonsensically high, open your own coffee shop to make a killing?

Hell, if someone comes out with a super-amazing Lightroom replacement I'd be more likely to move to that than I would be to start avoiding coffee shops. Even though I spend more money on the coffee than on Lightroom. But the most viable option I ever saw has been abandoned for over a decade and only ran on Macs in the first place.

Speaking from Australia (Melbourne, where coffee is a religion), I get a freshly brewed, freshly ground, "dialed in" every morning, double espresso from a barista that has qualifications to understand the best roast and best grind for the coffee.

AUD6 (USD4.50) is not a lot for all of that.

I agree. It's up there with prices as high as $100 being described as "less than the price of a good meal".

It is getting pretty hard for my family of four to go out and eat for less than $100, but we have food at home.

And I don't drink coffee, just water. Since software is priced as beverage equivalence, logically that means I should get software for free.

I hate to say it, but $5.00 seems cheap compared to the last time I bought a fancy coffee.

I think I'm pointing out that it tries to trivialize a cost, as if everyone is just spending $2000+ dollars on coffee a year. If your doing that, of course you can afford a measly $10.

You don't need to try to equate $10 to something. People know what $10 is.

And I agree - last time I got coffee, it was closer to $10. In a low COLA area, technically speaking.

> no one is insisting there are can only be one or two products per category.

Then maybe people are trying to convince themselves. All that I can really say is that a lot of people pipe up to defend the titans when alternatives are suggested.

> at some point in your life, $120 a year is not that much. It's $10 a month

For some people $10 is nothing. For other people, it is significant. Even for those who can afford $10/month, all of those fees add up when you consider all of the software someone may want to use.

I disagree. For a long time, Adobe insisted it was the only product in the category: that's how we got here.

I'm not sure how what Adobe insists on is at all relevant.

Reality informs us that there have always been competitors in the field: GIMP, DarkTable, ACDSee, Luminar, and many others.

It's surely true that their existence has been pushing Adobe to improve. And the good news for everyone is that they have: Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are improved products now, and so are those other competitors.

Inertia, wide use across various industries, and specific features not available in other products.

Basically, it's the Microsoft Office of print and visual media.

So what was Adobe supposed to do, make a worse product to give the other ones a chance?