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Comment by nofunsir | Hacker News Reader

You're making this up to justify subscription model guilt. Nobody (besides those on here) EXPECTS this. In fact, most would rather live with the risks than deal with subscription model, let alone the headaches of updating and it breaking everything (i.e. causing a chain reaction that you have to update EVERYTHING in order to fix a small non-issue).

I, in fact, do NOT want continuous maintenance. Ever. I will literally never turn on auto-updates for the rest of my life.

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I think you’re in the minority. There are products out there that suit you. They are not mainstream products.

Mainstream behavior doesn't necessarily mean what people want. Many try and fail to stop Windows updates, for instance. I would guess that the majority of the users of the TicketMaster app would rather not use it.

Hmmm I can’t think of a subscription app that truly doesn’t have a free/upfront/unupgraded alternative - its just that usually they come with quality issues or poor support, so people choose the better, subscription-based, auto-updating ones.

I can think of plenty of apps that have perfectly fine non-subscription options, and then turned subscription only.

People use them because the products were good or industry standard. They don't prefer them because subscriptions somehow magically enabled them to be better.

They already preferred them over alternatives before subscriptions. If anything, people often complain that they got shittier after the subscription was introduced, once many are onboard and captive.

And people use their subscription versions because a non-subscription version is not made available anymore. The real comparison of what users prefer wouldn't be "X subscription software vs Y non-subscription". It would be "X subscription or X non-subscription".

Don't you think that if people preferred it strongly, a competitor would gobble up that opportunity if the model was viable?

Regarding your last point, there's plenty of software offering both options ($$$ lifetime vs $ monthly). I don't have the data but I bet they see a TON more sales for $ monthly.

E.g. Final Cut Pro for macOS is available as a one-time purchase for $299.99. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Apple Creator Studio for $12.99/month or $129/year

I consider my phone scrap as soon as it stops getting security updates. Same goes for almost all proprietary software.

Open source needs updates too, but somehow we take that for granted.

I'm with you. I also hate automatic updates. Times when I want my software to behave differently from the day before without me requesting it: Zero.

It puts the incentives on the wrong spot too. They are no longer incentivized to make shit appealing enough to upgrade.

MeThree.

But I think it's not the case incentives are wrong but the reality of business - what do you do when things are feature complete in all the ways that matter?

I dunno, what does Jordan's Furniture do about the fact that the recliner I'm sitting on is feature complete and has been since 2005 and seems to be sturdy enough to last me for the next twenty years? Try to sell me something better, try to sell me different things, try to sell things to other people, and succeed or fail at those goals.

I haven't used a Mac in a bit but I remember liking BBEdit back in the 00s, and it still seems to exist without having a subscription model.

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