Comment by mvdtnz
20 hours ago
I get where you're coming from and your examples are egregiously expensive, but do we really want to live in a world where software is valued at a $2 one-time payment? We shouldn't be engaging in a race to the bottom like that.
No, but I want to live in a world where software can be 'done.' With very occasional security updates perhaps. I don't want to justify why my pomodoro timer needs a subscription model with constant updates.
Apple is not good with backwards compatibility to my knowledge. If you buy a 'done' app it's basically a subscription (albeit much cheaper) for maybe 2-3 years because a yearly iOS update will most likely introduce breaking changes, as someone below me already outlined.
It’s still cheaper to buy the same $2, hell, $20 app again once the compatibility breaks than keeping all the subscriptions going on forever.
Except that in that world they cannot force apps to adopt new APIs and have to keep supporting the old ones, thus the forced upgrades.
Apple does keep supporting old APIs indefinitely.
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I have a few app subscriptions that are under $5/yr, like Parcel, and always purchase the latest release of Acorn for around $20/yr. I use those apps frequently and hope those rates are supporting the independent developers who make them. I would gladly pay more for tools I use to make a living.
A few other apps that are only occasionally used support short-term paid activations, like Flighty and Oceanic+. I think that's a respectable business model, too.
On the less-reasonable end of the spectrum though are the $10/mo apps. Apple used to charge that much for the entire operating system.
I am pretty sure that if I tried to load up my phone with a handful of the kinds of apps I used to use (a word game, a third-party Twitter client, an SSH terminal, a calculator or to-do app with a trendy minimalist design) I would easily cross $100/mo for some marginally-useful features.
Well, in this present world where it isn't valued at a one-time payment, OP is no longer a customer. Myself as well. Likewise probably a lot of people on HN. Like OP, I don't scroll through the app store anymore. I used to actually do that for fun! So the developer of that would be $2 app is getting nothing today. They release their app and get no one downloading it because it is comingled with the bullshit. Best they can hope for is a 6 year old steals their parents CC and signs them up for a recurring subscription they miss between the rest of their bills. This is the world we live in instead of the $2 software world.