[HN Gopher] Subscription fatigue and related musings
___________________________________________________________________
Subscription fatigue and related musings
Author : hjuutilainen
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-02-26 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (morrick.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (morrick.me)
| deergomoo wrote:
| My biggest issue with App Store subscriptions is that I'm
| effectively only renting the software, as opposed to buying into
| future updates. If I cancel my subscription to a JetBrains IDE or
| the database client I use, I get to use the most recent version I
| paid for forever. Those are more like auto-opting into paid
| upgrades, which I'm totally fine with.
|
| For an iOS app, if I cancel my subscription I'm left with
| nothing. It really sucks, because a lot of the software I use is
| not a service in any sense, but the App Store model forces it to
| be so.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I get to continue to use the most recent version I paid money
| for forever
|
| Or until it stops working with an OS upgrade/update.
| hadlock wrote:
| I'm still using an ancient copy of Navionics on a 1st or 2nd
| gen iPad (that was gifted to me from my mother in law,
| because it wouldn't run any of her Instagram stuff) on my
| boat to get around San Francisco Bay. The depth near the
| shore changes by a foot or two from year to year but
| otherwise it's fine for charting a course from the marina to
| the float-up bar.
| ghaff wrote:
| Cases vary of course but a lot of apps will break at some
| point if they've been orphaned and there's an OS upgrade
| (or, as other comments note, an online service has been
| sunsetted).
|
| I expect the majority of apps I downloaded on my 1G iPad
| would not work today on a current iPad if not upgraded but
| if there's no server component, they'll presumably continue
| to work on the original platform.
| silvestrov wrote:
| A significant problem is that the App Store just says "In App
| Purchases" on the App page.
|
| We don't even get a list of prices and functionality of the IAPs.
|
| In EU it is a requirement that: _" When you buy goods or services
| in the EU, you have to be clearly informed about the total price,
| including all taxes and additional charges."_
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pri...
|
| I don't think the App store currently respects this law as the
| advertised price is not the total price for the advertised
| functionality when InAppPurchases are required to unlock them.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| Pretty sure Apple lists the name and price of IAPs on the App
| Store.
|
| Google on the other hand only provides a range on the Play
| Store. "In-app purchases: $0.99 - $74.99 per item" is worthless
| information.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| On my iPhone at least, if I scroll down the app store listing
| to the app details and expand the IAP section it shows a list
| of all the IAPs the app offers. The names don't always reveal
| what they unlock, but sometimes it's clear they are just
| voluntary donations.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm in the US and I can see prices and titles of all IAPs.
| kruuuder wrote:
| I think the requirement means something else: If a consumer
| purchases a product, they cannot be charged more than the
| declared price, e.g. by adding VAT or "handling fees" during
| checkout. The price must be transparent up-front.
|
| If you download a free app from the App Store that has some
| obscure in-app purchases or subscription, that's not a problem
| either, because you didn't purchase anything yet.
| flaburgan wrote:
| That's a really "proprietary software " point of view. You pay
| the developers, the price they decided, and you expect bug fixes
| and new features. As pointed, this model has many limits. I
| really prefer the free software one, where I am free to try, use,
| contribute, so then I can estimate myself how worth is a
| software, and give an appropriate one time or regular donation.
| This model is so much better.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Kind of orthogonal to the article, but I feel the iOS App Store's
| subscription mechanism is how online subscriptions as a whole
| should work. There's a unified predictable way to start
| subscriptions, and more importantly, a unified predictable way to
| stop them. I don't have to jump through hoops to stop a
| subscription, and the UI is clear on when recurring charges will
| occur next and for how much. I would love it if banks let me
| unilaterally cancel subscriptions just as easily on my online
| banking page.
|
| It almost makes the Apple tax worth it. Almost.
| DanHulton wrote:
| This is actually kind of ironic, because Apple's refusal to
| allow for paid upgrades to pay-once software is actually a
| major driver of developers switching from pay-once to
| subscriptions. It's way easier to convince customers to buy a
| subscription to a piece of software than it is to convince them
| to buy an _entirely new app_ with a new version number on it,
| then migrate all their data, re-organize their device so the
| new version is in the same spot, etc.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the Apple subscription
| interface, too, but I wish it wasn't the only reasonable way
| for devs to monetize ongoing work.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I don't like subscriptions and have never bought one on my phone.
| But faced with the choice of an expensive one time payment and a
| monthly subscription, I would prefer to be able to try out with a
| low cost subscription.
|
| None is as good as a free trial period or some free
| functionality, but I find an increasing number of apps that don't
| give those options.
| Awelton wrote:
| There are several pieces of software I would gladly buy if only I
| could, but I've gotten to the point where when it gets to the
| subscription fee page I go find something else. Especially in the
| case of rarely used and nice to have software I am not interested
| in paying in perpetuity for something I may only use a few times
| a year.
| brookst wrote:
| Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce
| better products and less wasted money in the long run.
|
| One-time up front purchases only reward developers for expanding
| the target market of their product; whether the product improves
| over time has no bearing on revenue.
|
| From a developer's perspective, the one-time price should be the
| CLV of what they'd get with a subscription. For users, that means
| much higher risk.
|
| I would much rather have 20 apps that I pay $10/mo/ea for than to
| buy one new $600 app a quarter and hope the developers I bought
| from years ago still care about me even though they will never
| make another dime.
|
| Oh, you want apps to be one-time purchases for $20 with a useful
| lifetime of 10 years? Then subscriptions aren't the problem, you
| just want $0.17/mo subscriptions, which are unlikely to be
| economically viable either.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I think your last paragraph has a lot of merit. It's that
| subscription costs are too high. Netflix and company are a
| completely different animal because there's content involved;
| I'm talking about non-professional non-content apps. Obviously
| .17 is too low, but often I feel that 3 or 4 would be more
| appropriate than the 12-20 standard. Especially when the paid
| app only offers 20% more utility than the free app. But I'm no
| business major.
| version_five wrote:
| SaaS and thus subscriptions makes sense when the software
| itself is offering a service. The example I always use is
| office365, or Gsuite. They offer storage, email, and online
| access to the office suites and email. It's "value add" over
| just paying a tax for the privilege of running code, and is imo
| a better proposition than having to pay outright for a static
| version of the tools.
|
| The same is true for like Salesforce or other big name SaaS.
|
| What rubs me the wrong way is when what are effectively
| utilities try and market themselves through a subscription.
| There were a couple image processing tools posted here recently
| that effectively just did some image transforms, and they
| wanted a subscription fee. I don't think that's a reasonable
| model, there is no reason why I'd want to pay a recurring fee
| for what amounts to a neat script. I think there's currently
| much of trying to cram utility software that doesn't provide a
| service into a service model
| lapcat wrote:
| > Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce
| better products and less wasted money in the long run.
|
| This is incorrect, as evidenced by the entire history of
| software development before the App Store, as well as software
| now that is sold outside the App Store.
|
| When developers can choose their own business model, outside
| the constraints out the App Store, they overwhelming do _not_
| choose subscriptions. Indie devs outside the Mac App Store
| still largely follow the traditional upfront paid with paid
| upgrade model.
|
| The subscription model was started mostly by BigCos such as a
| Adobe and Microsoft, who had a monopolistic market share for
| their software suites and thus could bleed a captive audience
| for almost unlimited amounts of money.
|
| The ahistoricalness of the claim "subscriptions were always the
| only viable business model" really bothers me. It feels like a
| kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Cupertino Complex?
|
| Let's call it what it is: software rental. Long-term rental is
| almost never a good deal for consumers over ownership.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Nice reasoning but the truth is probably simply that
| subscriptions generate way more money. Also because not a few
| ppl forget to cancel their subscriptions.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >> I would much rather have 20 apps that I pay $10/mo/ea for
| than to buy one new $600
|
| Right, and that's a fair preference, as long as we understand
| that some people have different preferences. I'm in completely
| opposite camp - I'm paying ridiculous amount of money a month
| for apps that I use once or twice a year. I am also paying
| money for apps I use all the time but that I'll lose the moment
| I stop paying.
|
| I have frequently rejected a $5/month app that I would've
| happily both for $30, even if I know I only need it once and
| can cancel after a month (utility type software usually).
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It is almost game theory:
|
| The SaaS wants to extract as much value as possible. They
| don't know YOUR individual use case or threshold, but they
| need to price in a general way so that based on the model of
| reality, the most revenue will come in (+ whatever other
| goals).
|
| You want to get as much value as possible.
|
| If they know that you use it twice a year, they could offer
| you a special price. But doing that for just you might be not
| worth the extra code in their licensing and usage tracking
| system. So there needs to be lots of you.
|
| In addition there could be high paying whale users happy to
| pay a lot and only use it twice a year.
|
| So they need to know how tight/loose each customer is, in
| addition to what they want, to come up with appropriate
| pricing.
|
| It would be like a bazaar where the price for a vase is 1000
| but locals will haggle it down to 100, expats will get it for
| 150, tourists that haggle get it down to 250, and naive
| tourists pay 1000, the full price. And the seller can look at
| them, their body language, the look in their eyes, and judge
| the price accordingly.
|
| AI might get us there!
| jsmith99 wrote:
| I'm sure differential pricing would be more efficient but
| there aren't any easy ways to do it. Maybe developers can
| advertise discount codes on sites where cheapskates hang
| out. Can you imagine the backlash on HN if it turned out
| apple track how much you use apps and increased the price
| if they thought you were likely to find the app useful?
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I have frequently rejected a $5/month app that I would've
| happily both for $30, even if I know I only need it once and
| can cancel after a month (utility type software usually).
|
| I agree but I also want to point out that it is possible to
| cancel the subscription right after you start it, and that
| way you are only charged once and you get to use it for the
| month that you paid for, without having to remember to cancel
| the subscription later. This is very helpful to me at least.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Few years ago I bought a drive partition manager tool for
| windows. I only used it a few times over the years. Recently I
| installed a new primary drive on my gaming machine. Downloaded
| the latest binary from the vendors site and tried to put in the
| license key. Nope, wouldn't activate. So i contacted their
| support and their response was that I had to pay the new yearly
| subscription to use the latest version. So I asked if they had
| the installation binaries for the version I had originally
| purchased which did not require annual subscription. Their
| response, "they no longer provide install files for the non-
| subscription version." If i can find the original installer
| somewhere , they will activate the license as a one time
| courtesy.
|
| There is absolutely no way I'm going to pay an annual
| subscription for software that I do not use often or everyday.
| cglong wrote:
| This article misses the elephant in the room: Apple. For years
| after the App Store launched, developers asked for an integrated
| way to provide upgrade pricing to help support major upgrades.
| Instead, they usually had to resort to creating an entirely new
| entry in the App Store. How many customers were lost because they
| didn't know they had to go _back_ to the Store to download a
| separate app named Thing 2? And how many then felt ripped off
| that they didn 't get a discount after having previously
| purchased Thing 1?
|
| After years of being asked for upgrade pricing, Apple instead
| introduced and then started pushing developers to embrace the
| exact subscription model we see today. Unlike paid upgrades, a
| subscription guarantees recurring revenue not only for the
| developer, but for Apple themselves.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Unlike paid upgrades, a subscription guarantees recurring
| revenue not only for the developer, but for Apple themselves._
|
| Actually, Apple would get more revenue the other way. They only
| take 15% on subscription revenue after the first year.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| The bean counter is not enforcing strategies that make him
| less money overall, that's certain.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Assuming that the cost to users of paid upgrades versus
| subscriptions are the same, which I don't think is a good
| assumption.
|
| Paid upgrades I only had to buy when they were worth buying,
| so often I wouldn't. I was using Photoshop CS5 for quite a
| long time, well after CS6 came out and then into the
| subscription era, and I got a great value out of that
| purchase even as someone who wasn't using it professionally.
|
| Subscriptions can keep on charging me the same price even
| when development is stopped or focused on features I don't
| want. Keep paying forever or you lose it.
| syzarian wrote:
| What Apple earns from fees from $x per month per user in
| recurring revenue is greater than the fees for $y per user
| per upgrade for certain values of x and y depending on the
| number of users in each category. How do you know what you is
| true?
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Typical Tim Cook strategy. I mean, who am I to judge Tim Cook.
| I assume in-app purchases work similarly to in-game purchases,
| meaning a very small amount of customers contribute the vast
| amount to revenue. One reason I believe this is that these apps
| cost ridiculous amounts of money for what they are. Notes app
| monthlies, Bunch of face filters for a yearly subscription, and
| so on. In the short term this increases revenue for devs and
| Apple. However, I do think that this strategy could backlash
| for Apple if the app ecosystem (a differentiating factor at
| some point) becomes less and less attractive. All of my paid
| apps are Mac exclusive. If they change to subscription then I
| am out. This also means my lock-in to Mac diminishes.
| radicalriddler wrote:
| I'm building an app at the moment, and I'm thinking to myself,
| "do people really want another subscription, or would they be
| happier buying credits or something". It's a really tough
| question to answer, but I'm so pulled to the subscription because
| it's been so successful for others.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Last year I tried to buy a mahjongg game for my iPad. My
| requirements: No subscription No hoarding
| my personal data Updated in the last year or so
|
| I couldn't find a single one. They're all subscriptions,
| slurping up personal information, or not updated in a very long
| time so they can continue to fly under the radar and not report
| what data they're selling about me.
|
| I'd pay $20, maybe $25 for an app the just let me play a simple
| tile game. But greed rules the app world.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| In-app purchases (free-to-play) are largely a separate issue
| although they share some of the same ongoing "Is this worth it?"
| fatigue.
|
| But I'm just super-wary of subscriptions. I mostly don't have the
| discipline to re-evaluate all my subscriptions every month and
| then have to agonize over those I get _some_ value from but is it
| worth $10? And usage goes up and down. So my default is mostly to
| just say no.
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| If I find a product useful and a 1-year subscription is
| available and doesn't feel expensive I will subscribe, then
| cancel renewal on it. This forces me to reevaluate if it is
| worth it every year.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's a nice theory but a lot of subscriptions are decidedly
| not cheap on an annual basis ($100+) and there's a lot of
| potential for money leaks you aren't pro-active about. Though
| I actually agree that subscriptions as a principle often
| align developer and user interests.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I build apps with subscriptions (like https://homechart.app) and
| this is why I offer a lifetime subscription/one time payment. To
| me, the monthly/yearly option gives users more of an "extended
| trial" option, and they'll hopefully see that it makes sense to
| just go lifetime.
|
| One problem I have (perhaps self inflicted) is that I do not
| offer my lifetime subscription on app stores. 30% is a huge cut
| of what is effectively my TCV, and I'd rather they use my web
| payment processor vs raising the lifetime subscription to cover
| the increase hit. I think this creates friction to conversions,
| but I don't know for sure.
|
| I do think subscription-based creates better quality software as
| you are (in theory) having to prove your software is still
| valuable everytime a customer renews. But too often this just
| results in redesign churn without any net new features/benefits.
| leipert wrote:
| Your "Learn more about self-hosted" link on the home page is
| broken. Looks cool. Might try it.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > I do think subscription-based creates better quality software
|
| Maybe compared to pay-once. But the pay-for-every-major-version
| model that used to be common also provides an incentive to
| improve, while avoiding redesign churn: the amount of sales you
| get is directly correlated to how much better your new version
| is. Meanwhile with subscriptions you mainly have to update the
| design to attract new customers, your old customers are stuck
| paying unless you become worse than your competitors.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| The app store is full of programs that haven't been updated
| in several years but still attract subscriptions until they
| get too buggy. Eg most popular ebook readers (eg kybook 3
| still costs PS15/year).
| thenipper wrote:
| Looking at this your pricing strategy is totally reasonable.
| Like I'll try something like that out and if it's worth it pay
| just the lifetime cost.
|
| Question: I couldn't find this with a quick skim of the site on
| my phone. Do you have an API?
| caseyross wrote:
| The big underlying factor is that so many software prices are
| artificially low because they're subsidized by collecting and
| making money off of users' personal data.
|
| Unlike with physical goods, users don't know any "objective" ways
| to judge the fairness of software pricing. So they see
| (monetarily) free software everywhere and think that good
| software is cheap to make.
|
| You can view the subscription/purchase debate as a second-order
| effect of people just not wanting to pay much for software,
| because they think that's what it's worth.
| wrycoder wrote:
| And then there's the multiple Substack subscriptions.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into
| subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription).
| This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings
| towards these apps.
|
| That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make
| sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates
| forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time
| payment apps" that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Very small
| number of people actually pay in full for the apps.
|
| What's worse than subscriptions is ad-ridden apps. I love hyper
| casual games for example but I can get no joy from these anymore
| because they are overflown with ads, the experience turns into
| torture. I don't want the ad based model to be the answer too.
|
| Maybe there could be other models like trial purchase where you
| get an old school trial version and pay to continue using it. I
| think actually there's nothing stopping you to implement this but
| it doesn't solve the problem of need for continued payments for
| continued support. Maybe the AppStores can implement something
| like version limiting and you can ask for a payment for upgrading
| to the new version.
|
| In the grand scheme of things, the subscription model is the best
| option at this time. People say that subscriptions are devils act
| but that's also how viable businesses are created.
| xoa wrote:
| > _It doesn 't make sense whatsoever to receive one time
| payment and provide updates forever._
|
| Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble
| making sense of your words. We had this for _decades_ without
| subscriptions, they 're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or
| whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full
| price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But
| they can do so on their schedule, or if they don't then they
| don't _lose_ anything they already have, they merely don 't
| gain the new features. Which in turn is one of the few truly
| hard direct bits of incentivizing feedback, developers don't
| get money "by default", but must earn it each time.
|
| I struggle to understand how suddenly it's like the entire idea
| of upgrades seems to have vanished. Why would a one time
| payment mean updates forever for free? But why would it mean
| subscriptions either?
|
| Edit: Maybe if there is anyone truly to blame as the root of
| this evil it's Apple for being massively hostile to updates in
| the App Store for reasons that I will never understand either.
| That really sucks and probably forced subscriptions on the
| general population more than any other single actor. For that
| reason alone I really hope to see alternative stores forced on
| them by law.
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| > UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when
| 3.x comes out new customers pay full price
|
| Upgrades like that kind of suck for everyone though. The
| users, the developers, the businesses.
|
| Users expect software to get bug and security fixes. By
| having 1.x, 2.x and 3.x versions, developers have to maintain
| 3 different versions.
|
| It also forces developers to add new features even if no one
| wants them. Plenty of good apps are essentially feature
| complete, but in an upgrade centric world there has to be
| constant new features. This often makes apps worse.
|
| Subscriptions are a good way to balance the needs of users,
| developers and businesses.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's not my English or that I haven't heard of upgrades, App
| Stores don't offer a mechanism to sell upgrades. That's why
| Im proposing it as a solution.
| brookst wrote:
| Yes, and that's because developers won't be able to support
| multiple versions, and they don't want people stuck on old
| versions that don't support new phones and library security
| updates.
|
| In "solving" the subscription problem, upgrades create more
| cost, bugs, and exposure for everyone.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's actually more than that. Many apps have a server
| component and this requires ongoing revenue and support
| for multiple versions of the app even if the new OS of
| the device doesn't break that app.
| [deleted]
| comfypotato wrote:
| With phone upgrades, for example, and an iOS app.
|
| The cost of maintaining different versions of apps for
| different tiers of payees seems prohibitive. Especially when
| libraries change constantly.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong and your system would work fine. It doesn't
| seem right to me though.
|
| Personally, I think subscriptions are the way forward, just
| lower cost subscriptions. Why is 15 a month such a standard?
| Most of the 15/month apps I shell out for feel more like
| 3/month or 4/month apps.
| louison11 wrote:
| Updates have disappeared because most software today is no
| longer full offline (as was the case of those CD-ROMs you'd
| use to install softwares back in the days), but a hybrid of
| offline and online, with a local client making calls to an
| API. A software company can't ship a hybrid product and stop
| running the API, the API has to be kept up, which is often no
| small feat, and costs money. On top of that, if they had to
| deploy different endpoints for different versions of the
| client, the backend management would become absolutely
| chaotic and cost the company even more.
|
| Tldr: online softwares cost money to run, even after they're
| sold. They're not standalone softwares.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| I actually look at this from the other direction: the need
| to somehow justify a monthly subscription fee has
| encouraged developers to add further user hostile features,
| including a move toward owning customers data and forcing
| customers to share data (often with egregious privacy
| invasive policies) and makes it harder for customers to
| interoperable with other software.
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _We had this for decades without subscriptions, they 're
| called UPGRADES!_
|
| Exactly. I bought Panic's Nova for $99. Love it. It came with
| one year of updates. My year is over. But I don't need any of
| the new features with the new versions.
|
| When some features are added that I need or want, I'll pay
| for the new version. No big deal. It may be a year from now,
| it may be two years from now. It works for my wallet, and it
| incentivizes the developers to add solid new features.
|
| The whole idea of being drip-fed features by software
| developers is crazy. I'm not a junkie on the corner holding
| out a shaky $5 bill to my software dealer to get this month's
| "fix."
| bvrlt wrote:
| > Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into
| subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription).
| This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings
| towards these apps.
|
| > That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't
| make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide
| updates forever.
|
| This. While justified, so many apps messed up the switch to
| subscriptions.
|
| We recently switched our app Genius Scan to a subscription
| model, but tried to do it The Right Way: users who had
| purchased the pro features automatically got subscribed to our
| Plus plan for life.
|
| New users will have to subscribe though, as it's the only way
| to be sustainable.
|
| We also introduced a new plan, Ultra, with more advanced
| features. This way, we still get a chance for long time users
| to support us if they upgrade to the Ultra plan.
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's interesting that in your thoughtful survey of
| alternatives, you don't consider simply challenging the
| assumption "and provide updates forever".
|
| Subscriptions do indeed fund perpetual development in a way
| that one time purchases don't, but the implication that comes
| along with that is that features are to be added along the way.
| If you _only_ released maintenance patches, you subscriber
| satisfaction would dry up really darn fast.
|
| So now we have this model where publishers charge subscriptions
| so that they can keep their business stable or growing, and
| subscribers are demanding features be added so that they're
| getting value for the ever-growing total cost of ownership. And
| what do you get from that? Feature Bloat.
|
| The subscription model insists that successful products need to
| continually grow their code base, complexity, and feature set.
| The idea of stable streamlined applications that do a few jobs
| really well and otherwise stay out of the way is very hard to
| sustain in a world of subscriptions.
|
| The alternative -- which was common in the past and remains
| common among many (not all) game publishers now -- is to
| temporarily expand your team payroll with talent that produces
| the product, and then scale it back to warranty the product
| with necessary maintenance patches while your emphasis turns to
| growing the _market_ through sales instead of growing the
| _product_ through features. Later, perhaps, you create another
| related product or a successor product.
|
| It can and does still work, and it can make for very high
| quality products that don't become bloated monstrosities. If
| subscription fatigue is making the news, I'm sure will see a
| resurgence of this model soon enough.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I actually considered that, just didn't call its name
| explicitly.
|
| > Maybe the AppStores can implement something like version
| limiting and you can ask for a payment for upgrading to the
| new version.
|
| I'm also not sure how I feel about it. Having people using
| multiple versions of the app in the wild seems wrong. Also,
| many apps have a server component which has ongoing costs and
| as a result user who choose not to pay for an upgrade will
| still cost you money and maintenance of the server for old
| versions OR they will lose functionality. I guess it can work
| for offline apps.
| ghaff wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense for something like a lot of games.
| Develop it, provide maintenance/patches for a while, and when
| it pretty much breaks on an OS upgrade after a few years?
| <shrug> Most people who cared got their enjoyment out of it.
| No reason to support ad infinitum.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > Maybe the AppStores can implement something like version
| limiting and you can ask for a payment for upgrading to the new
| version
|
| I can only assume this is a deliberate omission to push people
| into subscriptions.
| mrtksn wrote:
| IMHO it's not that. I think they don't want to have users
| with outdated apps. It makes the experience of the device
| worse and especially Apple is very protective over the user
| experience since that's how they sell iPhones.
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