It definitely depends on the query, but Kagi seems to do better at common (for me) queries. In particular, it tends to recommend authoritative sources instead of clickbait/SEO sources (e.g. official documentation instead of w3schools).
Google does better at some queries, particularly those that require a bit of parsing of the query text, understanding when two words represent one concept, etc. But you can usually tell when Kagi is doing poorly at those and fall back to Google by adding !g on the end of your query.
(-:
What I mean is: StartPage.com is Google results with better filters and without the "bubble" that Google likes to put you in. Although…
I did have to reluctantly block StartPages ads on some puters,though, after they resorted to "make the topmost ads appear right where the topmost results I was alread reading and/or about to click already were". I'd have blocked only the topmost ads, but I timed-out while trying to conjure a better CSS selector. I was mildly annoyed with their "ads look almost the same as results" in recent years, but this latest move may eventually convince me to block StartPage's ads everywhere.
> Owning software is worthless to me because their effective lifespans are so short anyway, usually just a couple years, before the ecosystem has moved on and left them behind anyway.
I find it strange that these two sentences are in the same comment.
Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep pace with one another and stay compatible because most users are on the latest version.
I think this is somewhat exaggerated. Not to mention that if you're using older versions of 3rd party software, you can use older versions of the OS too. In fact, many people don't like to update their OS version. If it ain't broke...
> Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep pace with one another and stay compatible because most users are on the latest version.
How is this different from upfront paid software? The latest versions of that stay compatible too. You may have to pay an upgrade fee, but that generally doesn't happen every year, unlike subscriptions.
As for upfront paid software, sometimes it's also just not worth it to the developer to make a whole new version anymore or they shut down. The shareware industry is pretty much dead today, for example, although free trials for cloud subs are still very common. I think the sub model smooths out the feast and famine cycles, ultimately, and make for more intentional and less panicked releases.
How long ago did you buy them?
> As for upfront paid software, sometimes it's also just not worth it to the developer to make a whole new version anymore or they shut down.
Lots of businesses shut down, regardless of business model.
> more intentional and less panicked releases
As a software developer, I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.
If those old games were subscriptions instead, they would probably be unplayable today. Their authentication servers would be shutdown after so few players remained that it wouldn't be worth it for the company to keep it going. Just like a lot of multiplayer games are closed nowadays.
The other thing games tended to do, that is basically a subscription, was frequent, sometimes yearly, releases. You just buy this years iteration of fifa or CoD. Playing the latest "version" will on current hardware, just like a subscription. Compare that to Fortnite, where you don't have a choice but play the latest version (i heard they removed building?!? not that i liked it, but that's certainly a change!).
I used VLC, Firefox (Phoenix), LibreOffice (OOo), MSOffice, paint, photofiltre, and notepad++ when I was a teen. They still work today.
The trending app ecosystem, the social network du jour and the JS framework fever seem to have given the impression to the new generation that there is not other way to do this.
But many of those tools are quite a bit less powerful than the commercial subscription ones. Creative Cloud CC is very powerful when you use it professionally, as is IntelliJ. Worth it to me because I know the difference, having used both kinds of tools and payment models for more than 20 years. These days I make a little more money than I did back in the 90s, so I don't pirate or demand freeware and would rather pay for something sustainable and have it work well because my time is worth it.
Take IntelliJ for example. There was a big uproar when they moved to a subscription model, but their products have continued to get better since. The company would've gone bankrupt otherwise. Instead, their pricing is now both very fair and includes a perpetual fallback license, while their software still keeps improving. I am happy to pay for it because it adds tremendous value over VSCode or Notepad++ in my workflows.
Of course some FOSS software is still amazing. VLC is still the best player I know of. Audacity is still useful and I find myself using that more than Audition.
But other times the subscriptions just deliver better software that I'm happy to pay for.
They did not move. They still offer perpetual license. Otherwise I would not be using their products.
I actually do the same in with one of my products.
They have, just not what you think unless your post is an attempt at humor:
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
Upgrades:
Plus: Must be compelling so they must come up with new features
Minus: Sometimes those new features are bad.
Subscriptions:
Plus: Keep it working on new OS versions
Minus: No compelling reason to add anything.
That's a big reason people want sta ility of "buy once": to protect the tool they use now from becoming worse over time.
They're even removing features
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/3d-faq.html#discontinue...
People are running pre-subscription Adobe products, for example, ... what specific software is suddenly breaking with OS changes?
This kind of thing is especially true in iOS where every OS release kills off a bunch of software using deprecated and then deleted APIs.
It's likely in 2-3 years MacOS will pull out Intel support (like they pulled out PowerPC support after so many years when they switched to Intel)
I pay for an Office365 subscription so I can have it on Mac, but on my Windows PC I use Office 2010, which I paid for when it was current. It is lightning fast compared to the current release of Office, and has all the features I could ever want.
The company I worked for '05-'12 used Office 2003 that whole time. It was fine!
(I don't know who those phantom people are. I'd love to meet them and learn from them. Everyone I know cares so little about the quality of the document itself they hardly use anything beyond immediate-mode font and paragraph styling...)
Once the company has lock-in, you have no control over their pricing. The reason a company offers a good deal on a subscription is to get enough customers for it to be worthwhile to start soaking those same customers for whatever they are willing to pay - or imposing things to get more money or etc.
You can see this play out with MS Windows, Twitter and so-forth.
It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time.
Edit: It's amazing to me that someone thinks they can give a company money and expect it to be spent on what they want. The company always to prefers to pocket your dollars as profit. If you send them a check or something, that's what they'll do.
And I'm free to stop subscribing if the service gets worse (or doesn't get better as fast as I'd like).
If you have the data locally, you can always migrate it - whether manually, through the software that made it (e.g. if the app isn't supporting your new OS, then run it in a VM with an older OS to export to a more forward-compatible format), or through third-party converters. If enough people are in this position, someone will write a solution.
If your data resides in the cloud, however, it's up to the vendor whether or not you'll be able to access it or export it, and how much of it. If they're just sunsetting the product, you probably, maybe, will be able to get some data back (which is almost definitely in some unknown ad-hoc format, quite likely a database dump in form of JSON, so you'll need a converter anyway). If they terminate your account because of $random reason, you won't even have a chance.
Or, to borrow a cliché, "not your files, not your data".
Assuming those exist.
Notice, getting stuff out of Facebook - or Twitter or similar walled-gardens - is double quandary. How you do scan/scrape/whatever the data and how do you avoid being banned for doing so. This given the formats/apis etc constantly and the degree of abusive platform protection also changing (we've seen Twitter's upheavals, imagine a similar abusive dictator buying Facebook and see how much he can squeeze).
And I'm sure someone will "you shoulda know about Facebook but my subscription sure ain't gonna trap me, no". Okay then...
This point is at the center of the move to subscriptions, and I think we should be more explicit that we want companies to eventually _not_ significantly upgrade products and keep them alive with minimal changes for a long time, while we're still paying for subscriptions.
It I think really important to lower the pressure on companies to have a constant flow of updates every month just to justify to users the money they're paying for. That would bring the old "one big revision every year" cycle to a more severe "meaningless small updates every months".
The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well.
How is that different from rent-seeking?
> The roadblock is of course customers wondering why they're still paying every month for a product that sees little change, and I don't have an answer to that, except the alternative had other issues as well.
That question is not that dumb. If you don't want any meaningful change to your software, why do you care that the company still exists? You might just as well have an old version that still works, whether or not the company is still maintaining it.
So yeah, in that situation, apart from the occasional security fix, I really wouldn't know what I'm paying for.
I refuse to pay for Adobe CS and keep an old Lightroom license around when needed, but pay for Bitwarden just to keep them around for security updates and new OS support, and absolutely don’t want them to add new flashy features every month. There’s no one size fits all I think.
It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over time.
I hate the other model, where with Windows and Office you end up getting useless forced upgrades and terrible makeovers because they need that upgrade revenue every few years. Or the ad driven model. I wish I could pay a personal Google subscription for better results and no search ads, for example.
Subscriptions allow companies to better develop organic roadmaps that's not tied to an upgrade cycle, and deemphasizes the needless shiny that's often there for no reason. They don't need to refresh the UI unless there's just an underlying good reason to (like with IntelliJ), but can still keep adding new features.
As a user it means I don't have these huge spikes in my budget every few years and can just plan for a predictable monthly cost. Or sub for something for a month or two and cancel when I don't need it, which I do often.
Owning software is worthless to me because their effective lifespans are so short anyway, usually just a couple years, before the ecosystem has moved on and left them behind anyway. It's not like code is collectible or appreciates over time. Owning it just means you prepay years in advance and lose access to the present value of that money in the meantime, and can't easily switch to a competitor if and when one appears. The subscription forces companies to keep delivering value unless they want you to cancel.