Not going out of business, but on the iPad there is a drawing app called Procreate which is a one time purchase. It’s decent, but in the two years I’ve had it, nothing has really improved and there is a whole lot missing or to be desired. Meanwhile some subscription apps have come to the iPad and they are absolutely packed with every feature you could possibly want.

For any well run company, the more the users are paying, the better the product is likely to be. With a once off purchase, any future improvements are based on a Ponzi scheme requiring constant new users which is unsustainable.

In my opinion you shouldn't expect future updates of any kind from software that you own. I wouldn't expect them to keep updating it because it obviously makes them no money. I would expect them to release a new product to keep making money.

The problem is that OS upgrades are frequently needed for security and bug fixes and those upgrades are often required by other applications--but a new OS version may break your older application. I suppose you can play around with VMs to keep an old OS and application together--that was one of the original virtualization use cases--but that gets awkward after a while.

That's like the car you bought in 2022 to run on the fuel used in the year 2500. Whether it's annoying or not, that it does or doesn't run on new technology, doesn't matter. You paid for a product, not upgrades (unless you did pay for upgrades, of course). You shouldn't expect free upgrades because they certainly were not free to create.

No I don't expect it because it's obviously impossible to be sustainable. Which is why I choose subscription stuff because then I can expect a constant stream of new value for my payment or I cancel the subscription.

> I wouldn't expect them to keep updating it because it obviously makes them no money.

What do you mean by this exactly? There are always new customers to sell to, so of course you can make money by updating your product.

Will the buyer continue to receive free software updates forever? No, probably not. Eventually they may have to pay an upgrade fee. But the great part about upgrade fees compared to subscription is that the choice and timing of whether or not to upgrade is in the buyer's hands. Whereas with a subscription, it's a forced update, with the timing determined by the software developer, not the buyer. You pay yearly, or the software stops working now.

This is why I think JetBrains nailed the pricing with IntelliJ. You own what you buy, and can use it forever. You pay for upgrades. That's it.

Well, it makes them no more money from me. My maximum value has been extracted. Whether that's a solid business plan or not is not my argument. I'm saying that if I paid for something I don't expect any changes at all. If good changes happen, great. If bad changes happen, I should be able to decide if I can retain the product that I paid for. Whether the changes are free or not is not important because changing anything at all would be make the thing a new unique product. I just want the choice to keep it the same, something subscriptions don't offer. Because, well, that's what a subscription service means. But if I bought a newspaper subscription, I wouldn't expect them to fix a typo after they already delivered a newspaper. Typos happen, bugs happen, I don't buy a product expecting perfection. I expect to get to use the product I paid for, for the time agreed upon.

By this principle, every physical product in the world would be "a Ponzi scheme".

I thought about it and a lot of physical products we use everyday are either perishables themselves or require perishables for a regular maintenance.

Yes, we aren't forced to buy from the exact same brands like in a subscription model. Practically, we end up buying the same products in a predictable schedule, to keep the wheel spinning.

A lot? Furniture? Clothing? Cars? Electronics? Appliances? Physical books? [takes off glasses to think] Glasses?

Physical products wear out eventually, but they can last for many years. They're not necessarily perishable.

Yes, for the second category I mentioned: "require perishables for a regular maintenance".

Cleaning products, washing powder, fabric softener, bleach, fuel, windshield wiper fluid, tires, batteries.

Books, sure, they seem to be maintenance-free. I guess glasses too.

Could you explain how clothing needing to be cleaned is relevant to subscriptions? After all, you don't have to buy the cleaning products from the clothing manufacturer. Same for car tires, etc. So the clothing companies and car companies aren't making any extra money from this.

I agree with your original post. Very thoughtful. The subscription version of glasses is contact lenses. Plus, most people need a tweak to their vision prescription every year (or two), so they need to update lenses.

Most physical products don't require constant work to be done. Software will mostly stop working properly if not updated.

Why wouldn't it be updated?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34043936

There aren’t always new customers to sell to. When your system requires on constant growth to not collapse, it isn’t sustainable. A Ponzi scheme is the closest way I can describe it but I wouldn’t say it’s fraud since you weren’t promised future updates. You just implicitly require and expect them.

I really don't see how there's any difference between software and physical products.

Businesses are working year-round — manufacturers are manufacturing new products, software developers are writing software updates — and also selling year-round. If you run out of customers, that's of course a problem, but that's not a unique problem to software.

As a software developer, I sell new copies year-round, every day, and also release updates year-round. If I run out of new customers I'll let you know, but last month was actually my best sales month ever.

What do you mean exactly by "constant growth"? You need constant sales, yes. You don't necessarily need a constant increase in sales, if sales are at a sustainable level.

> Not going out of business, but on the iPad there is a drawing app called Procreate which is a one time purchase. It’s decent, but in the two years I’ve had it, nothing has really improved and there is a whole lot missing or to be desired.

This is the trade-off, as far as I'm concerned. By paying one time, I get the product … once. It might be a bad purchase that I regret; that happens. But, if it's great, I want that product; I don't want the developer's new and greatest idea of how they think I want to use their product. Too many products that were once great ‘evolved’ away from being useful for me. For the software that I own (and that runs on a supported platform), I can just keep using it. For subscription software … well, too many developers don't care that they're leaving a dedicated base behind if they open up a new (and fickle) base.

Maybe the way by which the subscription software becomes better is different: perhaps because the SaaS model provides higher recurring revenues, these businesses and products draw more investment, which allows them to develop more quickly and leapfrog the competition. I think your point about non-SaaS being a Ponzi scheme is valid. However, I think it conflates several separate phenomenon, at least in my mind. I’ll use Fitbit as an example, since I have one. I purchased a piece of hardware that has certain capabilities, and links to the Fitbit app, which ought to provide me access to those capabilities. I can only use the app to access those capabilities (at least without some hacking; not sure if anyone has done this). I’d much rather use an open source app and self host the data - Google hosting the data and providing me an app to interface with it isn’t valuable to me except to the extent I cannot access it any other way. The fact that they paywall certain components behind a monthly subscription, when the device I purchased is fully capable of interacting with the app in the same way without me having a subscription, is exploitative, in my opinion. And I would be more than happy to pay money for new software versions if they provided me anything useful. Instead, Fitbit has become more SaaS-y, and I have gotten nothing of value from that. Sorry if that’s not a very cohesive set of thoughts; I think there are a lot of viable reasons for subscription services (I have no issue with Spotify, for instance). At the same time, I do not think worthless software upgrades, holding users’ data captive, and bug fixes are worth a dime, morally nor economically.