Bad experience for users, developers and Apple.
> The features you unlock are permanently available and any other pro features added the next 12 months after purchase are also permanently available. After one year new pro features introduced will be locked until you purchase a upgrade. Even if you do not purchase a new unlock after 12 months, the app will still be updated with improvements and bug-fixes.
And so there is plenty of software available e.g. LaunchDarkly to help simplify the process.
iOS and iPadOS are not stable systems like OSX where the fundamentals of the overall experience is clear and largely complete. There is still a lot of innovation and new concepts being introduced each year.
To have a large percentage of users with older apps that won't properly support these changes would hurt the platform.
As was mentioned feature flags are a much better option.
not yet, and most likely just not in the us
but due to the european union digital markets act, apple will have to allow for side loading, and somebody was speculating it will only be in the EU.
As for 'side loading', it's somewhat possible, but even if it was available by default it would be messy for most customers -- they already have trouble with what's currently available. Perhaps some sort of in-app store would make that model feasible. The vendor gets to show and deploy whatever they want, and the end-user gets a very clear and very specific list of options for the app/vendor. That would even be better than the 'everyone in one store' model for some more specialised apps, especially when searching.
Based on the wording comment it sounds like there may be additional ways I haven't seen but you didn't really say what they were as much as dismiss the point assuming everyone knew what apps or release models you are familiar with.
I agree an in App Store solution like the one you describe would be the preferred answer for most users. Sideloading is more useful as a catch-all for anything Apple doesn't have a good first party answer for. Once non policy related use cases for the sideloading exist it's going to be easier for most to have a first party solution for those use cases.
I suspect that this model has some downsides considering good security practise would prevent the apps from sharing their namespace contents. And for end-users they might end with "MyCoolApp 1" at first, but then "MyCoolApp 2, MyCoolApp 3, MyCoolApp 4" unless they delete the old one. I think some app vendors even use the year as the release distinction but in true software engineering fashion those years and the actual release date tend to be out-of-sync (just like MS Office).
And it's still undetermined whether Apple would be required to host your app on their App Store once you've decided to run your own store. Which means you would be losing a major distribution channel.
Also why should companies do that? They could be leaving money on the table as people can continue to gain value from the perpetual version without you getting any compensation for that value. Also you now have to deal wind a fragmented user base on different versions. And the user community has to dear with not everyone supporting the same features and menu navigation as everyone else.
Yeah, that model is infuriating. While your subscription is running you get the updates. Then they snatch them away if you cancel. It's a dark pattern.
False unless they changed it recently. It explicitly read last version on the subscription. I actually bought one a few years back and I got fallback to the last version of the subscription timeframe.
Regarding the “why”, it’s simply the option that properly aligns interests. A long enough subscription (ie an year), should cover initial expenses and development during the period, if the company wants to keep a customer paying, it needs to keep making the software better.
It’s putting customer first, which is something companies tend to forget which tend to lead to a downfall if they have not secured a strong prison/moat for their rent seeking behaviors.
Companies with proper alignment on incentives tend to make/maintain/develop better products over a larger timeframe. But ofc that was meaningless when money was “cheap” (negative interest rates), so VCs could just dump a huge amount of money on creating some competitor out of nowhere, put it out for free, operate under losses, and once they have “captured” a big enough userbase and fcked the rest of the competition, and have decent lock in, start the shitification of service for revenue, to make up for all the “investment”, leaving customers with no proper alternative.
A perpetual fallback license is showing customer that you care. And it’s also putting a gun on yourself to keep improving the product instead of stagnating for “captured” revenue. Also, happy customers tend to give free publicity, look here at hackernews how their tools are mostly praised.
Edit: it seems that indeed they changed the version to the initial plus bugfixes, or 12months old if using consecutive monthly billing
They were compensated when you bought the version you keep. If you get nothing from them after that, then what would they be compensated for? I could understand it if the application required server-side resources, but if it's all local, then no further compensation is due.
If you buy Microsoft Word and make $10 million from a novel, you don't have to kick any of that back to Microsoft. The software company has no claim to the value created by their software beyond the licensing costs.
Nordstrom's liberal return policy increased sales. Probably by mooting the fear of buyer's remorse. Their policy definitely wasn't motivated by altruism.
Maybe something similar is happening with Jetbrains.
I continue to pay yearly for Ultimate, even though I only use vanilla IntelliJ, and sometimes not for years. Why? I have no idea.
I usually cancel subscriptions without hestitaion. Somehow the Jetbrains license doesn't piss me off and I'm content knowing I could cancel without too much inconvenience, should I choose.
Whatever the case, I'm certain they validated their current license maximizes revenue.
Month subscription available, but by paying the annual subscription you get a perpetual license for the last release covered by your purchase, which makes an annual subscription pretty much the same as "buy with 1 year of updates".