Personally, even if I don't personally purchase this, I hope your wrong because I am strongly against subscriptions in most cases.

I see cases where it makes sense...but I also see the need for development to get paid their salery, and once you have reached all the users you can....their is no new user growth....and if your just selling based off a one time fee then that means you got very little income except the random guy who might donate, but a company shouldn't rely on donations to keep products alive.

If the thing needs updates or changes regularly say once very 6 months....due to changes in standard or just keeping things updated....this stuff costs money to keep developers paid.

My crude C program I wrote that converts an input between celcius or Fahrenheit is not really going to change. Unless I want to also support data inputs other than floating point numbers, I don't need to update or modify anything. But other stuff is more complex and might change due to standards, advancements, and the needs of the users.

The real problem is that people are afraid of paying high one time prices. Subscriptions allow you to lower your prices, which lowers the barrier of entry.

On iOS, it gets even worse as there never were high prices to begin with. Which means that the OTP model was never very sustainable.

I don't understand what people have against subscriptions.

To me that's the fairest. First, it incentives them to make a good product, and keep developing it as opposed to just throwing it out there and then not updating.

And secondly it's also fair for the customer. If I don't find something useful I might stop using it after a week, but I paid the full price, same as if I found it useful for years.

What do, say, furniture stores do when they "run out of users"?

> If the thing needs updates or changes regularly say once very 6 months....due to changes in standard or just keeping things updated....this stuff costs money to keep developers paid.

The problem is of course, that the industry has settled into a nash equilibrium of constantly changing things, so regular people have to continuously update software, as a way to charge rents, on top of whatever productive improvements they provide.

Sofas don't need constant bug fixes; they don't inexplicably stop working when someone upgrades their apartment with a new TV. Also, the up-front cost of a piece of furniture is a couple of orders magnitude higher than most apps, which help keeps the retailer in the black until it's time for the customer to buy another, similarly high priced item.

They have been around successfully selling apps with this business model for a lot longer than 2 years, why do you think they plan on changing it?

FiLMiC Pro, another pro camera app for iPhone, also existed for years [0] and sold with the one-time-purchase business model. They're now a subscription [1] and owned by Bending Spoons / Evernote. (Plus, more bad news [2]...)

[0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20111130073123/http://www.filmicp...

[1]: https://www.cined.com/filmic-pro-is-joining-forces-with-bend...

[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/3/23986187/filmic-staff-lai...

That kind of proves that one time sales can be a successful business model, doesn't it?

They were a successful business employing 23 people after more than a decade on the one time sales model!

No one said it’s not possible to be successful with it

What happens is you run out of new people to sell your niche app to (or hit a long rather thin tail) while continuing to provide updates for your existing userbase. So you either have to release arbitrary new versions from time to time leaving the old ones neglected and eventually unsupported (or with the overhead of supporting several versions) or you switch to a subscription model.

It's happened with so many businesses.

Maybe the solution here is to stop supporting new phones with old versions. So your app works forever but if you upgrade your phone you have to buy the software again. It's hard to find what feels fair.

Subscription fatigue is very real today, but to your point, as a business you can't provide eternal updates (work) for free.

In the old days, you'd buy a new version of Mac or Windows or any software that you run on it (Office, Parallels, etc.) when you wanted the new features each year.

I think Apple's App Store has a lot to do with why everything is now subscription-based. They used to offer developers a smaller Apple-commission (15%) for subscription sales instead of the typical 30% for in-app purchase sales and paid-apps.

This was great for businesses, but in my opinion, only service businesses should be subscriptions - this transition would help reduce subscription fatigue. Normal software should mostly go back to just issuing new versions each year (or whatever frequency), so that consumers re-frame the purchase cycle to something that feels more reasonable again.

In order for this to occur, however, Apple may need to adjust the App Store algorithms. If you were to launch a new app (ex. "Kino v6"), you'd start all over again from day 1 with 0 app ratings and reviews, and not rank well on any keywords nor in the top apps charts.

Some apps simply rename their app with each new version, but that introduces similar complexities, especially for users who already paid & downloaded the previous "version". So in a big way, the App Store de-incentivizes any kind of transition away from a subscription-based business model.

The "new versions" business model vs. subscription may be similar cost to consumer (it wouldn't support monthly users), but it would allow consumers to only update when their ready and could continue using an old app version (especially on older devices) as long as they'd like. If a customer really likes the software, they'd likely buy the new version to access new features & device support before too long anyhow

What do you mean used to take 15% commission, that has never stopped since the small business plan became available.

I mean that initially the 15% commission was only for subscription sales. Then more recently, Apple added the small business program which gave 15% commission for any sales (not only subscriptions), at least for smaller companies

> Normal software should mostly go back to just issuing new versions each year (or whatever frequency), so that consumers re-frame the purchase cycle to something that feels more reasonable again.

One way which feels fair that I have seen companies do is provide "Maintenance".

Premium paid support offerings which also includes upgrades to any versions released during your contract duration. It's enterprisey, and maybe weird for a camera app (how much support could you possibly really need?).

What about releasing new features as in-app purchases? This way you can make money from existing users too.

Their other apps are much older than 2 years and still have a buy-once model. This company has a good track record. (There is a subscription for some long-running services if I'm not mistaken.)