The issue I have with subscriptions (and with software in general) is value for money. Sadly, simply paying a developer annually or monthly does not give any more long-term security or even “bang for the buck” for the user than paying them for each major version and arguably there is less incentive for them to make the next version compelling.
I can see the sense of subscriptions for developers. Not only does it provide a more sustainable model to support them, but there’s an increasing need for many of them to service their investors. The lower entry cost and more flexible ability to vary subscription cost helps a lot with that: you can put on a lot of new users and grow very quickly.
From a consumer point of view it’s much less clear-cut. I’m happy to pay for good-value subscriptions and I enjoy the low cost of entry and exit but there are others where I feel I am being milked with minimal updates and upgrades and an OK service for a relatively high price. All the various ways that the software market went wrong for consumers are just as likely with a subscription model as with one-off licensing.
I understand doing “advance scouting” about an alternative to iThoughts. But from my understanding iThoughts won’t be going away soon. I’d suggest contacting the developer directly. I also use on my Mac and iPhone and a bit on my iPad.
I’m sure I won’t be able to use it anymore in about 5 years, but I highly doubt it will be obsolete within the next year or two.
Point taken. I am finding this impossible actually. I am very open source so to speak yet I do think it fair to support the ‘little guy’. I am sure there are ways to square the circle if we tried, we should.
Bear in mind, that a huge tranche of us involved in making Arpsnet etc, the math and logic behind computing various Govenment initiatives worked ‘for free’ in some sense, or often on quite modest salaries, then watched it given away and patent jockeyed for billions.
Thank you; you are probably correct. However, I don’t want to create mind maps in an app I know is not actively supported. I’d rather export those maps and create new ones in an app I’m reasonably sure will continue being developed.
I agree. The pricing for app subscriptions often bears little relation to the value they deliver.
Drafts at $20/year and Bear at $30 seem fairly priced. Fantastical at $60/year is pushing it, and is probably worth it only to people who have very full schedules or have to frequently arrange meetings with 3 or more people who have few openings. I’m sure NotePlan is a great app, but $120 a year is just nuts, especially since you have to pay for your own iCloud storage on top of it.
(I know some people with sufficient disposable income can simply buy or subscribe to any apps they want regardless of the cost, but I’m talking about cost relative to value for those who have to budget for software.)
I’d have no problem with subscriptions if they all followed Agenda’s model, or had functional free versions like Drafts. Without those, the ones that use proprietary data formats are basically holding your data hostage and forcing you to renew. (In its defense, iirc NotePlan uses plaintext files and doesn’t fall into that category.)
But one-time payments with occasional paid compatibility and feature upgrades (Bartender is a good example) is still a viable model that’s good for users as well as developers, and there’s a stronger incentive for devs to produce meaningful improvements than there is with recurring subscriptions.
The biggest software red flag for me is VC funding, which usually leads to enshittification, big price hikes, and/or what recently happened to Skiff’s entire user base.
Yes, that seemed high to me, too, when it was announced. I am fortunate to have been grandfathered in at half that price. And last I saw, I thought it had come down to $99 and was available on Setapp. I think the developer is closely watching the price that he charges in an effort to optimize his income … priced too high drives away subscribers but priced too low leaves money on the table. It is a great app that gets frequent updates.
As much as I dislike “renting” applications, I understand the rationale for subscriptions. I suspect the loss of iThoughts may be that the developer did not realize sufficient ROI for his labor.
We must determine how much we are willing to spend for app subscriptions on top of our other recurring discretionary expenses and what compromises we will make concerning app features to avoid ongoing costs. As others have said, I’m more willing to pay a reasonable subscription for an excellent app that allows me to export my data if I cancel the subscription. Otherwise, I’ll use default or one-time payment apps, even though doing so requires feature compromise. I have no reservations about paying the subscription for Backblaze and 1PW. However, I struggle to make a final decision in some situations. My prime example is trying to decide between Ulysses, Scrivener, and Pages as my primary writing application. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those applications. In brief, Ulysses uses a “propriety” markdown format and features that do not export to other apps. Scrivener is a great app, but it uses Dropbox for syncing and can be finicky. Scrivener’s compile feature is complicated. Pages has limited export options and is not as flexible and “future proof” as Word. Neither Word nor Pages are suitable for long-complex writing projects like a book or a dissertation-level document. I can use different apps for different purposes, but I prefer, as much as possible, to minimize the number of apps I use so most of my documents are in the same application and location.
Word for Mac now has a navigable sidebar outline (View > Sidebar > Navigation) that makes it a bit better for longform now.
(Unfortunately, you still can’t drag and drop or copy/paste in it to change the organization in the sidebar. Iirc, you can do that and fold headers in the Windows version, so that’s an option for those already using Windows in a VM.)
That doesn’t make Word as good as Scrivener for longform, of course, especially in early drafts, but it helps for editing and revisions after conversion to .docx.
You are correct that Word for Mac now has a navigable sidebar outline, but as you point out, one cannot use it to move sections. One cannot do it in Pages either. Things like this are what I find so frustrating. The ability to see, edit, and move within an outline in a large document on the Mac should be table stakes.
iA Writer for Mac lacks those features even though the Windows version, which is newer, has had them for years. The dev says that’s because they’re very hard to implement in a native Mac app.
I believe Scrivener gets around that because a Scrivener document in its native format is really a bundle of files rather than a single one.
Obsidian also has those features, I assume because they’re supported by the electron toolkit.
It is easily understandable, the word for it is “greed”.
As I’ve noted before on this very forum, unless there is a direct cost to the developer for me using the application, then there is no valid rational for a subscription. It is not my responsibility to ensure your business succeeds. Rather it is you as the developer who needs to ensure you price you application in a way that sustains your business and provides value to your customers. As exhibit one I give you BBEdit which debuted on the MacClassic OS and is till going strong today.
A subscription transfers the business risk form the developer, where it belongs, to the consumer, where it does not. And there is a valid argument that there is less incentive for the developer to provide meaningful updates when they already have your money. I do not think it is intentional, nor malicious, but it is human nature.
I have no problem paying for software, and have paid multiple hundreds of US$ for software. And I have no problem with paying a recurring fee if at the time I stop paying I can continue to use the then current version. It is the “extortion” part of the subscription, stop paying an lose everything, that I object to.
The oldest email I have for BBEdit is from 2005, it is an upgrade to version 8 at a cost of US$59.
Alas, I do not have the receipt for what I paid originally.
Update, I found a paper (gasp!) receipt for US$45 for an upgrade to version 6.5, from 2002, delivered on CD ROM, in a box no doubt.
Yes, I was around in the “box” era. And I did get my original version of Photoshop in a box, albeit for free when the company I was working for got bought, and they were giving stuff away.
I remember buying software mail order, from a company that ran multi-page adds in the major Mac magazines like MacUser, but I forget the name of the company (maybe MacZone?). All in boxes, first with diskettes and later CD ROMs.
There’s a lot of sense in these comments - but …(ramble warning)
My issue with subscriptions (apart from the point made elsewhere that some devs don’t provide great value in terms of ongoing development) is that use of the app turns into a recurring operational cost. Before I retired (thanks, Covid) I was a self-employed project manager and my income was very highly variable. Subscriptions mean I continue paying whether I’m earning or not, if I want to maintain access to apps and data, so they’re a bad match to my needs. Now I’m retired, I’m even less keen to rent the apps I want/need to use.
Secondly, my most-used apps - Curio, Tinderbox, Omnifocus, DevonThink and a couple of photo apps - have flourished for many years without the need for subscriptions - and none of them are that expensive. I surmise that part of their secret sauce is that they have characteristics that make them sufficiently different and distinctly better for some uses that enough people are happy to pay for them (worth noting that all of them make data available offline - no internet required - and all make it easy to extract data when they (inevitably) come to end of life).
It’s worth noting that Curio has just celebrated 20 years; Tinderbox has been going for 22 years, DT and Omnifocus a little less but still a long time (and there are others that I don;t use).
It makes me think that many of the apps that need a sub to be viable are in a kind of “me too” category (I know that’s unkind) in which the differences from direct competitors aren’t compelling enough to build a big enough and loyal enough customer base. Witness the lengthy and repeated debates about Agenda v Bear v Craft v Noteplan v . They’re flavours of a similar set of recipes. Nothing wrong with that - we each have our own tastes - but it means they’ll struggle to open up enough persistent differentiation to give themselves the reliable OTP-plus-upgrade income to maintain viability.
I’ve tried many many of these apps (Roam, Obsidian, Logseq, Craft, Agenda, Bear, Notion, Tana, and some others I don’t recall) but I keep coming back to the ones I listed earlier because they have some compelling attributes that the others don’t, And - no subscription.
