When an app for my Mac is offered direct from a developer via a web download (even if it is also available in the Mac App Store), that’s the route I take. Gives dev the 30% cut Apple would otherwise take and allows upgrade pricing rather than subscriptions.
I’m okay with it being different on my iPhone. The iPhone is a high-value target. I consider it to be a satellite device and appreciate that it is locked down in Apple’s walled garden.
one problem today may be “company bloat”. devs are no longer happy with a two or three person crew. now they have to have tech support people, secretaries, social media wranglers, HR, etc… etc… compare Flexibits employee count to Red Sweater…
Exactly. And then they have to cut back because they’ve grown too big too fast, or they want to reach too high, or they realize at some point that a text editor can’t be expanded indefinitely with useful features.
Cultured Code (Things 3) has no problem with this kind of way. Just don’t be greedy, keep it clean, not cluttered and make a next version every couple of years. It seemed to work back in the 90s, it seems to work nowadays. Look at computer games: Every big studio looked in complete jealousy at the Minecraft dev who did it alone. While they are in a death circle of iterations of the same game adding features no one wants or needs or likes.
There are a lot of companies who still can survive by selling a good product without subs. Affinity Suite, Pixelmator, Scrivener, Forklift, Daisy Disk, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel,… to name a few. I was too lazy to lookup the company names but I guess the app names are known better anyways.
Some of them come with way more complexity than a simple calendar app where the devs don’t know what features they should cram into it next to make the subscription worthwhile.
The bulk of the complaints are that the sub has increased by 50%+.
Another fair point is that some of these devs started and only survived because people believed in their product and invested when the product was still feature poor and/or buggy. Then when they have a solid product these long time customers don’t get any recognition and are simply told to pay more. This really leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
It seems that these devs are only in it for the money. Grow their startup big and sell to one of the big guns. This sort of behaviour has stopped me supporting new startups because I’ve yet to find one where I haven’t been burned in the long term.
Everything is a high value target these days. Last month Apple had to patch a zero day webkit vulnerability that effected Macs, iPads, and iPhones. Hackers are constantly attacking all kinds of consumer tech like routers and NAS devices, etc. like synology and qnap.
The more devices we own the more we have to monitor and protect. 
But you’re all using Calendar or BusyCal now, right? There’s a great free calendar, a great one-time purchase calendar, and a great subscription calendar. Plus about twenty other options that are one of those three things. That looks like a successful software market to me since everyone gets to buy/not buy what they want.
I look forward to the news stories of MacBook Airs being spirited away from drunk patrons in bars by gangs of Mac thieves! 
It’s been my experience that Mac thieves normally steal Macs from hotel rooms and rental cars. My guess is their young fit apprentices are the ones stealing iPhones. 
That’s true. There wasn’t a gatekeeper between software developers and their customers until 2008.
Yes some small companies “can survive by selling a good product without subs”. Until they can’t. Small companies can be more flexible but also more vulnerable. For example the loss of a single employee can be devastating. And many companies don’t allow key people to travel in the same vehicle for obvious reasons.
Whatever the reason that iOS/iPadOS software subscriptions are continuing to grow, it is happening. We can complain about it but all we can do is choose another app, if one is available, without a subscription.
OTOH the app developers have options. They can change their pricing policy, take another job, switch to another platform, or maybe retire to a south sea island .
We, and Apple, depend on the software developers.
How’s that soft sea breeze, now that you’re retired? 
The wind is coming from the south at 2 mph.
And it’s 43° F. 
I wouldn’t call Serif (Affinity) a small company. It’s the biggest contestor to Adobe. And its main selling point is the one time purchase.
Maybe you are right, maybe it is an inevitable future and being nostalgic is just silly.
But I think there is a line between honestly providing a constant service to the customer that needs a subscription to work and money grabbing and I’m having the feeling that some players are overdoing it right now. But yes, the market will probably regulate itself…
I often wonder whether Serif makes much money by selling all the add-on stuff, or if most of their revenue is just the apps themselves.
It’s the same as my frustration with TextExpander and (to some extent) 1Password. I’ve been using both for many years, and I remember when they were small, one-time purchase (except for upgrades) apps, and they were sold as apps to make the life of the consumer easier and less complex. The ad read for TE now is about making sure your corporate message is the same across users, and 1P lets you share vaults across your company and enterprise. There’s nothing wrong with that, we all want to make more money, but it does feel like a punishment for those of us who have been longtime customers.
I think there is one reason things really are different now than in the earlier days of the App Store, and in the days of the Mac before the iPhone: saturation.
As long as the iPhone market was expanding, selling a fixed price app with ongoing costs and new features was reasonable: Even if only one in 1,000 new customers bought your app, you had thousands of potential news customers all the time.
As sales of new devices (not replacements!) leveled off, that universe of potential new customers shrinks.
Once the economics depend on continuing customers rather than new customers, devs need either an upgrade pricing model or a subscription model. Otherwise there simply isn’t enough revenue (new sales) coming in to pay for servers and/or development. That leaves us with stale apps, abandonware, or subscription conversions.
(The iOS equivalent of an upgrade is to release new app, which seems to be more confusing or leads to less uptake than a more traditional upgrade path, or I’d guess we’d see more of it.)
I don’t pretend this is the only dynamic at play. Devs might be greedy, or bloated or lazy or whatever. But I think there has been a real structural change in the market as well.
Doesn’t this assume that the Dev has a large percentage of the total addressable market? Also, markets aren’t fixed, and can absolutely be expanded. Before Uber, in NYC the market for rides/ride sharing was fixed. They expanded the market. These arguments around subscription pricing don’t add up.
As @tf2 clearly said, Apple did expand the market in lockstep with sales of the iPhone itself. I would imagine Uber’s portion of the ride-share marketplace has also leveled off by now. (And note that Uber charges by the ride. There is no “one-time purchase” available for Uber.)
I agree that markets aren’t fixed, and can definitely be expanded.
But by the same token, I would argue that the proliferation of current-generation smartphones has once again contracted many markets in many ways, even as smartphones achieve ubiquity.
Get a computer in 1992. Oh, you want a word processor? You need to buy (Works / Word / WordPerfect / Claris / etc.). Want to track appointments? You need to buy calendar software. Wash/rinse/repeat for just about anything you actually wanted to do with your computer, including programming the computer. It was implicitly understood that software costs money, and that you probably needed a fair bit of it to do your work.
Fast-forward to today. Need a calendar? Built in. A robust email client? Built in. Browser? Built in, with lots of great free alternatives available (don’t forget that Netscape used to be a paid product!). Office suite? Built in. Presentation software? Built in. Productivity software? Built in. Development environment? Built in.
Most of the stuff the average person needs a computer for is covered by the platform’s built-in app suite.
Sure, the built-in apps may not be insanely great for all people. But the expectation of “platform includes software” has fundamentally changed the market. And to the extent users don’t realize that the apps aren’t actually free (i.e. it still costs money to make - it’s just built in), that depresses the value of competing apps.
Or maybe put differently, it’s not a matter of “is it worth $60 for an app that lets you type letters”. If I couldn’t type letters without the app, yes - $60. All day long. Take my money. But now it’s a matter of “is it worth $60 to move from the features available in the built-in word processor”. That’s a much harder sale.
And don’t get me wrong; it’s not that there aren’t expanding markets. But “expanding” describes a (likely rather limited) subset of the whole, rather than describing a general trend IMHO.
Well, you’re clearly missing the point. The total addressable market for the developer and for Apple are not the same. If a developer makes an app to track cycles the TAM for that developer is less than 50% of Apple’s TAM from a user perspective (lot of assumption here).
Uber was a simple example on market expansion. Last time I checked, Uber didn’t charge for the Application. Uber’s growth leveling off is irrelevant. The point is related to market expansion, and Uber took a market that was fixed (NYC for example) and increased the number of rides. Substantially.
Not going to get any argument from me on that. But that argument isn’t exclusive to apps or developers. Your refrigerator has an ice machine right? At one point ICE was delivered to homes and I bet it was relatively more expensive than than it is now. Filtered water? Nope that’s built into the refrigerator too. Need to tell time in the kitchen? Got you covered.
These arguments also assume that technology doesn’t get cheaper over time. In some cases, it doesn’t, but it should. That’s the whole point.
I’ll be the first one to admit that $.99 for an app was artificially low. But, charging a subscription for an app that is never upgraded and/or feature complete just doesn’t make sense.