Mac Power Users 459: My Life is a Subscription

You definitely win. I’m legitimately impressed.

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Well I finally got a chance to actually add mine up as part of my year end review which I start on the solstice.

Not many subscriptions here at all and most are not software.

the only software subscription is Adobe Photographer for LR & PS $9.99/mo
1 magazine I subscribe to on Kindle for $1.99/mo
Netflix both a DVD and streaming plan $23.57/mo
Amazon Prime $9.99/mo
Kindle Unlimited $9.99/mo
A comics aggregator $1.25/mo for my daily comics
A cutting machine subscription for die cut patterns $4.27/mo
An educational site for classes in craft techniques $9.95/mo
Then there are the magazines we get in print 10 of them totalling $21.06/mo
Even if I throw in our gigabit Internet service for all 3 buildings $149.85/mo and phone and electric $125.96/mo we end up with normal recurring bills of $367.69/mo. Our house uses propane but the tank only gets filled 2 times a year and it varies a lot as we get the spot price when we fill it.

Interesting experiment to look at this.

Just realized tonight on Christmas Eve how expensive it is to buy an expensive device and then use decent apps. Any decent app has some sort of subscription service built in. A subscription locks you into that app and prevents you from trying out similar apps. It’s as if developers don’t realize that there are many apps proving the same service m, just differently. I downloaded the app Pigment, which is a coloring (book) app, and it costs 6$ A WEEK for a subscription. I just want to color once in a while. I don’t have time to sit around and color for 6$ a week (!)
I think this whole subscription model is driving people away. I have never had a problem paying for an app as a once-time-fee, but subscription is different. There are only so many subscriptions that I can have before I’m hitting a total. We already bought these expensive devices at a hefty price and now we have to lock ourselves in to apps and service at monthly rates to use them. I’m not happy about this development

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Yup I enjoyed Pigment but not nearly enough to sign up for it on a recurring basis.

That said, if there’s something I use regularly then I don’t mind a subscription to keep it alive and healthy (1Password comes to mind), especially if I see ongoing benefit and development.

If having a steady stream of income makes for a better app I’ll use regularly, that seems completely fair and reasonable. It’s when I start to have to wonder “Doni use this enough to keep paying for it?” that I start to regret it, especially if I signed up for a year to get a better price and then stopped using it 3 months later.

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When I checked it out it was $24.99/yr, or $4/month. That’s a pretty big jump to the weekly fee. (Still, Colorfy has always been the most expensive.) Does Pigment still have a low(er yearly rate? I can’t tell the prices from the iTunes page.

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Not sure to be honest. I’m sure there is a reason for the high cost. I just used it as an example of how if we wanna use any of the decent apps out there with our more than decent devices then we need to sign up for 5-10 subscriptions. That can be really expensive in the long run. It’s a development that I don’t really appreciate

You might be correct. On the other hand, I’d rather pay for a few subscriptions for the apps I really care about/need and have them be awesome than pay a one-time fee and have the app be not as good (or poorly maintained or infrequently updated).

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How so? If anything a shift from paid up front to subscriptions makes it easier to sample a lot of different apps.

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Yeah that’s actually correct. I just feel that if one pays an annual subscription up front, because it’s the cheapest, then that prevents you from really trying out other apps in that year if you suddenly drift away from it

The apps on my iPad are showing annual prices of US$59.99 for Pigment and US$99.99 for ColorfyPlus. Colorfy also has a 20% offer going n this week for Christmas.

I don’t use either app enough to make it cost effective to subscribe.

I just do not understand this mindset whereas many people have this entitlement that software should be for free where some go on a rant on the App Store complaining about the $0.99 they paid for a certain piece of software.

I have been burnt so many times and continue to be burnt by companies/people that create software with a unsustainable business model to be unable to continue meanwhile their users at best get a “Dear John” sorry email. One of the latest victims was a nice piece of documentation software name “Clarify” now the software is unloadable and documents created in the propriety format unusable. I wish some Business 101 could be a prerequisite for software companies/developers prior to releasing a product to forecast if the business model is sustainable.

I have been using a cloud-based Subscription tracking tool (Also a subscription) to track all my subscriptions and periodic review my subs to keep under budget. “TrackMySubs

I have done a lot of tech jobs and none was harder than trying to sell computer software B2B, it is harder than selling insurance!

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For myself, I completely support subscriptions. The personal question is how many to support. I use Drafts and Evernote every day. So those are worth supporting. I need more iCloud storage, so Apple gets a bit of my money. Supporting the work on Relay FM, that deserves a bit of my money as well.

So these start to add up and at some point, there is a limit.

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