? Sorry, I don’t understand …
just meant to say that I don’t see app subscriptions going away any time soon…
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Bigger news to me is that YNAB has increase its subscription fees to $100 a year and applies even to grandfathered accounts. That hurts more than Notability!
I mean at least with YNAB I’m paying for their sync mechanism as well, but is the software worth $100 a year? As someone paying in £ Sterling and not getting half the functionality, this might be a price rise to much.
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Agreed, I expect them to continue to proliferate. Again, I don’t begrudge developers subscriptions, done ethically they are justifiable. But, the proliferation has pushed me over the edge in confirming my apps choices. This is not to say I’ll never subscribe to another app., I may, but by in large, I’m committed to a “good enough” approach to avoid adding more app subscriptions to my budget. As of today (Nov. 2 2021) I only have two active subscriptions, not counting Apple One: 1Password and MindNode. God has blessed me financially so I can easily afford all of the subscriptions I want but for me the issue is stewardship, not the budget per se.
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well, their whole acronym is true - YNAB to pay for YNAB! 
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If you don’t count Microsoft 365 I currently have two app subscriptions, Tweetbot and Due. My other subscriptions are for services, Mobile Passport, etc. So, I have very little experience with situations like this.
Given the limitations of the App Stores, especially the IOS App Store, what are the options available to a developer that needs/wants to move to a subscription model?
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yes, I left the word “bad” out of my statement. I have been a Drafts subscriber since the beginning. Drafts and 1Password are worth every penny.
This makes me think of Procreate. It’s an amazing app that my wife adores. I’ve been worried for years that they are going to keep adding features until it becomes difficult to use.
This is also why I turned off auto-update on her iPad.
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I’m @webwalrus, and I approve this analogy. 
Exactly. I actually wish some devs - Affinity comes to mind - would have a minor upgrade fee for existing customers when new versions come out. And if the Affinity version from 5 years ago doesn’t run on my “upgraded 5 times” OS and new hardware, I don’t expect it to run. But if I paid for it two months ago as a “one time unlock”, and now they tell me that “one time” really means “one year”, that makes me a bit cranky.
I don’t know if this is even still a thing, but for the longest time everybody that was trying to nickel-and-dime you for (whatever service / product) would compare it to the price of a cup of coffee. They seemed to assume that the average person spent $5-$10 per day on COFFEE, and that skipping it were an easy option.
No joke - I saw a church that said if TITHING was hard for you, it would be easy if you just gave up your coffee habit. How much are these people spending on coffee?!?!?!?
Yeah. I subscribe to NotePlan, and although it’s $7/month (less on a yearly basis), it’s incredibly useful to me. The dev also actually replies to emails with bug reports / feature requests. I’ve even had a back-and-forth discussion with him about what I would consider the best way to implement a feature.
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Indeed! I buy my “to go” coffee at McDonalds. It is good enough compared to what I’d pay at Starbucks just a block from the McDonalds! Besides, I drink my coffee black to avoid those calories so I don’t need a $4-$5 cup of “coffee.” 
Besides, I’m willing to give up a lot of things but 
is not one of them!
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All kidding aside, Microsoft 365 is one of the subscription apps that I don’t think is horribly-priced.
Word / Excel used to be almost $140 each. And there was some “home” bundle that was something like $200 to $250 that came with Word, Excel, and something else. The big “pro” package was over $400.
$70 per year for the “personal” 365, and it comes with everything that used to be in “pro” plus 1TB of storage? That’s a pretty good deal. It works out to something like 3 years of subscriptions to equal the previous up-front pricing for what most users would buy (Word + Excel).
And the monthly pricing option means that if you really only need it because you’re doing something temporarily with people that insist on using it, you can shell out a couple months of subscription and let it lapse.
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It is indeed the You Need A Budget app.
Trouble is they have a pretty good monopoly on the market as I’m only aware of one other enveloping budgeting system, and playing with that this morning was pretty poor (Goodbudget).
I guess you don’t exactly own it per se. This is not my background. (Most of my background has been in education). But you should have certain rights that go along with buying it. And I’d contend that you do.
I suppose it may be because I am accustomed to heading to that little itty section of Microcenter which was everything Mac. I paid for an app or two. Then I took the app home and installed and yes I did own it like I would own a book. I wouldn’t have the rights to the book, certainly not. I wouldn’t need to own it in the strictest sense of the word and quite frankly I wouldn’t know what to do with it, nor would I want to (The day I get tech savvy enough to modify software…) .
I’d just use it as it was intended and designed to be used without any untoward modifications. Certain intellectual property rights go along with the software. I wouldn’t dream of stealing someone’s work.
Developers need to be paid like everyone else and to pay for upgrades I would certainly support that. But the way I understand it is Apple gets their share, pushes subscriptions and is calling a lot of the shots, especially insofar as the iPad and the iPhone and yeah the Mac because you have to deal with their hardware.
Also I understand that modifications in the software need to take place to make it current. I agree at least in some respects it is an ongoing process (ignore what I said before. Ha!)
Oh please don’t take Things 3 away from me. Not that I couldn’t live without it but I just got through paying for it (for the fourth time). Grrrr.
Let me put it this way. With subscriptions there is a great deal of money out there. Someone is raking it in. I would be shocked if it were not large corporations in many of these cases. The numbers of subscribers can be staggering.
The App Store has seemingly developed as a milieu of shady characters in some of its corners. Consumers do have certain rights too. So do developers. Developers are also customers. So does Apple. But as it stands now, from my point of view, it is totally skewed. I cannot see the market taking it much longer. People are fed up. There are a lot of money hungry people out there.
And you can still buy it stand-alone. I know that option is hard to find and probably going away soon, but it’s still there.
If I decide that I don’t want continual updates, new features, and collaboration, I can just pay the 1-time fee for the software knowing that it will ALWAYS work on my system as currently configured. If I decide to upgrade I can break that compatibility, but that’s on me. And the developer, fairly paid for their work, doesn’t have to do anything except fix bugs they missed previously.
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Yes, I saw that yesterday, too.
For me it’s not a big deal. My subscription renewed in July, and I have a “YNAB renewal” category that I throw a few bucks at every month. I had to adjust that contribution slightly, but it comes to a whopping $1.35/month extra, taxes included. And for me YNAB is one of those subs that’s worth every penny I pay for it. I’ve been through a major life change in the last couple of years, and YNAB was what helped me prepare for it and really get a handle on my finances (it certainly helps with seeing the tradeoffs involved in any spending choice).
But for those who were previously grandfathered in at $50/year, it’s a big blow. They’ll still get a discount, but that’s not at all the same deal they were getting before.
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I’m with you! Don’t get me wrong; every now and then, I do enjoy a caramel macchiato or an iced vanilla latte at Starbucks. But that’s an occasional treat, not a routine.
I use a Keurig, and I’m fortunate to be able to buy (compostable, minimal plastic) pods in bulk. So when I make my own, I get my coffee for $.40 - $.50 per cup, not $4 - $5.
My wallet likes that a lot better.
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I don’t disagree. To me MS Office was an application suite, and Microsoft 365 is a service. Which is correct Yanny or Laurel? 
Potential “coffee heresy” warning ahead. 
We have a Chemex, because we like the plastic being out of the equation. We brew 2 quarts at a time, and then microwave the leftover the subsequent day. We can have decent-quality flavored coffee with heavy cream and our keto-friendly sweetener of choice that - to me - is as good to my taste buds as anything from the fancy coffee shops. About $0.25 per cup. 
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I don’t do subscriptions which was a decision I came to after Ulysses went subscription several years ago. I decided then to be more careful in my workflow. Which is to say, when possible, I use Apple apps: Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Mail, Pages, etc. For the most part, while not perfect, I’ve found that the default apps are pretty great and always getting better. Given that no paid app ever gets everything exactly as one might want, I’m pretty happy to just have a simplified app ecosystem. Saves me time, money and mental energy.
When I do use other apps I’m now careful to make sure they’re in a format that is not locked in by a proprietary database. Namely, when it comes to text outside of Notes and Pages, I want discreet files as markdown/plain text. I can use/try a plethora of paid apps (if I want to experiment) and know that I’m not locked in.
My only lock-in at this point (outside of the Apple apps) is the Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher ecosystem. I’ll happily pay to upgrade those apps when the time comes. Hoping they never move to subscription!
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