I think the overall point that what people are feeling is that there’s more than just subscription fatigue, it’s burnout.
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But this could be easily solved by paying for what you need, not for what you want or think you need.
The reality is that for almost all “non power user” people is stock and free apps and done.
It doesn’t bother me to pay for a subscription if it is an app that I use everyday. iA Writer falls into that category. I’m just more diligent about killing off subscriptions if I notice I don’t use the app anymore. I think overall I’m not paying anymore for software than I did when a typical Mac app cost $30 and came in a box. Maybe I’m paying less.
I think it is an artificial distinction, although you’re entitled to have that opinion. Subscriptions are a valid payment option for apps whether or not there’s an additional proprietary cloud or service component. CleanMyMac, Ulysses, Parallels, Luminar, Logo Maker Pro and a lot of other quality apps aren’t services but are worth their subscription prices to many, for reasons already discussed. And that’s without mentioning the 200-app Setapp subscription, which is a solid bargain on the Mac considering the variety of quality apps in it.
Fatigue, burnout - a distinction without a difference, really - it means the same thing. Also, saying “people” feel a thing is pretty nebulous, especially when we’re talking about a self-selected, vocal group on Mac forums. “People” love all sorts of things others loathe - not a particularly useful metric. Anyone for nailing some Jell-O?
Annual paid upgrades could be a viable long-term option for productivity apps if the AppStore would support it and make it equal to subscriptions cutting the fee from 30% (first purchase) to 15% (upgrade purchase).
Right now Apple incentivizes subscriptions. What Agenda did is very complicated to implement and just managing and testing the whole upgrade logic must be a nightmare.
Still one problem remains, and that is you need to promote the annual upgrade, which distracts from the development, since the revenue flattens out quickly after each launch.
Some developers might not have this problem if they are heavily supported by free Apple promotions (being features prominently in the AppStores).
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How dare you besmirch Jello sir! I contend that double-strength batches of Jigglers are perfectly suitable for wall adornment. I digress…
My point, if there is such a thing, is that this phenomenon isn’t isolated to a few people on a forum, but is becoming endemic.
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Is it a point or a speculation? Apple has the realtime stats to know and since it would affect App Store (and developer) revenue one assumes they’d make changes if your statement were true. More, since it is just an option, and since devs intimately know their sales numbers they have a better understanding of fatigue/burnout than you or I, so if fatigue/burnout really were endemic you’d see devs dropping subscriptions and going back to sales.
They haven’t.
Aside from the large number of devs and users wishing for upgrade pricing (count me among them) I don’t hear from devs with subscription pricing who are vociferously opposed to them. (To a small extent that might be prudence in not wanting to anger the great God of Malus Domestica but I really don’t hear anyone who’s in the program and opposes it - and they would oppose it if significant numbers of users oppose it.)
Interesting viewpoint. I’ve just never see it that way. Every job I’ve had I was effectively an entrepreneur even when I was salaried and paid regularly. I still had to account for time sold even as a systems engineer which meant that I had to pay attention to the business even if it wasn’t my “job” per se. And in my area I can’t think of anyone I know that has what most folks call a regular job, everyone here is gig work or farming and most folks anve at least 2 part time jos, usually in very different industries. Heck even the coal miners have very irregular pay as they get hours cut depending on the market. High environmental standards and our local coal mines do a booming business in compliance coal because of how cleanly it burns. Relax the environmental standards and our mines reduce hours and production. Farming in all forms is almost never an industry where you can get a set paycheck.
Could I sign up and get a pound every month? 
One of the things I miss most about the pandemic is eating out. NYC has Keens Steakhouse, opened in 1885, which legendarily specializes in mutton, and used to cook over 400 mutton chops orders a week. (It also owns and displays the largest collection of churchwarden pipes in the world, which underscores its eccentricity.)
The only time I’ve ever been to NYC was (coincidentally) on my 48th birthday, and a very dear friend took me out for dinner there 
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Sure, but you have to come pick it up at the farm. Shipping meat is a royal PITA for a small farm. Just the foam coolers and dry ice that are required cost between $8-10 per package, pus hazardous materials shipping fees are huge for small volume shippers. I’ve done it, sent meat to NYC to a restaurant for a special event and to special events in San Francisco and in Phoenix but I hate to do it as it costs more for the shipping than the meat.
I’d love to visit there someday.
The place we sold meat to was for Angie Mar at Beatrice Inn.The key was I could provde the name of the sheep and full details from birth to on the plate and that was important to them. We were the only place in the country that had that level of individual carcass level traceability in mutton that was USDA processed and legal to ship across state lines and that was the requirement.
From my perspective, I would tend to agree. It’s generally not the subscription that I mind, but rather the amount. But the amounts are frequently high enough that I just avoid the subscriptions entirely.
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I think this is getting to be more common, but there are large enough areas where the “old normal” still holds.
That said, I wonder if the prevalence of “gig work” helps or hurts the analysis for some people. If they view creating an app as a one-off sort of thing, kind of like a “gig”, then the idea of subscriptions wouldn’t make sense in that context either.
Yeah - and you definitely have my sympathies in that regard! From everything I’ve heard, it’s one of the bizarre professions where having wild success (so many crops / animals the prices drop due to decreased demand) and wild failure (not having any crops / animals due to bad weather, environmental issues, etc.) can both tank one’s business.
You can start a subscription box! MuttonMail™. Just build an extension to LambTracker to track the box subscriptions and projected demand.
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Once I perversely got a hamburger there. Wrong choice.
I agree that virtuously getting a hamburger there would be the better choice, but a steak would likely be best of all 
I make a habit of trying burgers at NY steakhouses. The famed Peter Luger steakhouse requires sometimes long reservations for normal steak meals, but it’s a cinch to walk in and get a hamburger and frites at the bar. And they have great burgers. (Sadly not at Keens.)
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As far as habits go, it’s not a bad one (at least as long as they let you buy them outright, instead of charging you as subscription).
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A Peter Luger subscription sounds amazing.
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