<story><title>Coming changes to Apple&apos;s App Store</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11880730/apple-app-store-subscription-update-phil-schiller-interview</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bad_user</author><text>There aren&amp;#x27;t many apps that can save you 1000&amp;#x2F;year. I keep hearing this, but that&amp;#x27;s nonsense. If a &amp;quot;service&amp;quot; is not producing money and isn&amp;#x27;t saving you time allowing you to produce money, then it&amp;#x27;s not worth paying for.&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have subscriptions for IntelliJ IDEA, for Dropbox, for FastMail and for a DigitalOcean VPS. All these are producing money for me. But the list ends here. Because here&amp;#x27;s the thing: $5&amp;#x2F;month here, $10&amp;#x2F;month there and pretty soon we&amp;#x27;re talking about serious money. Not only that, but as soon as you stop paying for whatever reason (eg temporary financial problems) you&amp;#x27;re out.&lt;p&gt;Of course, with our oversized salaries, we stop noticing that $5&amp;#x2F;month for a passwords app is actually expensive. And that&amp;#x27;s actually a good example because a passwords app at least has some utility.&lt;p&gt;More importantly, subscriptions are immoral because the end result is robbing users of any sense of ownership. And as a software developer, you no longer feel compelled to innovate, to improve, in order to convince users to upgrade. I for one hate renting things, I prefer ownership.</text></item><item><author>chasing</author><text>I think the mindset change that needs to happen is this:&lt;p&gt;Apps are a service.&lt;p&gt;I would actually prefer to pay developers of apps that are truly useful to me a monthly amount so I know they can continue to update and improve the app. If an app saves me $1000&amp;#x2F;yr in headache, I&amp;#x27;d prefer to spend $30&amp;#x2F;yr on a subscription rather than lose the app entirely because the developers can&amp;#x27;t keep the lights on.</text></item><item><author>AlexandrB</author><text>As someone who buys a lot of apps this is very disappointing. Things that would make me buy MORE apps (demos, upgrade pricing, better support) are still not in the app store, meanwhile the one pricing model I detest (subscriptions) is being added.&lt;p&gt;I suspect I&amp;#x27;ll be buying far fewer apps if there&amp;#x27;s a mass movement from a purchase model to a subscription model among app developers. I&amp;#x27;m perfectly happy to pay $20-30 for an app (even a simple app) if it provides value and I&amp;#x27;m happy to pay for major upgrades or additional content&amp;#x2F;features, but I won&amp;#x27;t pay $20-30 a year just to maintain the ability to launch an app on an ongoing basis.&lt;p&gt;In addition, after years of terrible search in the app store, coupling search improvements with search-based ads is just a kick in the shins.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chasing</author><text>I want to address two things, here:&lt;p&gt;1) You&amp;#x27;re absolutely right: Pricing matters. If I charge you $10&amp;#x2F;mo for my app that sends you a text message every time there&amp;#x27;s a full moon, that would be way too expensive and you&amp;#x27;d be well within your rights as a consumer to spend your money on something else. As far as I&amp;#x27;m aware, Apple will not force you to subscribe to any apps.&lt;p&gt;2) &amp;quot;... subscriptions are immoral...&amp;quot; Bullshit. And you don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;own&amp;quot; software you buy and pay for once. Operating systems change. Companies and developers come and go. If you value a piece of software, then you value the developer and should desire that they maintain and improve the app.&lt;p&gt;What &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; moral is creating a system by which software developers can support themselves by creating products that are useful to the community. I&amp;#x27;d say the App Store is currently broken in that regard (with a few high-profile exceptions). If popularizing subscription-based pricing will help fix that, I&amp;#x27;m all in favor.</text></comment>
<story><title>Coming changes to Apple&apos;s App Store</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11880730/apple-app-store-subscription-update-phil-schiller-interview</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bad_user</author><text>There aren&amp;#x27;t many apps that can save you 1000&amp;#x2F;year. I keep hearing this, but that&amp;#x27;s nonsense. If a &amp;quot;service&amp;quot; is not producing money and isn&amp;#x27;t saving you time allowing you to produce money, then it&amp;#x27;s not worth paying for.&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have subscriptions for IntelliJ IDEA, for Dropbox, for FastMail and for a DigitalOcean VPS. All these are producing money for me. But the list ends here. Because here&amp;#x27;s the thing: $5&amp;#x2F;month here, $10&amp;#x2F;month there and pretty soon we&amp;#x27;re talking about serious money. Not only that, but as soon as you stop paying for whatever reason (eg temporary financial problems) you&amp;#x27;re out.&lt;p&gt;Of course, with our oversized salaries, we stop noticing that $5&amp;#x2F;month for a passwords app is actually expensive. And that&amp;#x27;s actually a good example because a passwords app at least has some utility.&lt;p&gt;More importantly, subscriptions are immoral because the end result is robbing users of any sense of ownership. And as a software developer, you no longer feel compelled to innovate, to improve, in order to convince users to upgrade. I for one hate renting things, I prefer ownership.</text></item><item><author>chasing</author><text>I think the mindset change that needs to happen is this:&lt;p&gt;Apps are a service.&lt;p&gt;I would actually prefer to pay developers of apps that are truly useful to me a monthly amount so I know they can continue to update and improve the app. If an app saves me $1000&amp;#x2F;yr in headache, I&amp;#x27;d prefer to spend $30&amp;#x2F;yr on a subscription rather than lose the app entirely because the developers can&amp;#x27;t keep the lights on.</text></item><item><author>AlexandrB</author><text>As someone who buys a lot of apps this is very disappointing. Things that would make me buy MORE apps (demos, upgrade pricing, better support) are still not in the app store, meanwhile the one pricing model I detest (subscriptions) is being added.&lt;p&gt;I suspect I&amp;#x27;ll be buying far fewer apps if there&amp;#x27;s a mass movement from a purchase model to a subscription model among app developers. I&amp;#x27;m perfectly happy to pay $20-30 for an app (even a simple app) if it provides value and I&amp;#x27;m happy to pay for major upgrades or additional content&amp;#x2F;features, but I won&amp;#x27;t pay $20-30 a year just to maintain the ability to launch an app on an ongoing basis.&lt;p&gt;In addition, after years of terrible search in the app store, coupling search improvements with search-based ads is just a kick in the shins.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theli0nheart</author><text>&amp;gt; I for one hate renting things, I prefer ownership.&lt;p&gt;I applaud your idealism, but with this attitude, you might as well not buy any apps at all. When you buy an app, or TV show, or pretty much anything digital in 2016, you&amp;#x27;re purchasing a license, not the thing itself. You don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;own&amp;quot; anything.&lt;p&gt;Even if you can download the app you buy in 2016 in 5 years from now, what are the odds that it still works on whatever operating system is still available, on your 2016 hardware? What good is ownership when you can&amp;#x27;t even use what you own?</text></comment>