Exactly.
And if you run a business... the cost of software and upgrades shouldn't matter too much since it's a business expense.
But if you can go the subscription route... why not save some money and get updates as they become available?
And let's not forget that Adobe never really made software for "normal" people. As someone said earlier... it's not for hobbyists.
The people who balked at the $700 price for Photoshop and $250 for upgrades probably shouldn't be buying that software anyway. Or $2,600 for Master Collection and $1,200 for upgrades. It's not for them.
Adobe do EOL older versions of their software that were pre-subscription model, keeping various older versions in maintenance mode takes up resources - there should be a line to draw where developers stop supporting old products.
FCPX (now renamed back to FCP) has had major feature upgrades for years now and one purchase from years ago has entitled every single person to free unlimited updates on the current App Store model.
This is what prevents regular developers from being able to produce 'paid-for' updates - where people pay a fee to upgrade say a v1 to a v2 which they would have done in the past. Thing is, this leaves people who want to continue using v1 forever 'because they have paid for software and want it to work forever' expect to have the developer keep patching it to work with annual macOS updates and now architecture changes (from Intel to ARM).
Developers including Apple have to shoulder this model, where the initial fee is the only money that they will ever get from a customer and the only way to get more is to increase the user base. Difficult when, for example, a photo DAM like Lightroom or Aperture has only a limited probable user base - Apple already killed off Aperture likely because the bottom line was being affected and it was no longer economic to keep going for a user base who had already paid their initial fee - sometimes multiples years prior - and were complaining about lack of updates.
OK, so how do developers get a more reasonable income stream when version number updates can't be done? It seems the App Store would only support a subscription model for which there is a lot of resistance. I would suggest that price sensitivity is an issue.
They probably don't want to support multiple major versions on an optional upgrade basis - EOLing them after a set number of years. That's a lot of splintering for support costs and I can't see it being reasonable for small developers to keep a v1, v2, v3 etc in active support for a long time.
I can say that the Photoshop/Lightroom subscription model isn't too bad (prices of around $100 per year, there is a version with more Creative Cloud storage), and Office 365 is great value (1Tb, 5 users, industry standard software for $80 a year) and those guys rely on a large user base willingly paying.
Look at other major app developers who are seeing vocal resistance for their software update policy. I would argue because the monthly price is too high. Imagine password managers costing more in a year than previous versions of their app used to cost to buy outright? It might have been more palatable for more users had they priced so this fee was attained every two years perhaps.
I would say that a transition to a subscription model might perhaps also include a free variant with a set of features that are maintained and bug fixed (like Davinci Resolve) but with newer subscription features being actively developed for subscription fee. The idea of original content, add ons, and perhaps a discount on other Apple services might give extra value to the software itself.
The most obvious selling point could be including 1Tb of iCloud tier with a 'Pro App subscription' just like Microsoft throw in 1Tb of One Drive with Office 365.
So Apple could start selling a Pro tier of iCloud (with the fine grained bells and whistles that One Drive has) along with subscription access to 'Pro Pro' versions of FCP and Logic Pro (and obviously Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc), and tutorial, clip art, etc.
So for the sake of example, purchasing and maintaining FCP while paying for a high tier of iCloud storage gets you a special upgraded version of that software while the existing paid-for software is maintained at a slower pace.
What if this 'pro' tier included 1Tb of iCloud (or more) from $9.99 a month and any owners of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro get access to the so-called subscription version of
What if Apple released a Lite version of both of these packages (with a lower buy-in price) to get more users onboard, and then offered the same subscription version while users were subscription to 'iCloud Pro'?
As log as the price wasn't ludicrous they'd still get more users who would appreciate the iCloud space while then being allowed to use the pro software which would then get a perpetual upgrade budget.
