Is there a reason why so many services seem to be increasingly using their own cloud services to sync? What's wrong with tapping on existing infrastructure such as iCloud or Dropbox? They make it sound like a plus, but I am not sure exactly what the value add is.
The value addition is not to you. It is to the developer, in the sense that now your data resides in one more place - and not your place - his place, and this can often serve to discourage people from kissing the app goodbye when they decide they have had enough. Just another deterrent is a value addition that has great power over simple task users of apps who know just to use the app for the purpose, not to manage the devices and such.
I can erase my iPhone anytime because I know that my contacts, bookmarks and such are always in iCloud and synced. Here, the moment I stop paying, I have to look at export options, import options in another software, and what not, and instead of all that, I would only then think to keep the subscription rolling, if I did not know better.
Subscriptions work for software that is very actively developed and that has reached a certain scale of complexity. Now, everyone wants to have a subscription service. I'd like to know, being developers themselves and deciding to charge a hefty subscription, how many subscriptions do these DO guys have currently, and how many are they willing to add on to their lives? Let's see if they will love sacrificing so many coffees a month that they cannot drink one a day anymore without someone sacrificing his coffee for these guys to drink theirs. This coffee example is a pathetic example. They should be able to command what they ask, not just demand citing such low examples. They are not beggars, why ask people to skip a coffee and subscribe? Just give them enough value to keep paying. Not easily done, I get it, I know it, but that is the level I would hold myself to if I was in commercial app development, as I am in content writing. The comparison to coffee, or anything else, is fundamentally incorrect. It only always shows lack of confidence in your own product/ service.
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When an app only has a small core user base, they're incited to instead do a subscription model so they can experience some vague notion of revenue stability and predictability over time.
And they should behave responsibly at that time, and stick to focusing on creating the best possible user experience with the best possible feature set that users demand and that they can conceive, bring it out next version and charge, bring out another great feature set and charge again, maybe yearly.
Underlying thing is that you have to have a very solid base, not user base, but base of your service, and you have to have a very clear vision into the future direction of your service. You cannot cite MS or Adobe and say that hey, what's another coffee or two?
I paid for version 1. I have a lot of paid apps on iOS and on Mac and never did I think that hey, this developer just changed version number and charged me the full price again. Why? Because all the apps I use, they offered serious advantages over the previous version and I saw that price is justified if I want those new enhancements.
Why do I pay roughly $12-14 for MS per month? Because I do not want to get stuck with a hefty tag right now, and when it spreads out over 5 years, at the end of that term I still have the version and feature set I bought, while if I had subscribed and spread my payment across the term, it would not only be friendlier on the wallet but also allow me to remain up to date with the apps. Win-win situation. Definitely NOT with DayOne.
Adobe has decided that there are apps that you can use forever, and we will have another set of apps that are in active development with constant fixes and feature-additions every few months, and charge a subscription. Fair enough for those who need to use it, who see value. Why? Because they are offering constant developmental front-end changes. I do not need it, so I have not taken it.
Over the years, I have paid for 4 versions of Rapidweaver from Realmac Software, got key to latest version free from them (I had only talked to them about my inability to pay the discounted upgrade price because it was showing full price instead, and due to some last minute time zone issue, they responded with a free key), so I was willing to pay for that version upgrade as well, 2 versions of Art Text from Belight Software, 3 versions of Swift Publisher from Belight and 4th I got free because of a small technical issue to which they decided to give me the key free, I have Transmit 4 and I will py for Transmit 5 if it comes to payment, I have Infuse on my iPhone I have paid for 2 versions of it already. I have a Todoist subscription since 2 years. I pay for Quickbooks subscription since 3 years. I have a Webshots biennial subscription as well. I paid for Things and Things 2. Since I moved to Todoist I did not pay for Things 3 that came out now. I purchased Studiometry 10 and then upgraded to 11 as well when it came out.
So, just like me, people in general are definitely not against payment. They support the developers and understand that major versions are the times when developers will ask for payment again, mostly because they have a substantial betterment to offer. All of the examples above offered significant enough upgrades that I did not feel ONCE that I am being robbed. Swift Publisher, for example, in its latest version 5 does not offer too many differences from version 4, and its price reflects that, just $20. Lowest ever for Swift Publisher. So, I know that the developers are fair and honest as well. They know they need to charge, and they are charging in proportion of what they are offering.
People are against payment when they are not able to see that much upgrade in value to justify the payment asked for it. Resolve that, instead of arguing about one or two coffees and Apple subscription model with new iPhones every year and what not. That is just not only bad taste but bad argument, because of which it is bad taste. Which is what is happening with this backlash with DO. These guys are not offering that value to people for them to have went subscription based.
