What about them?
One single data point doesn't negate what I wrote.
There are some companies that are doing fine; like Bare Bones Software with BBEdit as well.
The oldest macOS shops are still doing fine because they had enough experience and users to carry them through.
Omnigroup is doing just fine post-app store. They continue to charge reasonable prices for their software, and charge for regular upgrades. The products are maturing, the major feature improvements are fewer and further between, but actual users pay to upgrade to stay current on their platform. There's none of the fragmentation to say is inevitable. They've leveraged the ecosystem to grow across multiple devices.
They don't need to run multi-platform to survive. They're managing updates just fine. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the economics of software development-- you need enough revenue to cover your costs and feed your employees.
Nobody is forcing these companies to change business models. What I'm saw is a bunch of new little devs without much business acumen chasing downloads rather than revenue. What you're saying is that customers will keep racing to the bottom-- serious customers don't. I've paid well clear of $100 for apps on the App Store that are solid applications. I'm pretty sure I've paid over $50 on some high quality games. When they get upgraded every few years or whatever, I'll pay the upgrade fee if the upgrade provides additional value.
People seem to think profits come from massive market share or really high prices-- it doesn't come at either of those extremes... It comes at finding the optimal number of customers at an optimal price. Making your money by holding your users data for ransom or leeching off the fact that people tend to keep paying subscriptions long after they stopped getting value from a product is unethical.
The reason developers like subscription isn't because they "don't have to wait to release new features"-- it's because their revenue is smooth and predictable regardless of how many features they release. If you have built up a lot of data in their application, they don't have to develop anything at all-- you'll just keep paying because you don't want to lose your data. Lightroom is a classic example-- can't move your non-destructive edits to another app, so you're kinda stuck.
Subscriptions are for things that actually carry recurring costs. I pay a subscription for my cellular plan because the carrier has recurring costs associated with my usage. People pay for iCloud storage because there's recurring costs associated with powering and maintaining the servers. Writing a new note in my existing Notability application doesn't cost Ginger Labs a single cent. There's nothing to charge me for. Future features? It's not freaking kickstarter-- I'll pay when they're done. That's called an upgrade.
I don't have many subscription apps, but I suspect there's constant marketing about "all the great features we're working on" to keep people hooked and hoping that something good comes through the pipe to justify whatever they're paying monthly. Feature isn't done this month, doesn't matter, ship it next month-- they'll get paid either way.
Subscriptions completely pervert the incentive structure for product.
But fine, if that's what a developer wants to do, and a customer is willing to jump onto that hamster wheel, more power to 'em. But for a developer to install a remote kill switch into an application you bought assuming you could rely on it? That's simply unethical.
