Then uuuuh stop using them?
What I can’t stand is when platforms don’t take no for an answer.
Every fucking visit to Dropbox: “Upgrade to Standard!”
Every check out on Amazon: "Upgrade to Prime!
Every time I open Walmart: “Upgrade to Walmart+”
I fucking can’t stand it.
Would you like to activate this annoying feature!
- Yes.
- Remind me later.
I’ve only purchased like 3 apps in like 15 years. Every now and then I donate to an open source project. I used to pay for Office, Adobe Cloud, Sony Vegas way back in the day. What happened was the free and open source became far beyond capable than my technical ability and if I needed pay software, it was for work at a company that purchased licenses themselves. It was fast forward in mobile apps. There was already 20 years of open source desktop software being adapted to mobile even if less limited it covered what I and many people would want to do with a mobile device was quickly covered.
Now it’s a matter of getting people to stumble on your software first and get them to pay before they learn of any of the truly free stuff. Cloud services where storage/processing is fully off your device and way better in ways are what can’t be fully replicated as a free service for people. A NAS can work out to be cheaper for storage but way less functional and more hassle for most people
Very little pisses me off like downloading a ‘free’ app and immediately being hit with a paywall for a subscription without so much as a free trial. Those devs can go fuck themselves. Their app is NOT free and should not be marked as such.
Alternatively, shit like what Accuweather did also pisses me off. Years ago, they had a one time payment to remove ads permanently. I paid, because I like their service and didn’t mind kicking a few bucks their way to support development. A few months later, they introduced a sub model that locked many existing features behind a wall and started showing me ads again. I immediately uninstalled that shit, sent them a scathing email (which I recognize does nothing, but made me feel good), and found an alternative.
I’m cool with paying a few bucks for an ad free version as long as it’s not a subscription. But it’s annoying that it’s often only available as an in-app purchase that doesn’t work without google play services.
I would love to have an overview before I install an app what it might cost. Play store lists at least minimum and maximum in-app-purchases, but the information is not very visible and I cannot filter my results based on it. And if need to pay for a subscription on the app website it will not be reflected at all.
Developers should be forced to provide an outline what you get for free (if they decide to advertise/sell their app as free) and what the different payment/subscription tiers include.
Of all places Microsoft Windows Store does it quite well for some apps (like MS Office), but also does not enforce it for all apps.
It also gives you no clue whether those prices are one-off purchases or monthly subscriptions, making them entirely useless.
$3.99, sounds like a dea… per month… YOU BASTARDS.
Honestly, these days I use fdroid as my primary app store. It’s been an amazing way to cut through the junk and find great apps.
Same but with the droidify client. FOSS is life.
Paying once is fine. Subs are not to be tolerated.
Subs are fine for services. I personally also think they provide a better incentive structure. But they’re often abused
I think the ideal model is something like 1-time purchase w/ 12 months of updates.
Software does often require ongoing maintenance. So after 12 months, no more updates, and it works as long as it continues to work, without any new features or patches. Updates are an optional fee for like 10-20% of purchase price.
Yeah, you can’t expect devs to actively work on an app indefinitely just because you gave them a few bucks that one time. It makes no sense financially if the app isn’t exceptionally successful.
IIRC app stores downrank apps that are not regularly updated too, hence the vague “bug-fixes and improvements” updates in many apps. But seriously, how much could a developer update in a calculator, habit/medicine tracker, sky map, or any other app that is a complete feature?
It could be updated to follow the newest design guidelinestm
As with anything, nuance exists. Does a monthly / annual donation to a FOSS developer count as a subscription?
I have a few things I’ve paid once for additional function or even banner ad removal that don’t receive updates. Though at a glance I don’t see anything I have installed that has a recurring cost and receives no updates.
I suppose there’s a fine difference between what I consider a subscription, and supporting active development of something I use regularly, but that difference probably varies person to person.
I blame Apple for setting the standard of $1-$3 for an app with lifetime updates. And also for making it so old apps stop working on newer OSes after just a few years. The business model was broken from the start. It was great at first but the bubble burst in record time.
That was nearly unheard of just 20 years ago.
I understand your sentiment, but a lot of that isn’t right.
Early iPhone apps were going for $10-20. So many developers being okay with just data harvesting plus so many devices out there made the $0.99 / free with ads model dominate – people got used to “free” apps from the big guys (Facebook, Google, whoever).
iOS apps are pretty resilient to OS updates. They usually only totally break when huge changes happen (dropping 32-bit support, etc) and those happen once a decade.
Tons of Windows software didn’t survive the 3.1 to 95 transition. A bunch died on 98 to XP, too. In the Apple world, a lot got left behind on the Mac when they went from PowerPC to Intel processors in 2007, or when they dropped 32-bit libraries.
I’d make the distinction between paid app and subscriptions. I think most people don’t mind paying once for something. But every single thing is nowadays a subscription model, it’s ridiculous.
To a certain extent I get it though. It’s one of the fundamental failings of the App Store. In the olden days you paid for a piece of software and whatever was on the disc is what you got. When next year’s version came out you had to go to the store and pay for that one too or call the number on the shareware screen. When the App Store came out all of a sudden Apple and their customers expected devs to keep supporting apps on newer platforms with changing APIs. You can’t develop with no income, so developers turned to subscriptions and similar.
There needs to be a better way but Apple makes money off the way it works now.
Also most people do not want to pay for an app. They simply don’t.
They either don’t mind the ads or just buy a subscription, but don’t even think about spending like 1€ once to never be bothered.
A ‘free’ app the trys to shove either a sub or purchase is the same annoyance.
Unpopular opinion: I’m fine with any try before you buy model as long as (1.) it’s clearly stated up front before downloading and also (2.) it allows you to try enough of the app to decide if it does what you want or not
It’s better this way actually from my experience. You can test the app for free and then pay once you determine if it’s worth it.
I have used several apps that needed up front payment, only to find afterwards they lacked specific features, or didn’t work the way I expected. In those cases I had to try my luck with the refund process. Sometimes I got refunded, other times just got fucked over.
The article likes to say that apps want money for the shareholders, but I have seen lots of one-dev apps go the subscription route. It’s simple, all apps require ongoing work, paying a few bucks once is not sustainable.
Yup. Even if you don’t change anything in your app, it still requires maintenance to run on newer devices.
Then use FOSS apps.
Atleast they kindly ask, NOT “BUY THE PAID VERSION OR FUCK YOU, NOTHING FOR YOU, GO TO HELL”.Enshitification
You can either have 0 of my money forever
Or you can have a reasonable amount of it for lifetime access, at minimum, to the version I purchased
Then don’t use them?
