Windows 8

[Quintillus]

I would cheer any software company forcing users to adopt subscription based solutions. As I've explained, it incentivizes developers to make their software better, instead of incentivizing them to make people want to stop using old versions.

Isn't there already a pretty good incentive to make your software better if it's non-subscription? The only way you'll get money again is if you can convince your users to pay for the upgrade to a newer version - i.e. you have to make it better.

I agree with Aimee on one-time vs. subscription... if it's something you're going to be using a fair amount, one-time is the better deal. Subscription services generally equal the perpetual license cost in 3-5 years, and since I rarely find it necessary to upgrade for every version, perpetual licenses usually win out - especially when lower costs for upgrade licenses are considered.

If you needed to always be on the latest and greatest, subscriptions might make sense. And if you wanted to try something for a couple months, they might. But I won't be buying any for my personal needs anytime soon.

 

[Zelig]

Isn't there already a pretty good incentive to make your software better if it's non-subscription? The only way you'll get money again is if you can convince your users to pay for the upgrade to a newer version - i.e. you have to make it better.

No, making new versions better and making old versions unwanted via planned obsolesces are quite different.

Even discounting that, subscription software has to be updated much more quickly to match competitors. Nobody is going to stop using Photoshop the month after they dish out $500 for it because a competitor's subscription based service is better than Photoshop. However, after six months of paying $50/month without any upgrades to Photoshop, jumping ship at no cost starts to look pretty good.

I agree with Aimee on one-time vs. subscription... if it's something you're going to be using a fair amount, one-time is the better deal.

Do you have an example, other than MS Office 2007?

Subscription services generally equal the perpetual license cost in 3-5 years, and since I rarely find it necessary to upgrade for every version, perpetual licenses usually win out - especially when lower costs for upgrade licenses are considered.

Upgrade licenses are quasi-subscriptions.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Matter is, I was saving up money to get a copy of Adobe Premiere for hobby stuff (machinima-making, for instance). But if it's going subscription-based, I won't be able to afford to pay a fee per month and I'm already looking at other alternatives.

 

[Zelig]

If Adobe Premier Pro costs $1000, once you have $1000 saved you can purchase the subscription, and you're covered for 4.16 years. If you toss the money into something-interest bearing at 5%, you're covered for 4.75 years. Hell, if you save up $4800 and put that into something interest bearing, that covers your subscription fee indefinitely, with the bonus of having a totally liquid five grand lying around.

 

[Archbob]

I pay for a version of photoshop for $500, I use it for 5-6 years before going to the next version. its vastly cheaper than this subscription based stuff their doing. I don't need all those new features. You should not be forced to upgrade if you don't want to upgrade.

 

[Zelig]

If you're okay with using Photoshop CS3 instead of CS6, you're okay with using GIMP and saving your $500 in the first place.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I haven't really found a decent free alternative to the high end video edit programs though. VirtualDub is great, but can only go so far.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

I updated to gimp 2.8 only to discover it still had a application breaking bug regarding scripts which would cause it to crash loosing me up to hours of work. Luckily I can go back to 2.6 which works fine with my plugins and filters. Now if Gimp was a service, I would have had mine "upgraded" and broken without the option to rollback.

A similar thing happened with the new G-mail web-mail UI. Although it contained no program breaking bugs there was no way to effectively roll back to the previous look and functionality.

So to all those of you who cheer on all the up-to-the-minute seamless releases and patches, just wait until you get shoot in the foot by a botched patch pushed by the little dictators.

 

[Zelig]

Complaints against services don't really work when you're not paying for them.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

You mean free services are guaranteed to screw you over at every opportunity whereas trusted and paid for services such as Windows Update won't ever break what they are intended to fix/improve?

 

[Zelig]

Windows Update isn't a paid for service.

I mean that any given example of "free service A did something I didn't like" has no relevance to the overall utility of software as a service. If a service has a track record of doing things you don't like stop using it, the market will deal with it.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Eh, truth is it's pretty tricky to stop using Windows Updates when Microsoft has been known to push updates out without user permission. I'm in the middle of something right now so I don't have time to dig up a link, but once or twice I've found my computer rebooted from the update process even though I had it set to notify-only.

 

[Zelig]

Windows Update isn't a service by any reasonable definition of SAAS, you shouldn't stop using it. If you don't want it to reboot, turn off auto-updates.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well, auto-updating is turned off, and yet it had rebooted anyways when I hadn't even touched the updates.

 

[Archbob]

If you're okay with using Photoshop CS3 instead of CS6, you're okay with using GIMP and saving your $500 in the first place.

There are many things in CS6, you don't need. CS3 does everything I want and its light years ahead of GIMP. The UI in CS3 is still good and it doesn't crash every 5 minutes. You have no idea what your talking about. GIMP just sucks.

One of the worst things about Adobe is that they stop supporting earlier versions once a new ones comes out and usually the new version doesn't have any great outstanding features over the old one. Most graphic design artists and indies hate it. It one of their most common complaints.

 

[Zelig]

There are many things in CS6, you don't need. CS3 does everything I want and its light years ahead of GIMP. The UI in CS3 is still good and it doesn't crash every 5 minutes. You have no idea what your talking about. GIMP just sucks.

I don't have problems mixing up measurements of distance with quantifications of quality, or of having any of my programs crash every 5 minutes.

One of the worst things about Adobe is that they stop supporting earlier versions once a new ones comes out and usually the new version doesn't have any great outstanding features over the old one. Most graphic design artists and indies hate it. It one of their most common complaints.

Well I guess Adobe might as well close up shop, seems their job is done.

 

[Iranon]

Many successful proprietary software suites are overloaded with questionable features that would make more sense as external utilities - they exist mostly to lock users into the ecosystem.

*

Free is usually better than outdated, but sometimes the latter makes sense:

The Free Software flagships are usually good but seem made for amateurs/enthusiasts.
Too involved for casual users, and following an internal logic that may not be apparent.
Refusing to follow any weirdness just because it's usual practice in the relevant industries... at least by default and without hunting for extensions.

And of course, some people who use certain programs at work may prefer to use a predecessor at home, rather than a more capable but completely different program.

 

[Zelig]

Many successful proprietary software suites are overloaded with questionable features that would make more sense as external utilities - they exist mostly to lock users into the ecosystem.

Which is exactly what SAAS avoids!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've seen services that don't have any sort of meaningful export, so the only option is to literally copy and paste everything by hand.

The ability to migrate data is very important to me after a developer suddenly went AWOL and I couldn't find any way to get the data inside the files out so it was lost.

 

[Zelig]

Yes, I recommend not using services or programs that don't have good data export features, regardless of their cost.