> The "middle ground" has been the most common model for desktop app pricing for decades. You buy version X of a product. When the next major version is released you pay an upgrade price.

Mobile app stores killed that model, when they made continuous, perpetual updates the norm. At the time, everybody was too busy pointing out the implications of going from 50$ to 50ct when the even bigger change was a farewell to major version upgrade sales.

But there, after a few cycles of companies ruining themselves by hiring in the short-lived money surge of growing an app to saturation, parts of the industry seem to have found their way to quite reasonably priced subscriptions.