I've done well and made good money on my own, but launching a new Mac only desktop product these days without a subscription component is hard. Launching one without subscription is even harder, because your revenue is one off.
Apps that are not extremely mainstream are bound to make just a few thousand or a few tens of thousands a year. That is likely not enough to build out a proper app dev team.
I wonder if starting off and growing a bit by being one off the switching wouldn’t be better business. Of course that strategy is considered repugnant by many. But I’m putting that aside.
One weird thing that usually turns me off too much is when the one off payments are less than the subscription per year price. Like Noteplan 3 per year is more than Noteplan 2 Mac and iOS separate purchases.
I actually agree that plenty of apps don't warrant a subscription. Do you want to end up paying a monthly fee for everything? It's a hard one to balance.