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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

Still strange that apps that work fully locally and thus don't entail any running costs are a subscription. Adobe did it first but they at least threw in some cloud stuff (that no one uses) to try to justify the subscription.

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How is that strange? What about maintenance and regular updates?

What happened with people using one single version of something for 10 years? If there's a major update, it's a separate product that's a paid upgrade. We've had that figured out since the 90s. And quality software doesn't need maintenance.

FCP and Logic are highly optimized for Apple's CPU and GPUs. They fully utilize all cores and operate in a way that won't bring the general OS to a grinding halt if you're encoding in the background. Additionally, Apple updates these to provide all the latest video and audio encoding available on their devices.

Doing all of this requires significant engineering and licensing (Dolby) that comes at a cost.

Sure but none of that should fall under "maintenance". Apple makes a new SoC and needs to optimize Logic for it? Fine, issue a paid upgrade but make it optional since it has 0 impact on my M1 Mac. They add a new feature like Dolby support? Again, make the update optional if it's paid since a lot of people (me incl) don't care about it. The entire point is to not cut off access to one's offline workflow if money is tight which is absolutely possible for tools like Logic and FinalCut.

What is the difference between maintenance and regular updates? If I for software it should be complete, correct, and secure.

No new features? Fair enough.

I’m generally okay with subscriptions for software without running costs if I get to keep using the last version I paid for when I cancel.

Paying hundreds of pounds and having nothing to show for it is fucking lame.

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