How do you pay developers to continuously fix bugs, provide security updates and update their software when the underlying hardware and operating system changes?
Have we really strayed so far that everyone's forgotten how this is done? Security fixes and serious bug fixes should always be free (At least going back N-1. You price that work into the sale price to begin with), and you get ongoing revenue by selling new versions.
This works exactly up until the moment that your software is good enough that most of your userbase stops paying to upgrade. Then you are dead in the water, and the software becomes abandonned by design.
There's a reason farmers want the ability to repair their own tractors without having to give John Deere an extra cut, you know.
Two decades ago, for instance Apple was still selling PPC based Macs.
George R.R. Martin pretty famously uses WordStar on DOS. I can't imagine it'd be some win for consumers (either Martin personally, or downstream enjoyers of his books) if he had to be on the latest internet-connected, ad-infested, notification-riddled copy of Windows just so that his OS and Office Suite could repeatedly check to make sure he still has an active subscription and a valid "digital entitlement."
I still use Office 2010. (Though it gets increasingly difficult to activate it, and it last received security updates in 2020.) In 2010 I was using x86_64 (an Athlon 64 X2), and today I'm using x86_64. Why should I upgrade? It happens to still run on Windows 11, but I'd gladly stuff it in a VM to continue using it. (I do use Office <current 365 build> for work, so I can pretty confidently say there is nothing worth paying for in there. The only feature even remotely interesting is PowerQuery for Excel, which is available as an add-in for Office 2010.)
We each get 1TB of online storage.
Compare that to the $599 that Office for Mac use to cost and that you could only use on one computer.
Of course there is, but that's why software in a box cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per version, with minimal bug or security updates thereafter. The grass is always greener, yeah it's a pain in the ass having a ton of $10/mo subscriptions. But I'd much rather have that - as both a consumer and a developer - than have $800 single-sale purchases.
They will still need to buy a new version or should that be free?
If the author of BBEdit never added a feature since 1991. You would have still had to pay for new versions to run on your PPC/Classic MacOS, OS X PPC, x86 Mac and now your ARM Mac.
Back in the “good old days” MS Office cost $595 for each version if you had a Mac and Windows PC.
Now it’s $99/year for five users and you can run on your Mac, Windows, iPad, iPhone, web, or Android device.
The same for Photoshop.
And you get continuous features added as the platform vendor and software vendor add more capabilities.