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I paid $75 December 2013 and then a similar amount as you in 2021 when I set up a system for my parents.

$750 is insane considering how little they care about user feedback.

The lifetime model isn't sustainable, that's why they're pricing it out.

It had been sustained for something like 14 years, though?

Yep, but there’s a limit to everything.

At some point you hit market saturation and the forever users are just costing you money and new user acquisition isn’t enough to offset it.

Nobody likes the subscription model but it’s the easiest way to sustain constant development bigger than side hustle projects.

It isn't sustainable in the context of their desire to pivot to being a streaming service, along with their desire to blow resources on repeatedly redesigning the apps to make the UI slower and buggier.

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