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Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

Definitely not peak, my kid asked for a Rubik's Cube solver app which turned out to be subscription based, then wanted to tune her Ukelele with an app which turned out to be subscription based.

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Gotta keep up with pitch inflation!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch

That's what makes me sad about the current Tetris game, on iOS.

One of my favorite games ever, and I'd gladly pay for an ad-free version, but they don't have it. I assume there's much more money to be made with ads, over subscriptions.

A penetrating observation that feels true. Too bad.

Oh, the Rubik's Cube app has both actually - the subscription gets rid of the ads you have to watch to get more solves.

I think there's money to be made with both, but there's more money to be made by not maintaining two separate models, so ads win.

It's not that rare for games to offer a "remove ads" option for a few bucks. That model doesn't require a lot of extra "maintenance".

I think a few bucks for ad-free brings in more money for most developers, but that still pales in comparison to a recurring subscription model (or models where people keep spending in-app on consumables).

Play the Gameboy version. I bought every single official Tetris version and they all suck in conparison.

Gameboy emulators are now available again in the iOS app store or even as a a web app. Or just play on real hardware.

This sort of nonsense is what I think will drive adoption of AI for personal apps. Tell it to create a ukulele tuning app and you get one without ads without subscription that you can make work exactly how you want. I wonder whether this is something that only privacy and tech oriented folk will do and care about our whether it will be adopted generally.

The source of this problem is that it costs $99/year + the churn of having to keep up with the latest ios api updates to have an app for iphones. Which kills the normal free software that would have filled this role. As well as the fact that the subscription apps can pay for adverts to sit at the top of the search results.

Once governments force Apple to allow sideloading we should get some kind of f-droid for ios which only lists open source user respecting apps.

Meanwhile Google is going to block apps sideloading in Sep 2026, including F-Droid installed.

Only applies to Android. Apple make it deliberately expensive to publish apps and deliberately annoying to run your own apps locally (have to refresh every 7 days).

Metronome apps are paid now or have an 'ad' tier. I took my money and spent it on a real metronome.

Did you buy it or show them a better way of doing it?

Man, you don't want to know. But I guess I've answered you anyway.

This is why some hardware is still supreme. I've had the same Korg chromatic tuner for 20 years and would not be in the least bit surprised if it goes for another 40.

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