While I’m sympathetic to that, I’ve (somewhat) come around on the notion of “subscription apps” if the developers are responsible with it. I’ve found that in most cases, new features that would probably be held for major version releases (e.g., “this is a feature that would entice you to pay for the upgrade”) just come out when they’re ready; it’s essentially shifting the app to a rolling release model. The traditional commercial model of “buy the new major version and get free updates until the next major version that makes you buy it again, hopefully at a discount” does always give you the option of not upgrading if you don’t want the new features, to be sure, but if you are a regular user and tend to buy upgrades as they come out, the price difference tends to be minimal.
Having said that, I’m not sure a subscription model makes sense for an app like MindNode, since I’d bet a majority of its users only work on mind maps sporadically That’s conjecture on my part, of course, and I could be absolutely wrong, but I suspect people who do everything with mind maps are fairly few and far between. Paying annually for Ulysses, a writing app I really do use every day, is one thing; paying for MindNode, which I use maybe once a quarter, is a big ask.
Yes, sporadic use is a major issue on top of the fact that this is not SaaS and nothing lives in the cloud (which of course I don't want of a document creation tool anyway).
I am all for layers of features that cost money to unlock, but never ever ever on a subscription basis. It's like every developer out there heard that SaaS is where the money is at and decided that applied to their project out of dogma rather than a well reasoned business case.
Ah I didn't realise. I have it through SetApp, which itself is a subscription, albeit an easier subscription to swallow as you get access to a number of great apps.
Yup - without SetApp there are a number of apps I wouldn't otherwise be able to justify spending on individually; but as a group I get more than enough value.
It's a tough balance. Software doesn't age like fine wine sitting on a shelf - it lives in a dynamic environment. It's more akin to produce that will rot over time. Even if no new features are added, it still requires maintenance - by someone.
I will never invest my time into an app that I might need to pay for later if paying for it will require a subscription and it is not an SaaS or cloud based app.
<spews out vitriol>