> he was sure users preferred new features to bug fixes for old ones
He's probably right (if you think of users as being the person who approves the payment). I can't imagine the CFO at a Fortune 500 company approving a few million dollars to be spent on bug fixes. The obvious question would be "why did we pay for defective software in the first place?".
So perhaps one side effect of the subscription model will be less buggy software, since the business model relies more on keeping users than getting them to upgrade.
Yep. This is why Excel is actually a really good spreadsheet: the people who approve the purchase are in fact the people using it - the bosses and the accountants.
He's probably right (if you think of users as being the person who approves the payment). I can't imagine the CFO at a Fortune 500 company approving a few million dollars to be spent on bug fixes. The obvious question would be "why did we pay for defective software in the first place?".
So perhaps one side effect of the subscription model will be less buggy software, since the business model relies more on keeping users than getting them to upgrade.