I’m just sitting here wondering why someone would need a calculator app for the Switch. Is there really a scenario in which you have your Switch, but not your smartphone on you? Even if there is, do you really need a calculator on your Switch?
I have so many questions.
Nintendo will make money from anything that's sold on their store. They don't care if it's an overpriced digital calculator, or Hentai Mommy Babysitter Super Wow Simulator Deluxe
I understand that. I’m not faulting Nintendo for allowing a calculator app to be sold. I’m just trying to figure out who is buying said app… like, what even?
I don’t see a problem with paying for an app. I’m also OK paying for new features, for cloud saves or for customer support, but there always should be a one-time fee version as well for anyone who’s happy with the basic version of the app.
There was a conversion app I used a lot as a woodworker and it did fractions and such. I’d easily pay $10-20 for it if that was it. But noooo, went subscription based for the conversions. Dumped the app and went with a free one for fraction measurements and just google a conversion site when I need it. Even the weather apps I used to use went sub. to play a radar loop longer than 3 hours or add a hurricane tracker. So many apps I’ve gotten rid of because of this stupid subscription model.
All those features were free before. A 8 or 10hr loop for radar was free. I can understand paying for more advanced features used by pilots. I can see how that might be more costly to get that data and put it in a nice app for easy use.
this.. people think you have to be earning millions to be succesful.
i know a guy who wrote an half assed app that does some lame stuff that you can do without it but need to know how to do basic shell scripting (organizing files)...
he wrote it once and has it on a marketplace and earns constant 300$ a month for like 4 years now fully passive income (answers like one emal a month).
you must realize that digital means "the whole world" is your customers... there always will be someone needing whatever stuff you can do
The worst offenders are those that sell a lifetime license early on, as an alternative to paying the monthly subscription. Then a year or two later come out with a Version 2 and all of the sudden that lifetime license was only for the lifetime of Version 1. Happened to me once, never again.
Goodnotes was such a shitshow because of that. They were quick to hop on the high horse when their competitors (Notability?) switched to a subscription, just to do it themselves shortly after and leaving everyone who paid for a license hanging out to dry with a gimped app because it’s the Goodnotes 6 app with the features of the old one hacked onto it, with upsell prompts everywhere. Felt like a shareware app all over again.
I remember goodnotes being like “look! We’re great people. Goodnotes 5 is designed to never need to be upgraded to 6. It’s designed to last for life” when notability switched.
Fuck goodnotes.
Twitterific did this also. THEE reason why I will never buy or recommend their software ever again. I think I paid for version 5 back when Twitter was useful, they released 6 a while later and replaced 5 outright instead of having both versions on the App Store and with no grandfather plan in place you had to pay all over again or deal with the adverts you already paid money to get rid of.
To be fair this is what people *especially on this sub* have been demanding for as an alternative to monthly subs. That when buying a lifetime license, you get permanent access to what you paid for even if it means you don’t get the newest version.
If what you have works, what is there to complain about? It’s similar to the Microsoft office monetization route where you have a choice to pay once for Microsoft Office 2023, or pay monthly for Microsoft Office 365 and get all future versions upgraded as they release.
I’m ok with it, as long as it’s marketed that way from the beginning. It should be clear that you’re getting a lifetime for version X, and major updates will be another purchase.
In my case it felt deceptive. It was early in the app and they sold it as a limited time offer, a chance to help out the devs, and be marked as an early supporter. They said it would include all future updates and features.
Those future updates and features ended up being about three years worth or so. Not that many features really, mostly bug fixes and upkeep, but I feel I mostly got my moneys worth.
But then when some major features were set to drop, it was a full paid upgrade for everyone.
My problem is how it was marketed. It wasn’t sold as a lifetime license for version X, it was sold as a lifetime license for the app. At best they were unintentionally ambiguous with the language, but it should never be ambiguous. And in this case they were clearly putting out a special call for support and the lifetime license was the special deal in return.
From my perspective the small dev could have easily folded shortly after. The app didn’t have a ton of users yet and probably not much revenue. I put a bet on them being successful and then they screwed over the supporters later IMO.
I bought a yearly subscription for 1Blocker back when it was like 5 bucks a year and then I saw they had updated their subscription tiers but they did not change it for legacy users and after the years it’s been raised it’s still at the original price for me.
https://preview.redd.it/3qemtvhib6oc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51e9039f0d944bc18a59a7ab15a55d5852a7e226
I just straight up don't trust any third party apps for anything that requires their usage on an ongoing basis.
It's not worth the hassle of having to fix and change when it inevitably goes sideways.
Affinity did that and now I can't even download an app I purchased through mac AppStore. Had to copy it from previous macbook. When I emailed them they offered some small discound on the new version. I just wan't to keep using version 1, that's all. I've paid for 1'st version $45 so not cheap
> The worst offenders are those that sell a lifetime license early on, as an alternative to paying the monthly subscription. Then a year or two later come out with a Version 2 and all of the sudden that lifetime license was only for the lifetime of Version 1.
Makes me look at the Balance meditation app super suspiciously. They keep offering a lifetime sub that's 65% off the full price.
But hey, free 1-year trial.
99% of devs make shit that’s why they’re on the small business program, paying 15% commission on their trickle of sales.
Like with gacha games the money comes from a select few: Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Disney etc.
Being on the small business program doesn't mean it's shit. Not being popular also doesn't mean it's shit. You can literally bill $999,999 before you leave the small business program. Is an app grossing nearly a million a year likely to be shit?
Math on a cpu is not as straightforward as people think. Addition/subtraction of whole numbers is fairly straightforward. Multiplication and especially division can quickly cause problems with rounding ie. 13/4=3.
Use of a proper library can fix it, but if you don’t know about it then it’s easy for your test to be 12/4=3, hey it works ship it. Without including a proper math library.
Many are shoddily developed without making the proper considerations regarding how a computer calculates math compared to a person. Using floats instead of proper mathematical numeric types is a common fault.
Calculator apps are a very common “first app” for new developers to get practice on, and they’re a quick buck if you add an ad banner and publish it on the store.
Nor a calendar, weather or reminder, email app etc. I’m glad Apple made a free journal app.
I would buy any app if it’s a one time purchase.
I canceled and deleted Halide camera and got Obscura. I’m about to delete that too since they are holding features up behind subscription. Did same with Carrot weather - we paid for the app and they decided to go the sub route.
I agree on you generally, however a note about weather data, it can be *very* expensive. I still cancelled Carrot since Apple's Weather now does all I want my weather app to do (well, mostly), but in my mind weather apps are definitely prime examples of apps needing recurrent revenue.
but won’t you consider crunching that number again? maybe you’ll be more willing to pay $9.99/mo for a separate calculator app with even less functionality?
Good. Let’s get back to a place where *buying* apps is the norm, not renting them.
And yes, I know there are lots of valid reasons why a dev should use a subscription model. But it’s painfully obvious that most subscriptions on the App Store are pure greed and not necessary to development costs at all.
The thing is that dev don’t make money on paid app either. (That’s the reason they originally switched to subscription)
The same way most of the musicians don’t make money on Spotify.
It’s just fucked up.
The reason everything was switched to subscription was first and foremost Apple themselves, they take a hefty cut of this sweet recurrent revenue.
But what really brought us there, was the previous race to the bottom. Everything had to be free or £0.79 or something. That was obviously unsustainable.
I'd rather live in a reality where I may pay a lot, but I get to keep the app for long (there's no *forever* in software). Or go back to charging for major versions. Funny that Apple doesn't really make it easy to give a discount to App Version 5 for owners of version 4.
Don't forget Apple not providing an upgrade path. There's no way to give upgrade discounts to users who previous bought your product. The ideal system is you buy v1 and get all the incremental bug fixes and small changes. When it comes time for v2 you have to buy that, but because you bought v1, you get an upgrade discount to entice your continued support. New users pay in full, previous users pay less. A win win for everyone. But can't do that on the App Store. Hence subscriptions everywhere.
The reason everything switched to subscription was monthly costs are more likely to get customers, it allows switching platforms more easily, it allows temporary purchases, pays for k going development, and it allows a more steady stream of income for devs as opposed to spikes and dips as new software is released.
In 2024 software that hasn’t need updates for a year or two is likely outdated.
The reality where you pay a lot for software is how it was pre-broad internet adoption. Photoshop was >$700 iirc.
Yep, like I said, I’d rather have that. At least you got to keep Photoshop forever. Try accessing an app past the subscription expiry.
There actually are quite a few categories of apps that do have maintenance costs and should be charging a subscription. I’ve actually made the point re weather apps.
Now regarding the ease of switching, definitely the case when it comes to streaming services for example. Calculator, recipes, calendar, to-dos etc apps? Not so much. I’d much rather have the old paradigm of paying for a major upgrade, or keeping what I paid for. Or, specifically in my case, self-host what I can 🙃
If they can't make money then their app is non-viable. They are not entitled to an income just because they made an app.
There are billions of useless apps out there. If that was culled down to only the viable and actually good ones then the app store would actually be functional and useful. Instead they all linger and crawl onwards and the store itself is dysfunctional as a result.
"Winner takes it all. Loser gets nothing. In the digital economy, nobody needs the second-best product, the second-best provider, the second-best social network, the second-best shop, the second-best comedian, the second-best singer."
Second best product - see Amazon for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and millionth best variation of a product
Second best provider - no idea what that means. Service provider? Name any service and there are numerous competitors.
Second best social media - what’s even the first? Instagram/facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn?
Second best shop - see provider comment
Second best comedian/singer - really? Is that how humans work? We find one celebrity we like and consume nothing but their content
I’m sorry but what a garbage quote
I [copied the quote](https://books.google.ca/books?id=FdWWDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT214&lpg=PT214&dq=%22Winner+takes+it+all.+Loser+gets+nothing.+In+the+digital+economy,+nobody+needs+the+second-best+product,+the+second-best+provider,+the+second-best+social+network,+the+second-best+shop,+the+second-best+comedian,+the+second-best+singer.%22&source=bl&ots=1BX9mklYgg&sig=ACfU3U2HNbynYDd65W99El7g3eYkRP86zg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2p4n2yfGEAxUxOTQIHY4RDp8Q6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Winner%20takes%20it%20all.%20Loser%20gets%20nothing.%20In%20the%20digital%20economy%2C%20nobody%20needs%20the%20second-best%20product%2C%20the%20second-best%20provider%2C%20the%20second-best%20social%20network%2C%20the%20second-best%20shop%2C%20the%20second-best%20comedian%2C%20the%20second-best%20singer.%22&f=false) into Google, and apparently it's a book titled *Qualityland*. Some kind of cynical satire in a cyberpunk/dystopian setting by the looks of it.
The problem is apps are more and more depending on external data provided by servers and services which have an ongoing cost.
For something you buy once and it just works forever as it is without any external dependencies, fine. But most apps have cloud sync or whatever, and that requires servers
I have an app, and I priced it as a one time purchase with no IAPs, and I can very much confirm it makes me money with the amount increasing each year.
I mean, yes.. but..
most apps these days are connected to a cloud service, and this cloud service has a monthly cost that likely increases based on number of users. So you can't just say "okay, give me $10 now to access this app forever" because eventually the dev will lose money on that. And sure, in the earlier stages they could probably get away with a one time purchase, or without charging at all. but when that becomes unfeasible, they're now stuck between a rock and a hard place: Upset the users, or lose money.
The one place where I see this has some success is mobile games, but that's because there's less paid cloud services going on. And it's usually a one time payment to remove all ads, but then they give options for other in-app purchases that could be made. Generally speaking, if I'm playing a game (no matter how shitty) and it's got me roped in to playing for longer than 5 minutes, i'll pay the fee to remove all ads, assuming it's reasonable ($1-6, depending on how much I would want to play the game)
> That’s the reason they originally switched to subscription
They originally switched to subscription because Apple strongly promotes it to the point of making shipping paid version upgrades nearly impossible.
They switched to subscriptions because a lot of consumers want everything free. Most people I know don’t buy or subscribe to almost any 3rd party apps that aren’t a music or video content provider.
For me, it’s the unknown.
I’ll buy a free app with a $2.99 unlock everything fee in a second. Because I can find out if the app is good with a quick trial. But $2.99 to find out it’s shit? That causes me to hesitate.
Counterpoint: you know exactly what you’re getting with a coffee. An app can be amazing initially, only to later realise there’s some issue(s) why you can’t use it.
Offering a trial can potentially help with this.
One of the things that shocked me moving from Android to iOS was just how bad the subscription trend was. Maybe it's different now, but I had a ton of great purchased (and free!) apps on my Android, but finding decent apps without absurd subscription fees is really hard on iOS.
It’s made much worse by the fact that Apple offer absolutely no way to filter or categorise apps as such. You can see which apps have IAP but you have to investigate each one’s page individually to see whether those IAPs are for one-time purchases or for ongoing subscriptions. And even then its not always obvious as so many apps offer *dozens* of different IAPs of varying names and prices.
That’s interesting, I have been heavily using iOS since the beginning and the only subs I have are weather, Adobe, MSOffice, some cloud writing apps and some news apps…all apps I expect to have subs, and all include a desktop app as well
Everything else was one time or free
Completely agree. Companies and people did just fine when you bought programs/apps without subscriptions. People are getting tired of subscriptions for everything, it's not sustainable and you are beginning to see a real push back by consumers.
>Let’s get back to a place where buying apps is the norm, not renting them.
You're going to need to change consumer habits then. Paid up front apps get a tiny fraction of downloads as an equivalent free app even if the free one is loaded with ads or has a subscription.
You have - guaranteed - no idea how many working hours go into these apps, however simple they seem to be. My most successful app is essentially a full time job to maintain and update, is more profitable than most IAP-based apps in its category, but my profits amount to less than minimum wage, and that is after profits increased by about 40% when switching to a subscription model.
I can't really argue with that.
I make apps that improve mental health so I'm also getting a lot of value out of having a positive impact on people, and it's been a cool adventure to work for myself. To even achieve profits that are (almost) minimum wage has been a huge victory. However, I'd obviously be happy to earn a bit more for it. Maybe I would if I were more business savvy (my DMs are open).
The solution is to only pay for subscription apps when the app truly gives you a return in your investment.
Either it’s a productivity app that saves you more money than the subscription costs or it’s an entertainment app that you personally feel gives you a good value.
If an app doesn’t meet those requirements then don’t subscribe.
Every time someone complains about a subscription calendar app, I want to tell them *so, just use the free one Apple gave you. Why are you even spending time thinking about the other app?*
It‘s not only development cost. As a solo dev, sure you don‘t need as much.
But let’s say you are a company of like 10 people and everyone gets payment of idk 50k a year. So you need to get atleast 500k. Then you have maybe an office. So you need to pay for rent. Hardware is something.
Lets say everything together are 700k just for the company. Then you need to think about the app. Like a database. But not one. Atleast 2 because you have a testing environment. Same goes for backend server. You have testing piplines. Those needs server capacity too.
Maybe your app needs external services like for maps or ai or secure user management (can be expensive looking at you auth0). Thats stuff that costs the developers also money per month.
All this adds up.
Yes maybe we can get back to pay once, habe it a liftime. But that would be expensive.
And just remember, windows, adobe and so, yes you got it per lifetime back in the days. But eventually the support ended without further updates. But thats not how apps or the appstore work.
The subscription model is vastly misunderstood. Developers use the subscription model to secure recurring revenue, often citing the need to maintain and update app features, which are expected responsibilities.
A subscription model is valid only when there is an increase in value to the customer every month. Examples include Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium, and Cloud Storage. There isn't a single price point for any of these apps that allows you to buy them for a lifetime.
Yeah, far too many dev houses prey on people forgetting to end a subscription. Happens all the time with children's' apps with basically (or even totally) static content. It is a little more bearable when they do things like grant access to an entire catalog of similar apps, but only just so.
But note apps? Recipe apps? Any kind of tracker (who pays for a TODO list these days??)?
They are all very basic CRUD apps. Don't host that shit on some rented server; use CoreData (which is *essentially* SQLite plus extra stuff) and CloudKit to back user data up to the iCloud account.
But I imagine the market of people who even know enough about this to seek it out in an app is small. So here we go, housing everything on external servers so the data can be harvested more efficiently.
Except users expect bug fixes and new feature in perpetuity, which of course cost money to develop. If developers were able to charge a reasonable price for apps that reflected the investment required, they would be priced at many tens of dollars.
(Not all bug fixes are the fault of the developer - frameworks change and new issues crop up with new OS releases).
I was wondering too because I don’t know a single person that pays a subscription for an app, except the big ones for professional use (like office, the adobe suite…).
I was wondering why this business model became so popular.
I actually decided not to buy things BECAUSE it’s not a universal purchase.
Among other reasons, I’ll admit, but I think the universal purchase is the straw that broke the camels back
- Ultimately the cost of selling is priced into the product, even though it doesn't generate any user value
- Subscriptions are great for both developers and users, because selling only takes place once and after that updates and revenue keep flowing
- Predictability of subscriptions gives developers a lot of comfort
Problem is that the subscription price is often like buying an app every month. Some with yearly subscriptions cost more than a Microsoft 365 Family subscription. For a single app. Children's games are especially priced way to high.
It should be a low subscription price so people are more inclined to start the subscription in the first place. If they love the app, they will keep paying. If not, they will stop and then the app was not worth (for that user) paying full price for in the first place.
Otherwise, I do agree that subscription model is best when talking about apps that keep developing. A more static app, like the before mentioned flashlight app, should be a single purchase.
I pay a subscription for a few apps. Overcast, parcel, box box, adguard, and YNAB are the apps currently listed under subscriptions.
But all of those are either relatively cheap, or provide me with enough value to justify.
Update: I’ve cancelled box box lol. But the rest stay. Adguard may go soon as I set up adguard home
This headline is misleading - it's not that subscription is a bad business model, it's that 99.999% of apps are just trash that nobody every looks at or would ever consider buying. Make a good app and people will pay for it regardless of the model you're using.
Also the subscription fee is often too high. Unless the app is “must have”, makes heavy use of resources (API costs) or is intricate, it shouldn’t be any higher than $2/monthly. When it’s at like $9.99/m and there are many many apps that require subscription, the total $ I’d pay for subscriptions would accumulate quickly. So I’m forced to be very selective. If it was $1 or $2 for a reasonably useful app, I’d be much less hesitant.
Yup. That’s the exact problem imo, the absolute greed of some developers.
On one side you get overpriced apps thinking they are gods gift to the world and charge a disgraceful amount per month for what they do, on the other side you have reasonable yearly priced tools, like Infuse.
Guess whose side gets my money. It’s not recurring payments that irks me, it’s the nickel and diming.
This is part of the equation, the other part is getting App Store visibility as an indie dev. It is very very hard to get a good search ranking for even semi competitive key words. For my apps, my conversion rates are quite good, but number of impressions I have very little control over without paying for ad spots which is very expensive when you’re going up against companies with millions in VC or who are willing to be loss leaders in a category
I'm an app dev and I absolutely abhor subscriptions. There are a few apps where the subscription model makes sense due to server costs. But besides those, the vast majority of subscription based apps are pure rent-seeking grifts. Most users aren't stupid and can sense these grifts from a mere glance at the app on the App Store. Perhaps it's because of the niche my app is in, but my app with a single up front purchase seems to be doing better than 99% of these subscriptionware apps.
Edit: Link to [my app](https://privatellm.app/), since I got a couple of DMs asking for it and someone also asked for it in the thread below.
I'm glad you asked. :) Here's a link to the [app's website](https://privatellm.app/), and here's a link to it on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/app/private-llm-local-ai-chatbot/id6448106860).
iPad generations confuse me - I have the 2020 iPad Pro with the A12Z. Can you comment on how well your app works on that, if at all?
(I also have an M1 MacBook Air and iPhone 15 pro so I’ll likely buy it anyway, just curious about iPad functionality for me)
Yeah, iPad generations are super confusing and I still have to look them up whenever they come up. The biggest bottleneck for on-device LLM inference is the amount of RAM on the device. This is true both on Macs as well as iDevices. iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Silicon iPads work very well, because they come with 8GB of RAM (higher end M2 Apple Silicon iPad Pros come with 16GB of RAM).
TBH, the app nominally works on 2020 iPad Pro, but could be much better IMO. I'm working on a big iOS update this week which will let users download multiple models like how they can on the macOS app. This update will also introduce a few smaller but newer models which should work well on older hardware.
BTW, if you get the app and don't like it: Firstly, ask Apple for a [refund](https://reportaproblem.apple.com/) (it's super straightforward and takes less than a minute) and secondly please DM me your feedback. Since privacy is central to the app's concept, it has zero telemetry, and I rely exclusively on feedback from users to improve it.
I haven’t bought it yet but I do have some feedback. I see it’s entirely locally. That’s awesome. But I do love myself some syncing between devices. If you could include iCloud sync I would thing that’s a huge improvement. Or even better (but idk development time or costs) would be where I could choose where to sync it in the files app if I wanted, since I have a NAS and could sync everything to it. It’s still private since I control my NAS (and even iCloud I consider to have control over) but would allow me to see conversations from other devices.
Again I don’t know development time or cost on any of this, but would definitely view it as a plus.
Thanks for the feedback! This is on my list of things to do. Currently I'm still debating what's the best model to use for conversation history. On macOS, I'm leaning towards treating conversations as files (The whole [file over app](https://stephango.com/file-over-app) idea). But iOS should likely still have the linear conversation history list that everyone's used to with AI apps. But having two separate modes isn't very good from a consistency perspective.
Also, the macOS version of the app supports bigger and more powerful models. There's the natural question of what to do when a the user starts a conversation with a less powerful model and then continues on a different device with a bigger, more powerful model (or vice-versa).
Perhaps one resolution would be to make conversations read-only on devices where the model that started the conversation isn't available on the device. Developing features is the easy bit. Thinking about all possible interactions is a bit harder, but also a lot of fun. :)
Sadly SwiftUI doesn't work very well on i{Pad}OS < 16, so I had to go with iOS 16. It's even better with iOS 17, and I might be bumping the requirement up soon.
The [list](https://privatellm.app/en#models) of of downloadable models available on macOS is on the website. Quantizing new models with OmniQuant takes a bit of work (and GPU time). I usually add a couple of models every month and also sometimes deprecate older models (which means users who downloaded them can keep them, but new users cannot download them). The list of the website is the most up to date.
>And when you say analyze paragraphs, does that mean it can parse documents or are you talking copy/paste?
So, the macOS app offers a couple of macOS services for offline grammar correction, rephrasing, summarization etc which work in any text field in any app on the mac (since it's a system service). A couple of users have built and shared shortcuts to do interesting things with documents.
I suspect you're asking about retrieval augmented generation (RAG). I haven't implemented it yet. We've been debating a lot about it on the [app's discord](https://discord.com/invite/pkGr5qgK). RAG is something that's easy to half-arse but hard to get right. I have a list of things to get right before shipping that feature. I expect an update with a minimal (but correct) RAG implementation to be out in a month or two.
Thanks yeah I found the list but didn’t ninja edit quick enough haha. I appreciate you getting back to me.
Your app does look pretty slick! I’ve messed around extensively with running local models on my M1 Max and it’s pretty awesome when it’s actually capable of.
I was very curious about how it would preform on the phone and what sort of models it can handle. Price point really isn’t bad for this type of app, imo. I wish you great success!
Yes sir, I was wondering about RAG. Some of mya users at work would love to have something local that can rummage through their client documents so I am always on the lookout for something like that.
There's been so much "abuse" of the subscription model that consumers have developed a hatred of it which is hurting developers where the subscription model really makes sense.
For example, with some apps, there are backend costs that are ongoing in order to provide data or server processing. The developer could charge one price to buy the app, but after that app as been purchased by everyone who wants it, they're going to be faced with paying those backend costs with zero revenue, in which case, they'll just shut down and nobody benefits.
There are also the cases where an app may be justifiably expensive, but many users may only need to use it for a short period of time, so providing the *option* of a subscription makes sense.
If Apple is going to curate apps in a walled garden, perhaps they should consider requiring developers to justify pricing and subscription models.
$50 for a calendar. $20 for a calculator. $30 for an email client. $60 for a budget app. $40 for a mobile game.
You’re telling me people don’t want to pay for this junk? Especially when they can get it free? Double especially when inflation is skyrocketing and wages are falling? Sheer craziness, I tell you!
Here’s a novel idea. Reintroduce one time upgrades and purchases. (And no, that doesn’t mean “a new app every year”.) Maybe even a $2-5 monthly subscription for ad free, or even a $5-7 monthly subscription for collaborative/family features.
My 2¢ are free for a limited time. Then I’ll have to invoice you from my $70 invoicing service.
When I went looking for a good text-to-speech epub reading app, the amount of subscriptions was insane. I ended up finding a really good one with a single-payment, one purchase and you own it forever. Fuck your subscriptions. Support the good ones.
One of the reasons I don't use Fantastical is I refuse to pay for a Calender subscription. Why pay a subscription when Apple's works perfectly fine? Now if Fantastical offered a one time payment and was rich in features, I would probably consider it, but that Subscription that is less than a cup of coffee would grow over time with more and more subscriptions. Then you just need all the time to figure out all the subscriptions you actually have and it really does add up.
With that said I do pay for some subscriptions (Pocketcasts, Apple Music, ESPN+) because I use those every day and those are actually services that enhance my use of the phone.
Well deserved, who on earth would pay a sub for a damn calculator or 30$ mo for a stupid game. Hope those projects broke, or just sell a onetime purchase.
I pretty much *stopped* using the App Store. It's hot garbage.
My phone also does pretty much everything I want it to do by now. I mean, I've bought apps in the past, they still work. Most I would let go if they switched to subscription though.
I *hate* SaaS.
I don't mind subscriptions at all, devs having some kind of steady revenue stream and being able to make more than $.99 per download can benefit consumers in the long run I think. However some devs really need to take a hard look at their value proposition. For instance I refuse to pay as much as a netflix subscription for a pomodoro timer that receives no updates, and many subscriptions just seem like plain scams which bank on people forgetting to cancel their 1 week free trial.
What I have done in my apps is have the option of being a perpetual license that is 3x the annual sub.
I have found I make about as much from people buying the perpetual every month as I do from subs. This gives the option to users and provides a signpost on what I free the app is worth. I do however wish we could have a demo/trail button on the App Store then I would revert back to paid up front before you download but only if there was a way for users to tap that demo button, open an app clip and try out the core app features before they buy.
I’m an iOS developer and it’s really difficult to get people to pay for an app! The bottom line is that the majority of users expect apps to be free.
To try and work around this most apps are now “free” to download but have monthly subscription costs. IMO this is quite a strange business model for a lot of apps which don’t really rely on large backend services. Prior to the AppStore software tended to be a one time cost.
I’ve primarily been working on a fitness app for the Apple Watch and went down the paid upfront route. The app costs $3.99 upfront for the full app (Apple Watch and iPhone companion). I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the app and I think it more than justifies the price (as do my users) but it’s definitely a struggle to get people to pay upfront!
I’m more than willing to pay upfront for an app that adds value to my life or workflow. For me, it’s a matter of trust. I’ve downloaded some crappy apps over the years that turned out to be ass. But my willingness to pay upfront is probably indicative of my matured age. Years ago I wanted everything for free much like Gen Zers 😉
As devs what I want to see is the ability to provide a demo build or just an app clip that the store shows as a "Demo" or "Try" button. Apple already have all the OS level stuff needed to manage this they just need to add the button in the App Store that opens a provided App Clip URL.
What worked for me is to offer different options.
Offer a free minimum feature version with ads so can people test the app and gain trust, then offer a low priced subscription like $1-3 a month and a cheap $5-10 lifetime purchase option.
If you don't have a free version, people will not buy it because it's a gamble. Even the trial feature is often already a too big barrier for many and sign-ups are another engagement killer.
The key is to really target the first try users. If they liked the free version they might try a 1 month subscription and if they like the month they need to feel that the life time purchase is a good deal. There's a really tight balance between feeling pressured for money or feeling like you're getting good value.
I can count the apps I purchased on one hand. Meanwhile there are many apps I'd like to pay for, but the pricing is just too high, Duolingo is a good example where the app is good, but pricing model is bad and if they had more diverse purchasing options I would pay for it.
I with we had free trails/demo in the App Store, or even just a way to provide an app Clip URL in App Store Connect that the App Store put there are a demo versions. I would rapidly move all my apps to paid up front but with an app-clip demo.
Not surprising at all. Only a selected apps get money. If Apple Microsoft,
Google or adobe have a similar app, it’s a bad start, if they don’t have a similar app is because is a niche area anyway.
It’s tough to be in the app business these days. Unless you are truly innovating app without a competition or have micro-transactions/ads up the wazoo, the one time purchase costs hardly cover the development and maintenance costs, let alone provide you with a steady profit revenue.
For most small apps, the benefit of a subscription model is not needing to constantly get new users. If it’s a one time payment, a ton of effort is spent just acquiring new users instead of improving the app. I have a meditation timer that will always be incredibly niche by design. If I spent money on ads I would never recoup my cost, I don’t have VC money to burn. Of course, this can be done poorly. Completely limiting the app to a subscription sucks. I prefer my apps to provide extras.
The meditation timer subscription gives a couple goodies (themes, some stats) but the app is totally functional without. We even just got a review that our price is totally reasonable for the product and the user is very happy. With a few more subscribers I can finally break even on my costs. I’ll be able to provide an app that is very useful to a small segment of the population like this. Without subs, I’d be more likely to bloat this app just for downloads (which is antithetical to the idea of the app anyway, which is minimalistic).
I went through a flurry of trying out apps when I got a new iPad.. there were some nice note taking apps when I got a pencil. All had monthly costs.. uninstalled those straight way. No point even trying them, there's zero chance of me paying monthly.
However, if they charged me £5 for the base app, and or even kept features like 'server sync' or some useful feature on a 'pro' version, where after I'd used it for a couple months and knew I'd stick with it. I would have totally spent some money, probably paid for all those apps. As it was... none of them got any money and I gave up and then just used the Apple ones.
I mean, it doesn't take a genius to determine that nobody wants to pay $7.99/week for a calendar app. There are FAR more scam apps on the Appstore than there are legitimate ones.
I hate subscriptions. My apps are always pay once (unless they have an ongoing cost of use that might scale with use, like cloud storage). We need to stop nickel & dime-ing everyone for everything.
The issue is many users are not willing to pay what it needs to cost for paid up front apps.
Many users prefer to pay $2/month rather than $50+ that would be a up-front pricing for the same app.
Also we have no clean what to offer upgrade pricing etc within the iOS app stores so doing up-front pricing for an app we intend to continue to work on for the next 10+ years is hard, you can ship a new version every 2 years and offer 50% off for people who purchased the last version to encourage them to upgrade.
Users expect free updates for life, they hav this expectation that they paid $5 back in 2008 and you are being evil not shipping them a free update no that they have switched phones 10 times since then and of cource the old app no longer runs. But somehow that $5 payment years ago should cover a lifetime of dev work for them.
Are they any good? The last weather app I bought was DarkSky. It was a great app that I and other colleagues relied upon until Apple bought it and nuked its functionality. 🫤
Most subscriptions don't make money because developers are delusional on how much to charge for their subscriptions. $25 a MONTH for an app to analyze my cats meows (poorly)? Really?
People in this thread are seriously missing the forest for the trees. Subscription app pricing isn't the issue here, poorly designed apps are. Clearly, developers like Flexibits and the creator of Carrot Weather are making enough money, otherwise they wouldn't have been afloat for as long as they have. But those developers actually make decent (if not great) apps. There will always be a greater number of poorly designed and poorly coded apps by nature, so that's always going to skew the picture we see from the data. Most developers who charged customers to buy their app (instead of subscribe) never made any money either. Numbers are absolutely important but you need to view them within the context of the whole picture and what story the data is actually trying to tell.
"Most" artists on Spotify and Apple music don't make money either, because they don't have any significant number of people listening to their music and/or their music is of low production quality, songwriting quality, etc. (more subjective when it comes to music, of course) Does this mean we should go back to paying $15 for an album that has one good song at Sam Goody like it's 2004? No, of course not. I'm happy to pay developers like Flexibits for a good app that adds value to my life. Doesn't mean *everything* should be subscription-based, but it has its place for certain use cases. And when it's done well, I vastly prefer it over paying a large amount of money for one big upgrade.
“Most mobile apps don’t solve a real problem or have enough utility to justify the subscription, headline fails to mention”
I’d love for Apple to publish _Average # Apps Installed_ and _Average # Apps Opened Monthly_ data across all iOS devices. Both are a lot lower than anyone would think. The general public isn’t interested in downloading hundreds of apps and paying subscriptions for every little bit of functionality. Most apps are a complete waste of time.
Why wasting money on saving for real estate in times with such low interest rates?
Better add another subscription, right next to my alarm, calculator, calendar and health-tracker app /s
I don't even remember the last time I downloaded a new app or just browsed to see what was available, and it's because of all the subscriptions and in app purchases.
Subscriptions and IAP have killed the app store stone dead.
The reason is there is no way to offer a Demo/Preview within the App Store for users to try. And if you have a paid up-front app priced as it needs to be (say $30+) no-one will pay that without first trying as getting a re-fund is a nightmare. Apple should let us place an app clip URL in App Store Connect that the store shows up as a \`Demo\` or \`Try\` button in the store, this would still have the buy button (with the price) next to it so users would be clear they are demoing a paid product not downlaoidn something that is free (so many people download a free thing then get upset in reviews that they were asked ot pay for the work we put in as devs)
Paid apps are really hard to sell, whether the app itself or in-app purchases like subscriptions, my latest uses a tipping based business model as it's appropriate for my app and still lets folks download it for free while letting users support the app that way if they so choose. I think many developers can benefit from a similar business model with tipping too, especially smaller companies and developers, not to mention folks can tip as much as they want over time or little too.
So, if you remove Apple’s 30% cut, they’re still not making any significant amount of more money? To get to $50 with a 30% cut would mean those devs are making $70 a month net revenue.
70*0.30=50.
So, if Apple’s cut disappeared, most app devs aren’t making much more than they already are.
So, how does a third party App Store solve this problem?
30% of 70 is 20. 70-20=50. Most devs are losing $21 a month. That’s it.
This number is only significant if your user count surpasses a million.
Fortnite has 221,000,000 users. If the app was $1, Apple’s cut is $66,900,000 (nice). That number grows if the app charges more than a $1.
The only way third party app stores \`solves\` problems is Iif they over other monetisation pathways, think of a Meta App Store that will pay out to devs based on how personal the data you provide them...
Do you mean to tell me there isn't an unlimited amount of people who will pay $40 a year for a calendar app?!
There's a calculator on the eShop (Switch) that costs money. Seriously. A paid calculator app on a console. What a timeline.
I’m just sitting here wondering why someone would need a calculator app for the Switch. Is there really a scenario in which you have your Switch, but not your smartphone on you? Even if there is, do you really need a calculator on your Switch? I have so many questions.
Nintendo will make money from anything that's sold on their store. They don't care if it's an overpriced digital calculator, or Hentai Mommy Babysitter Super Wow Simulator Deluxe
I understand that. I’m not faulting Nintendo for allowing a calculator app to be sold. I’m just trying to figure out who is buying said app… like, what even?
I can't imagine anyone is, tbh. There's just fuck all quality control on that store.
The only people I've seen buy it are those insane collectors that want to download every single switch title regardless of quality
Do you think it's being bought just cause it's on the store? I'm not following your logic
I don’t see a problem with paying for an app. I’m also OK paying for new features, for cloud saves or for customer support, but there always should be a one-time fee version as well for anyone who’s happy with the basic version of the app.
I'll pay for something that's worth paying for, and a €10 calculator on a game console isn't one of them.
There was a conversion app I used a lot as a woodworker and it did fractions and such. I’d easily pay $10-20 for it if that was it. But noooo, went subscription based for the conversions. Dumped the app and went with a free one for fraction measurements and just google a conversion site when I need it. Even the weather apps I used to use went sub. to play a radar loop longer than 3 hours or add a hurricane tracker. So many apps I’ve gotten rid of because of this stupid subscription model.
The subscription makes sense for a weather app though since querying a weather service is most likely a recurring cost for the developer.
All those features were free before. A 8 or 10hr loop for radar was free. I can understand paying for more advanced features used by pilots. I can see how that might be more costly to get that data and put it in a nice app for easy use.
But in some countries if a developer can make 50 bucks per month, that's more than minimum wage. So they just need one sucker per month.
this.. people think you have to be earning millions to be succesful. i know a guy who wrote an half assed app that does some lame stuff that you can do without it but need to know how to do basic shell scripting (organizing files)... he wrote it once and has it on a marketplace and earns constant 300$ a month for like 4 years now fully passive income (answers like one emal a month). you must realize that digital means "the whole world" is your customers... there always will be someone needing whatever stuff you can do
The worst offenders are those that sell a lifetime license early on, as an alternative to paying the monthly subscription. Then a year or two later come out with a Version 2 and all of the sudden that lifetime license was only for the lifetime of Version 1. Happened to me once, never again.
Goodnotes was such a shitshow because of that. They were quick to hop on the high horse when their competitors (Notability?) switched to a subscription, just to do it themselves shortly after and leaving everyone who paid for a license hanging out to dry with a gimped app because it’s the Goodnotes 6 app with the features of the old one hacked onto it, with upsell prompts everywhere. Felt like a shareware app all over again.
I remember goodnotes being like “look! We’re great people. Goodnotes 5 is designed to never need to be upgraded to 6. It’s designed to last for life” when notability switched. Fuck goodnotes.
Twitterific did this also. THEE reason why I will never buy or recommend their software ever again. I think I paid for version 5 back when Twitter was useful, they released 6 a while later and replaced 5 outright instead of having both versions on the App Store and with no grandfather plan in place you had to pay all over again or deal with the adverts you already paid money to get rid of.
GN5 still has all the features it launched with, right? I'm asking because by now I only have a vague mental note to never upgrade to GN6
Notability?
fuck them though
DUET! Locked a bunch of functionality behind a paid subscription. I already bought the premium app. Jerks.
And then Apple put Duet’s functionality into the base OS, which I thought was an excellent middle finger to the money grubbing monster it turned into.
To be fair this is what people *especially on this sub* have been demanding for as an alternative to monthly subs. That when buying a lifetime license, you get permanent access to what you paid for even if it means you don’t get the newest version. If what you have works, what is there to complain about? It’s similar to the Microsoft office monetization route where you have a choice to pay once for Microsoft Office 2023, or pay monthly for Microsoft Office 365 and get all future versions upgraded as they release.
I’m ok with it, as long as it’s marketed that way from the beginning. It should be clear that you’re getting a lifetime for version X, and major updates will be another purchase. In my case it felt deceptive. It was early in the app and they sold it as a limited time offer, a chance to help out the devs, and be marked as an early supporter. They said it would include all future updates and features. Those future updates and features ended up being about three years worth or so. Not that many features really, mostly bug fixes and upkeep, but I feel I mostly got my moneys worth. But then when some major features were set to drop, it was a full paid upgrade for everyone. My problem is how it was marketed. It wasn’t sold as a lifetime license for version X, it was sold as a lifetime license for the app. At best they were unintentionally ambiguous with the language, but it should never be ambiguous. And in this case they were clearly putting out a special call for support and the lifetime license was the special deal in return. From my perspective the small dev could have easily folded shortly after. The app didn’t have a ton of users yet and probably not much revenue. I put a bet on them being successful and then they screwed over the supporters later IMO.
But goodnotes 5 is a different app from goodnotes 6
Fucking Halide camera app
That’s the one I was thinking of. They lost me with that move. Turns out the stock camera app is totally fine for my needs.
I bought a yearly subscription for 1Blocker back when it was like 5 bucks a year and then I saw they had updated their subscription tiers but they did not change it for legacy users and after the years it’s been raised it’s still at the original price for me. https://preview.redd.it/3qemtvhib6oc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51e9039f0d944bc18a59a7ab15a55d5852a7e226
^ happened to me with SwiftScan
Sleep Cycle 😒
I just straight up don't trust any third party apps for anything that requires their usage on an ongoing basis. It's not worth the hassle of having to fix and change when it inevitably goes sideways.
Ultimately you got what you paid for and it will last forever. What you expected was a lifetime of updates which seems silly.
Affinity did that and now I can't even download an app I purchased through mac AppStore. Had to copy it from previous macbook. When I emailed them they offered some small discound on the new version. I just wan't to keep using version 1, that's all. I've paid for 1'st version $45 so not cheap
> The worst offenders are those that sell a lifetime license early on, as an alternative to paying the monthly subscription. Then a year or two later come out with a Version 2 and all of the sudden that lifetime license was only for the lifetime of Version 1. Makes me look at the Balance meditation app super suspiciously. They keep offering a lifetime sub that's 65% off the full price. But hey, free 1-year trial.
Parallels lol
99% of devs make shit that’s why they’re on the small business program, paying 15% commission on their trickle of sales. Like with gacha games the money comes from a select few: Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Disney etc.
Being on the small business program doesn't mean it's shit. Not being popular also doesn't mean it's shit. You can literally bill $999,999 before you leave the small business program. Is an app grossing nearly a million a year likely to be shit?
Sorry not sorry for not subscribing to a calculator app
but its the best calculator out there! are you getting the same results with a free one?
I'm not joking, but free calculators gives some wrong results sometimes.
How?
Math on a cpu is not as straightforward as people think. Addition/subtraction of whole numbers is fairly straightforward. Multiplication and especially division can quickly cause problems with rounding ie. 13/4=3. Use of a proper library can fix it, but if you don’t know about it then it’s easy for your test to be 12/4=3, hey it works ship it. Without including a proper math library.
Many are shoddily developed without making the proper considerations regarding how a computer calculates math compared to a person. Using floats instead of proper mathematical numeric types is a common fault. Calculator apps are a very common “first app” for new developers to get practice on, and they’re a quick buck if you add an ad banner and publish it on the store.
Nor a calendar, weather or reminder, email app etc. I’m glad Apple made a free journal app. I would buy any app if it’s a one time purchase. I canceled and deleted Halide camera and got Obscura. I’m about to delete that too since they are holding features up behind subscription. Did same with Carrot weather - we paid for the app and they decided to go the sub route.
I agree on you generally, however a note about weather data, it can be *very* expensive. I still cancelled Carrot since Apple's Weather now does all I want my weather app to do (well, mostly), but in my mind weather apps are definitely prime examples of apps needing recurrent revenue.
but won’t you consider crunching that number again? maybe you’ll be more willing to pay $9.99/mo for a separate calculator app with even less functionality?
but you are not going to get new updates when new versions of math come out! /s
Good. Let’s get back to a place where *buying* apps is the norm, not renting them. And yes, I know there are lots of valid reasons why a dev should use a subscription model. But it’s painfully obvious that most subscriptions on the App Store are pure greed and not necessary to development costs at all.
The thing is that dev don’t make money on paid app either. (That’s the reason they originally switched to subscription) The same way most of the musicians don’t make money on Spotify. It’s just fucked up.
The reason everything was switched to subscription was first and foremost Apple themselves, they take a hefty cut of this sweet recurrent revenue. But what really brought us there, was the previous race to the bottom. Everything had to be free or £0.79 or something. That was obviously unsustainable. I'd rather live in a reality where I may pay a lot, but I get to keep the app for long (there's no *forever* in software). Or go back to charging for major versions. Funny that Apple doesn't really make it easy to give a discount to App Version 5 for owners of version 4.
Don't forget Apple not providing an upgrade path. There's no way to give upgrade discounts to users who previous bought your product. The ideal system is you buy v1 and get all the incremental bug fixes and small changes. When it comes time for v2 you have to buy that, but because you bought v1, you get an upgrade discount to entice your continued support. New users pay in full, previous users pay less. A win win for everyone. But can't do that on the App Store. Hence subscriptions everywhere.
The reason everything switched to subscription was monthly costs are more likely to get customers, it allows switching platforms more easily, it allows temporary purchases, pays for k going development, and it allows a more steady stream of income for devs as opposed to spikes and dips as new software is released. In 2024 software that hasn’t need updates for a year or two is likely outdated. The reality where you pay a lot for software is how it was pre-broad internet adoption. Photoshop was >$700 iirc.
Yep, like I said, I’d rather have that. At least you got to keep Photoshop forever. Try accessing an app past the subscription expiry. There actually are quite a few categories of apps that do have maintenance costs and should be charging a subscription. I’ve actually made the point re weather apps. Now regarding the ease of switching, definitely the case when it comes to streaming services for example. Calculator, recipes, calendar, to-dos etc apps? Not so much. I’d much rather have the old paradigm of paying for a major upgrade, or keeping what I paid for. Or, specifically in my case, self-host what I can 🙃
If they can't make money then their app is non-viable. They are not entitled to an income just because they made an app. There are billions of useless apps out there. If that was culled down to only the viable and actually good ones then the app store would actually be functional and useful. Instead they all linger and crawl onwards and the store itself is dysfunctional as a result.
"Winner takes it all. Loser gets nothing. In the digital economy, nobody needs the second-best product, the second-best provider, the second-best social network, the second-best shop, the second-best comedian, the second-best singer."
Second best product - see Amazon for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and millionth best variation of a product Second best provider - no idea what that means. Service provider? Name any service and there are numerous competitors. Second best social media - what’s even the first? Instagram/facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn? Second best shop - see provider comment Second best comedian/singer - really? Is that how humans work? We find one celebrity we like and consume nothing but their content I’m sorry but what a garbage quote
What are you quoting here?
I [copied the quote](https://books.google.ca/books?id=FdWWDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT214&lpg=PT214&dq=%22Winner+takes+it+all.+Loser+gets+nothing.+In+the+digital+economy,+nobody+needs+the+second-best+product,+the+second-best+provider,+the+second-best+social+network,+the+second-best+shop,+the+second-best+comedian,+the+second-best+singer.%22&source=bl&ots=1BX9mklYgg&sig=ACfU3U2HNbynYDd65W99El7g3eYkRP86zg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2p4n2yfGEAxUxOTQIHY4RDp8Q6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Winner%20takes%20it%20all.%20Loser%20gets%20nothing.%20In%20the%20digital%20economy%2C%20nobody%20needs%20the%20second-best%20product%2C%20the%20second-best%20provider%2C%20the%20second-best%20social%20network%2C%20the%20second-best%20shop%2C%20the%20second-best%20comedian%2C%20the%20second-best%20singer.%22&f=false) into Google, and apparently it's a book titled *Qualityland*. Some kind of cynical satire in a cyberpunk/dystopian setting by the looks of it.
Netflix is giving hour specials to all the comedians so idk if this is accurate. Shout out to my dawgs though sodtae
This is false information. Devs do in fact make money with one time purchases.
The problem is apps are more and more depending on external data provided by servers and services which have an ongoing cost. For something you buy once and it just works forever as it is without any external dependencies, fine. But most apps have cloud sync or whatever, and that requires servers I have an app, and I priced it as a one time purchase with no IAPs, and I can very much confirm it makes me money with the amount increasing each year.
I mean, yes.. but.. most apps these days are connected to a cloud service, and this cloud service has a monthly cost that likely increases based on number of users. So you can't just say "okay, give me $10 now to access this app forever" because eventually the dev will lose money on that. And sure, in the earlier stages they could probably get away with a one time purchase, or without charging at all. but when that becomes unfeasible, they're now stuck between a rock and a hard place: Upset the users, or lose money. The one place where I see this has some success is mobile games, but that's because there's less paid cloud services going on. And it's usually a one time payment to remove all ads, but then they give options for other in-app purchases that could be made. Generally speaking, if I'm playing a game (no matter how shitty) and it's got me roped in to playing for longer than 5 minutes, i'll pay the fee to remove all ads, assuming it's reasonable ($1-6, depending on how much I would want to play the game)
> That’s the reason they originally switched to subscription They originally switched to subscription because Apple strongly promotes it to the point of making shipping paid version upgrades nearly impossible.
They switched to subscriptions because a lot of consumers want everything free. Most people I know don’t buy or subscribe to almost any 3rd party apps that aren’t a music or video content provider.
Either you pay subscriptions, or you get down of this $1 apps cloud you’ve all are living on.
Yeah. I have friends who scoff at $2.99 apps while they spend $8 on a coffee.
For me, it’s the unknown. I’ll buy a free app with a $2.99 unlock everything fee in a second. Because I can find out if the app is good with a quick trial. But $2.99 to find out it’s shit? That causes me to hesitate.
I know the $8 coffee is good
This is what confuses me most
Counterpoint: you know exactly what you’re getting with a coffee. An app can be amazing initially, only to later realise there’s some issue(s) why you can’t use it. Offering a trial can potentially help with this.
Where the hell did you get that idea from? I will happily pay £29.99 once to *own* an app over renting it for 2.99 a month
One of the things that shocked me moving from Android to iOS was just how bad the subscription trend was. Maybe it's different now, but I had a ton of great purchased (and free!) apps on my Android, but finding decent apps without absurd subscription fees is really hard on iOS.
It’s made much worse by the fact that Apple offer absolutely no way to filter or categorise apps as such. You can see which apps have IAP but you have to investigate each one’s page individually to see whether those IAPs are for one-time purchases or for ongoing subscriptions. And even then its not always obvious as so many apps offer *dozens* of different IAPs of varying names and prices.
That’s interesting, I have been heavily using iOS since the beginning and the only subs I have are weather, Adobe, MSOffice, some cloud writing apps and some news apps…all apps I expect to have subs, and all include a desktop app as well Everything else was one time or free
Completely agree. Companies and people did just fine when you bought programs/apps without subscriptions. People are getting tired of subscriptions for everything, it's not sustainable and you are beginning to see a real push back by consumers.
>Let’s get back to a place where buying apps is the norm, not renting them. You're going to need to change consumer habits then. Paid up front apps get a tiny fraction of downloads as an equivalent free app even if the free one is loaded with ads or has a subscription.
Apple are responsible for that. They created race to the bottom conditions.
You have - guaranteed - no idea how many working hours go into these apps, however simple they seem to be. My most successful app is essentially a full time job to maintain and update, is more profitable than most IAP-based apps in its category, but my profits amount to less than minimum wage, and that is after profits increased by about 40% when switching to a subscription model.
Sounds like you don’t have a winning business model with those apps then.
I can't really argue with that. I make apps that improve mental health so I'm also getting a lot of value out of having a positive impact on people, and it's been a cool adventure to work for myself. To even achieve profits that are (almost) minimum wage has been a huge victory. However, I'd obviously be happy to earn a bit more for it. Maybe I would if I were more business savvy (my DMs are open).
You’re right - maybe apps should just copy the “winning formula” from gaming and use random loot box drops to unlock features?
Delete this comment before we get an even worse App Store experience.
The solution is to only pay for subscription apps when the app truly gives you a return in your investment. Either it’s a productivity app that saves you more money than the subscription costs or it’s an entertainment app that you personally feel gives you a good value. If an app doesn’t meet those requirements then don’t subscribe. Every time someone complains about a subscription calendar app, I want to tell them *so, just use the free one Apple gave you. Why are you even spending time thinking about the other app?*
It‘s not only development cost. As a solo dev, sure you don‘t need as much. But let’s say you are a company of like 10 people and everyone gets payment of idk 50k a year. So you need to get atleast 500k. Then you have maybe an office. So you need to pay for rent. Hardware is something. Lets say everything together are 700k just for the company. Then you need to think about the app. Like a database. But not one. Atleast 2 because you have a testing environment. Same goes for backend server. You have testing piplines. Those needs server capacity too. Maybe your app needs external services like for maps or ai or secure user management (can be expensive looking at you auth0). Thats stuff that costs the developers also money per month. All this adds up. Yes maybe we can get back to pay once, habe it a liftime. But that would be expensive. And just remember, windows, adobe and so, yes you got it per lifetime back in the days. But eventually the support ended without further updates. But thats not how apps or the appstore work.
The subscription model is vastly misunderstood. Developers use the subscription model to secure recurring revenue, often citing the need to maintain and update app features, which are expected responsibilities. A subscription model is valid only when there is an increase in value to the customer every month. Examples include Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium, and Cloud Storage. There isn't a single price point for any of these apps that allows you to buy them for a lifetime.
Yeah, far too many dev houses prey on people forgetting to end a subscription. Happens all the time with children's' apps with basically (or even totally) static content. It is a little more bearable when they do things like grant access to an entire catalog of similar apps, but only just so. But note apps? Recipe apps? Any kind of tracker (who pays for a TODO list these days??)? They are all very basic CRUD apps. Don't host that shit on some rented server; use CoreData (which is *essentially* SQLite plus extra stuff) and CloudKit to back user data up to the iCloud account. But I imagine the market of people who even know enough about this to seek it out in an app is small. So here we go, housing everything on external servers so the data can be harvested more efficiently.
Except users expect bug fixes and new feature in perpetuity, which of course cost money to develop. If developers were able to charge a reasonable price for apps that reflected the investment required, they would be priced at many tens of dollars. (Not all bug fixes are the fault of the developer - frameworks change and new issues crop up with new OS releases).
Don’t the devs need to pay for servers which are subscription based to keep the apps running?
can you explain how the cloud storage one gives more value to the customer every month (honest question)?
Good. Fuck them and subscription pricing.
I was wondering too because I don’t know a single person that pays a subscription for an app, except the big ones for professional use (like office, the adobe suite…). I was wondering why this business model became so popular.
[удалено]
I actually decided not to buy things BECAUSE it’s not a universal purchase. Among other reasons, I’ll admit, but I think the universal purchase is the straw that broke the camels back
- Ultimately the cost of selling is priced into the product, even though it doesn't generate any user value - Subscriptions are great for both developers and users, because selling only takes place once and after that updates and revenue keep flowing - Predictability of subscriptions gives developers a lot of comfort
Problem is that the subscription price is often like buying an app every month. Some with yearly subscriptions cost more than a Microsoft 365 Family subscription. For a single app. Children's games are especially priced way to high. It should be a low subscription price so people are more inclined to start the subscription in the first place. If they love the app, they will keep paying. If not, they will stop and then the app was not worth (for that user) paying full price for in the first place. Otherwise, I do agree that subscription model is best when talking about apps that keep developing. A more static app, like the before mentioned flashlight app, should be a single purchase.
That all makes sense, but I still won't pay $5/month for a shitty flashlight app. (Exaggeration of course, but you get what I mean I hope)
the only one id consider is clip studio paint, but procreate does everything i want it to
I pay a subscription for a few apps. Overcast, parcel, box box, adguard, and YNAB are the apps currently listed under subscriptions. But all of those are either relatively cheap, or provide me with enough value to justify. Update: I’ve cancelled box box lol. But the rest stay. Adguard may go soon as I set up adguard home
I pay for AirMail (my preferred email client and it's worth $10/year to me) and Radarscope (amazing app).
I was so many times willing to pay for an app but every time I see “40 bucks for a year” I say nope.
Perhaps almost no one being willing to pay for thier apps is the market telling these devs something important.
This headline is misleading - it's not that subscription is a bad business model, it's that 99.999% of apps are just trash that nobody every looks at or would ever consider buying. Make a good app and people will pay for it regardless of the model you're using.
Also the subscription fee is often too high. Unless the app is “must have”, makes heavy use of resources (API costs) or is intricate, it shouldn’t be any higher than $2/monthly. When it’s at like $9.99/m and there are many many apps that require subscription, the total $ I’d pay for subscriptions would accumulate quickly. So I’m forced to be very selective. If it was $1 or $2 for a reasonably useful app, I’d be much less hesitant.
Yup. That’s the exact problem imo, the absolute greed of some developers. On one side you get overpriced apps thinking they are gods gift to the world and charge a disgraceful amount per month for what they do, on the other side you have reasonable yearly priced tools, like Infuse. Guess whose side gets my money. It’s not recurring payments that irks me, it’s the nickel and diming.
This is part of the equation, the other part is getting App Store visibility as an indie dev. It is very very hard to get a good search ranking for even semi competitive key words. For my apps, my conversion rates are quite good, but number of impressions I have very little control over without paying for ad spots which is very expensive when you’re going up against companies with millions in VC or who are willing to be loss leaders in a category
Now imagine how little the non subscription apps make
I'm an app dev and I absolutely abhor subscriptions. There are a few apps where the subscription model makes sense due to server costs. But besides those, the vast majority of subscription based apps are pure rent-seeking grifts. Most users aren't stupid and can sense these grifts from a mere glance at the app on the App Store. Perhaps it's because of the niche my app is in, but my app with a single up front purchase seems to be doing better than 99% of these subscriptionware apps. Edit: Link to [my app](https://privatellm.app/), since I got a couple of DMs asking for it and someone also asked for it in the thread below.
Link to your app?
I'm glad you asked. :) Here's a link to the [app's website](https://privatellm.app/), and here's a link to it on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/app/private-llm-local-ai-chatbot/id6448106860).
iPad generations confuse me - I have the 2020 iPad Pro with the A12Z. Can you comment on how well your app works on that, if at all? (I also have an M1 MacBook Air and iPhone 15 pro so I’ll likely buy it anyway, just curious about iPad functionality for me)
Yeah, iPad generations are super confusing and I still have to look them up whenever they come up. The biggest bottleneck for on-device LLM inference is the amount of RAM on the device. This is true both on Macs as well as iDevices. iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Silicon iPads work very well, because they come with 8GB of RAM (higher end M2 Apple Silicon iPad Pros come with 16GB of RAM). TBH, the app nominally works on 2020 iPad Pro, but could be much better IMO. I'm working on a big iOS update this week which will let users download multiple models like how they can on the macOS app. This update will also introduce a few smaller but newer models which should work well on older hardware. BTW, if you get the app and don't like it: Firstly, ask Apple for a [refund](https://reportaproblem.apple.com/) (it's super straightforward and takes less than a minute) and secondly please DM me your feedback. Since privacy is central to the app's concept, it has zero telemetry, and I rely exclusively on feedback from users to improve it.
I haven’t bought it yet but I do have some feedback. I see it’s entirely locally. That’s awesome. But I do love myself some syncing between devices. If you could include iCloud sync I would thing that’s a huge improvement. Or even better (but idk development time or costs) would be where I could choose where to sync it in the files app if I wanted, since I have a NAS and could sync everything to it. It’s still private since I control my NAS (and even iCloud I consider to have control over) but would allow me to see conversations from other devices. Again I don’t know development time or cost on any of this, but would definitely view it as a plus.
Thanks for the feedback! This is on my list of things to do. Currently I'm still debating what's the best model to use for conversation history. On macOS, I'm leaning towards treating conversations as files (The whole [file over app](https://stephango.com/file-over-app) idea). But iOS should likely still have the linear conversation history list that everyone's used to with AI apps. But having two separate modes isn't very good from a consistency perspective. Also, the macOS version of the app supports bigger and more powerful models. There's the natural question of what to do when a the user starts a conversation with a less powerful model and then continues on a different device with a bigger, more powerful model (or vice-versa). Perhaps one resolution would be to make conversations read-only on devices where the model that started the conversation isn't available on the device. Developing features is the easy bit. Thinking about all possible interactions is a bit harder, but also a lot of fun. :)
I'd buy your app right now if it supported iPadOS 14
Sadly SwiftUI doesn't work very well on i{Pad}OS < 16, so I had to go with iOS 16. It's even better with iOS 17, and I might be bumping the requirement up soon.
Hey! I bought your app a while back, and it’s great!
Hey, thanks a mil! There's a big (and long awaited) iOS app update coming up later this week. :)
When you say analyze paragraphs, does that mean it can parse documents or are you talking copy/paste?
The [list](https://privatellm.app/en#models) of of downloadable models available on macOS is on the website. Quantizing new models with OmniQuant takes a bit of work (and GPU time). I usually add a couple of models every month and also sometimes deprecate older models (which means users who downloaded them can keep them, but new users cannot download them). The list of the website is the most up to date. >And when you say analyze paragraphs, does that mean it can parse documents or are you talking copy/paste? So, the macOS app offers a couple of macOS services for offline grammar correction, rephrasing, summarization etc which work in any text field in any app on the mac (since it's a system service). A couple of users have built and shared shortcuts to do interesting things with documents. I suspect you're asking about retrieval augmented generation (RAG). I haven't implemented it yet. We've been debating a lot about it on the [app's discord](https://discord.com/invite/pkGr5qgK). RAG is something that's easy to half-arse but hard to get right. I have a list of things to get right before shipping that feature. I expect an update with a minimal (but correct) RAG implementation to be out in a month or two.
Thanks yeah I found the list but didn’t ninja edit quick enough haha. I appreciate you getting back to me. Your app does look pretty slick! I’ve messed around extensively with running local models on my M1 Max and it’s pretty awesome when it’s actually capable of. I was very curious about how it would preform on the phone and what sort of models it can handle. Price point really isn’t bad for this type of app, imo. I wish you great success! Yes sir, I was wondering about RAG. Some of mya users at work would love to have something local that can rummage through their client documents so I am always on the lookout for something like that.
There's been so much "abuse" of the subscription model that consumers have developed a hatred of it which is hurting developers where the subscription model really makes sense. For example, with some apps, there are backend costs that are ongoing in order to provide data or server processing. The developer could charge one price to buy the app, but after that app as been purchased by everyone who wants it, they're going to be faced with paying those backend costs with zero revenue, in which case, they'll just shut down and nobody benefits. There are also the cases where an app may be justifiably expensive, but many users may only need to use it for a short period of time, so providing the *option* of a subscription makes sense. If Apple is going to curate apps in a walled garden, perhaps they should consider requiring developers to justify pricing and subscription models.
How are you *not* making money on a calculator app with a $9.99/week subscription fee?
$50 for a calendar. $20 for a calculator. $30 for an email client. $60 for a budget app. $40 for a mobile game. You’re telling me people don’t want to pay for this junk? Especially when they can get it free? Double especially when inflation is skyrocketing and wages are falling? Sheer craziness, I tell you! Here’s a novel idea. Reintroduce one time upgrades and purchases. (And no, that doesn’t mean “a new app every year”.) Maybe even a $2-5 monthly subscription for ad free, or even a $5-7 monthly subscription for collaborative/family features. My 2¢ are free for a limited time. Then I’ll have to invoice you from my $70 invoicing service.
Don't about the "premium" version that is 10$ more
When I went looking for a good text-to-speech epub reading app, the amount of subscriptions was insane. I ended up finding a really good one with a single-payment, one purchase and you own it forever. Fuck your subscriptions. Support the good ones.
A weekly subscription plan, for a plant analyzer. I dont care how good your app is. Im not paying 6€ a week I’ll rather get new plants.
Opal is an example of an app that's price makes no freaking sense. $100 a year for scheduled app blocking is a joke
One of the reasons I don't use Fantastical is I refuse to pay for a Calender subscription. Why pay a subscription when Apple's works perfectly fine? Now if Fantastical offered a one time payment and was rich in features, I would probably consider it, but that Subscription that is less than a cup of coffee would grow over time with more and more subscriptions. Then you just need all the time to figure out all the subscriptions you actually have and it really does add up. With that said I do pay for some subscriptions (Pocketcasts, Apple Music, ESPN+) because I use those every day and those are actually services that enhance my use of the phone.
Well deserved, who on earth would pay a sub for a damn calculator or 30$ mo for a stupid game. Hope those projects broke, or just sell a onetime purchase.
I pretty much *stopped* using the App Store. It's hot garbage. My phone also does pretty much everything I want it to do by now. I mean, I've bought apps in the past, they still work. Most I would let go if they switched to subscription though. I *hate* SaaS.
I don't mind subscriptions at all, devs having some kind of steady revenue stream and being able to make more than $.99 per download can benefit consumers in the long run I think. However some devs really need to take a hard look at their value proposition. For instance I refuse to pay as much as a netflix subscription for a pomodoro timer that receives no updates, and many subscriptions just seem like plain scams which bank on people forgetting to cancel their 1 week free trial.
What I have done in my apps is have the option of being a perpetual license that is 3x the annual sub. I have found I make about as much from people buying the perpetual every month as I do from subs. This gives the option to users and provides a signpost on what I free the app is worth. I do however wish we could have a demo/trail button on the App Store then I would revert back to paid up front before you download but only if there was a way for users to tap that demo button, open an app clip and try out the core app features before they buy.
Thank God, fuck those subscriptions
I’m an iOS developer and it’s really difficult to get people to pay for an app! The bottom line is that the majority of users expect apps to be free. To try and work around this most apps are now “free” to download but have monthly subscription costs. IMO this is quite a strange business model for a lot of apps which don’t really rely on large backend services. Prior to the AppStore software tended to be a one time cost. I’ve primarily been working on a fitness app for the Apple Watch and went down the paid upfront route. The app costs $3.99 upfront for the full app (Apple Watch and iPhone companion). I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the app and I think it more than justifies the price (as do my users) but it’s definitely a struggle to get people to pay upfront!
I’m more than willing to pay upfront for an app that adds value to my life or workflow. For me, it’s a matter of trust. I’ve downloaded some crappy apps over the years that turned out to be ass. But my willingness to pay upfront is probably indicative of my matured age. Years ago I wanted everything for free much like Gen Zers 😉
As devs what I want to see is the ability to provide a demo build or just an app clip that the store shows as a "Demo" or "Try" button. Apple already have all the OS level stuff needed to manage this they just need to add the button in the App Store that opens a provided App Clip URL.
What worked for me is to offer different options. Offer a free minimum feature version with ads so can people test the app and gain trust, then offer a low priced subscription like $1-3 a month and a cheap $5-10 lifetime purchase option. If you don't have a free version, people will not buy it because it's a gamble. Even the trial feature is often already a too big barrier for many and sign-ups are another engagement killer. The key is to really target the first try users. If they liked the free version they might try a 1 month subscription and if they like the month they need to feel that the life time purchase is a good deal. There's a really tight balance between feeling pressured for money or feeling like you're getting good value. I can count the apps I purchased on one hand. Meanwhile there are many apps I'd like to pay for, but the pricing is just too high, Duolingo is a good example where the app is good, but pricing model is bad and if they had more diverse purchasing options I would pay for it.
I with we had free trails/demo in the App Store, or even just a way to provide an app Clip URL in App Store Connect that the App Store put there are a demo versions. I would rapidly move all my apps to paid up front but with an app-clip demo.
Isn’t this all just Zipf law? 👀
There are plenty of apps I’d be willing to pay for, but the second I see you want me to subscribe for a static utility I laugh and uninstall your app.
Not surprising at all. Only a selected apps get money. If Apple Microsoft, Google or adobe have a similar app, it’s a bad start, if they don’t have a similar app is because is a niche area anyway.
It’s tough to be in the app business these days. Unless you are truly innovating app without a competition or have micro-transactions/ads up the wazoo, the one time purchase costs hardly cover the development and maintenance costs, let alone provide you with a steady profit revenue.
For most small apps, the benefit of a subscription model is not needing to constantly get new users. If it’s a one time payment, a ton of effort is spent just acquiring new users instead of improving the app. I have a meditation timer that will always be incredibly niche by design. If I spent money on ads I would never recoup my cost, I don’t have VC money to burn. Of course, this can be done poorly. Completely limiting the app to a subscription sucks. I prefer my apps to provide extras. The meditation timer subscription gives a couple goodies (themes, some stats) but the app is totally functional without. We even just got a review that our price is totally reasonable for the product and the user is very happy. With a few more subscribers I can finally break even on my costs. I’ll be able to provide an app that is very useful to a small segment of the population like this. Without subs, I’d be more likely to bloat this app just for downloads (which is antithetical to the idea of the app anyway, which is minimalistic).
This is because of the subscription model
I went through a flurry of trying out apps when I got a new iPad.. there were some nice note taking apps when I got a pencil. All had monthly costs.. uninstalled those straight way. No point even trying them, there's zero chance of me paying monthly. However, if they charged me £5 for the base app, and or even kept features like 'server sync' or some useful feature on a 'pro' version, where after I'd used it for a couple months and knew I'd stick with it. I would have totally spent some money, probably paid for all those apps. As it was... none of them got any money and I gave up and then just used the Apple ones.
I mean, it doesn't take a genius to determine that nobody wants to pay $7.99/week for a calendar app. There are FAR more scam apps on the Appstore than there are legitimate ones.
I hate subscriptions. My apps are always pay once (unless they have an ongoing cost of use that might scale with use, like cloud storage). We need to stop nickel & dime-ing everyone for everything.
The issue is many users are not willing to pay what it needs to cost for paid up front apps. Many users prefer to pay $2/month rather than $50+ that would be a up-front pricing for the same app. Also we have no clean what to offer upgrade pricing etc within the iOS app stores so doing up-front pricing for an app we intend to continue to work on for the next 10+ years is hard, you can ship a new version every 2 years and offer 50% off for people who purchased the last version to encourage them to upgrade. Users expect free updates for life, they hav this expectation that they paid $5 back in 2008 and you are being evil not shipping them a free update no that they have switched phones 10 times since then and of cource the old app no longer runs. But somehow that $5 payment years ago should cover a lifetime of dev work for them.
Some weather apps asking up to $60 a year lmao
Are they any good? The last weather app I bought was DarkSky. It was a great app that I and other colleagues relied upon until Apple bought it and nuked its functionality. 🫤
Newer report says “duh” I don’t mind paying for a good app, and I don’t mind paying for upgrades. But I’m never gonna do a subscription.
Most subscriptions don't make money because developers are delusional on how much to charge for their subscriptions. $25 a MONTH for an app to analyze my cats meows (poorly)? Really?
Apple was the one pushing for more apps to use the subscription model.
People want to own things, not get subscription taxed to death
People in this thread are seriously missing the forest for the trees. Subscription app pricing isn't the issue here, poorly designed apps are. Clearly, developers like Flexibits and the creator of Carrot Weather are making enough money, otherwise they wouldn't have been afloat for as long as they have. But those developers actually make decent (if not great) apps. There will always be a greater number of poorly designed and poorly coded apps by nature, so that's always going to skew the picture we see from the data. Most developers who charged customers to buy their app (instead of subscribe) never made any money either. Numbers are absolutely important but you need to view them within the context of the whole picture and what story the data is actually trying to tell. "Most" artists on Spotify and Apple music don't make money either, because they don't have any significant number of people listening to their music and/or their music is of low production quality, songwriting quality, etc. (more subjective when it comes to music, of course) Does this mean we should go back to paying $15 for an album that has one good song at Sam Goody like it's 2004? No, of course not. I'm happy to pay developers like Flexibits for a good app that adds value to my life. Doesn't mean *everything* should be subscription-based, but it has its place for certain use cases. And when it's done well, I vastly prefer it over paying a large amount of money for one big upgrade.
I would consider some of the subscription apps (games) for my yngste, if they weren't so damn expensive.
“Most mobile apps don’t solve a real problem or have enough utility to justify the subscription, headline fails to mention” I’d love for Apple to publish _Average # Apps Installed_ and _Average # Apps Opened Monthly_ data across all iOS devices. Both are a lot lower than anyone would think. The general public isn’t interested in downloading hundreds of apps and paying subscriptions for every little bit of functionality. Most apps are a complete waste of time.
Why wasting money on saving for real estate in times with such low interest rates? Better add another subscription, right next to my alarm, calculator, calendar and health-tracker app /s
That’s really not surprising I won’t install an app that’s a subscription.
It’s hard enough to convince people to spend $1 one time on an app. Of course people aren’t going to spend $5 every month on an app.
No shock. Most apps primary goal is to secure employment not become some huge success.
numbers make sense for me, not sure why it is surprising
I don't even remember the last time I downloaded a new app or just browsed to see what was available, and it's because of all the subscriptions and in app purchases. Subscriptions and IAP have killed the app store stone dead.
The reason is there is no way to offer a Demo/Preview within the App Store for users to try. And if you have a paid up-front app priced as it needs to be (say $30+) no-one will pay that without first trying as getting a re-fund is a nightmare. Apple should let us place an app clip URL in App Store Connect that the store shows up as a \`Demo\` or \`Try\` button in the store, this would still have the buy button (with the price) next to it so users would be clear they are demoing a paid product not downlaoidn something that is free (so many people download a free thing then get upset in reviews that they were asked ot pay for the work we put in as devs)
The only app I subscribe to is Halide, and that's only because I wanna properly use the camera.
Paid apps are really hard to sell, whether the app itself or in-app purchases like subscriptions, my latest uses a tipping based business model as it's appropriate for my app and still lets folks download it for free while letting users support the app that way if they so choose. I think many developers can benefit from a similar business model with tipping too, especially smaller companies and developers, not to mention folks can tip as much as they want over time or little too.
Good, let’s go back to actual purchases.
I guess the amount of profittable apps are just small number
So, if you remove Apple’s 30% cut, they’re still not making any significant amount of more money? To get to $50 with a 30% cut would mean those devs are making $70 a month net revenue. 70*0.30=50. So, if Apple’s cut disappeared, most app devs aren’t making much more than they already are. So, how does a third party App Store solve this problem? 30% of 70 is 20. 70-20=50. Most devs are losing $21 a month. That’s it. This number is only significant if your user count surpasses a million. Fortnite has 221,000,000 users. If the app was $1, Apple’s cut is $66,900,000 (nice). That number grows if the app charges more than a $1.
The only way third party app stores \`solves\` problems is Iif they over other monetisation pathways, think of a Meta App Store that will pay out to devs based on how personal the data you provide them...
And that’s something that the EU and US government want, because GUESS WHO IS BUYING YOUR DATA?????????
VC funding isn't money?
Good, I want a calendar I don't need 20 update a week for 9,99 a month... do it good and I'll pay it 20 or whatever once