App Store Subscriptions - Think It Will Effect Pro Apps?

When do you rent, when do you purchase something in 'real life'?
And why?

I rent a car in a foreign country, 'cause it's completly brain-free to purchase a car for 2 weeks vacation.
I buy my kitchen stove, cause I use it daily... renting a stove is ... gives some headache, hm?

So, why should I rent something what's in use frequently?
Why should I purchase something what I use once in a while?

What carpenter rents a saw??
Who purchases a restaurant for having a single dinner?

So, we soon rent Lumberjack via AppStore... ok, why not?

If you need a tool or equipment once off, it makes sense to rent, if it breaks, you are not left with the headache of replacing/repairing it, Ripple Twins make a fuss of how much they rent, and it in their case makes perfect business sense, to rent gear as an when they need it, insurance costs are lower if you have nothing to insure.

As with FCPX, it would be a very bad idea to turn FCPX into a rental option, as Adobe have done, app theft is high, you loose control of the product. Apple with the fixed one time price has a fix on income, sure there are many illegal copies of FCPX out there, and I am sure it would not be a huge investment to write software that prevents users from using or updating FCPX, in the end is it worth it for Apple to lock people out?

If you sell the app for $300 and the user buys a mac laptop for $2000, has Apple actually lost anything? Maybe the $300, but then there is "hackintoshing" non mac laptops running MacOSX, and FCPX, and countless other apps.

Rental of things plays a vital role, and so does full ownership, for software, rental is just a plan bad idea, we all from time to time run into financial crunches, more month, not enough money, so things have to be left unpaid.

Having your business based on rental is a very bad idea, if you cannot pay the rental, you are locked out, no access, no income, no access, no income-an infinite loop, once long ago Apple incurred a cost to producing FCP, in the actual pressing of disks, printing 3000 pages of paper, the big black heavy box-set, now the cost is hosting a few GB's of data, and you the user has to pay the data transfer costs, not Apple!!!

Adobe is clearly confused as to what it wants to be, if what I think is true, that Adobe wants to sell on the Apple App Store, then what is the software going to be, by that I mean, once off full purchase, or rental, as in in-app purchase?

As I see it, you need a base on which to build something, the App Store is a perfect setup, it can be updated as an when needed, FCPX for example, is a basic setup, it relies in the main on outside developers to make it better, the plug in works well, what is needed is a rework of the way the App Store works, FCPX should be once off, and plug in's come in 2 sizes, once off, and subscription, for those that only need a tiny fraction of plug in's they buy once off, for a few $'s, and if you are a power user, have many work stations, then a subscription to a plug in service may be better.

It really depends on what the developers can bring to the market, how quickly are they willing to produce, if it is many updates, then having a subscription would maybe work, trying to sell hundreds of single plug in's might be confusing to the user.

Sound effects, music tracks, clip art, stock footage, use both subscription and once off, depending on how much you use, the more you need them, then it becomes economical for the editor/client to pay for subscription, kind of like buying in bulk, you get a discount, and there are editing shops that work in bulk, so can afford the higher subscription model, if you do the odd project, then once off works for you, but there are 2 options, you have a choice.

Apple is once off, Adobe is rental, there are your 2 choices, but is it really a choice????

Karsten Schlüter wrote: When do you rent, when do you purchase something in 'real life'?

I buy my kitchen stove, cause I use it daily... renting a stove is ... gives some headache, hm?

So, why should I rent something what's in use frequently?
Why should I purchase something what I use once in a while?

What carpenter rents a saw??
Who purchases a restaurant for having a single dinner?

Where I'm from, the majority of homeowners rent their water heaters. Go figure.

alex4d.com/notes/item/app-store-subscriptions-imovie-fcpx

So how to subscription-based apps run? Do I need to be connected to the internet each and every time I launch an app? What if my internet is down and I need to edit? What if the internet company screws something up and I am without internet for over a month? What if as I'm editing the internet goes down? Does the app just save and shut down until it is restored?

Restaurant owner is the content creator (post house). The patron only purchases the content needed (media client). Would the restaurant owner rent the equipment used to create their content?

Metaphors are slippery. I'm still opposed to the subscription based model for tools I need to use daily and over many years to run a business. I also do carpentry work. If I have to rent my radial arm saw, I'd be in trouble. I don't sell the same dollar amount of furniture every month.

On the other hand, the saw manufacturer isn't maintaining and upgrading my saw. That's my responsibility and expense.

But software, a very different animal from anything else. Digital media production a very different business and workflow model than anything else.

Is Apple goes subscription, some will win, some will lose, the field will narrow for sure. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. But I don't think this can be compared to any other traditional industry. Stoves and saw a don't get upgrades sent out regularly.

Ben wrote: Stoves and saw a don't get upgrades sent out regularly.

Well neither does FCPX, really. So maybe a subscription-based format would be a good thing???

Online downloads make frequent (or infrequent) updates possible. For a company with the sales numbers such as Apple or Adobe, a subscription won't make things developer faster. Coding with a handful of developers happens at the speed it happens, money doesn't make it go faster. A small company of one or two guys can hire another one or two guys and that may help them. But outside of that, money flowing in monthly to Apple won't speed up writing code.

But like you said, I recently did 2 weeks on location for a reality TV show in the Rocky Mountains, no Internet, outside of cell phone 4G. Would I be allowed to use FCPX to work remotely, or would I be SOL? I have several other similar situations coming up, where I won't have Internet outside of my cell phone for extended periods. Something to ponder...

Uh. I really hope that they won't move to subscriptions... As a freelancer with irregular income, what saves me many times during down times is being careful with all regular monthly payments. I only buy things when I can pay them in full.

What it would be good for is maybe stuff like Frame.io they could then offer it via the AppStore directly...

What Apple did with their apps whe the Mac AppStore was launched was to basically lower the price of the apps to what used to be the upgrade cost. Logic used to cost $199 to upgrade. Now it's $199 to buy. I think Final Cut Pro upgrades were $299 or maybe even $399 before the AppStore.

Now the problem is that people have forgotten how expensive apps used to be. So if they pay $199 for and app... A new version of that app has to be a real major upgrade for people to pay those $199 again. This leaves the developer with the choice of either putting out only maintanence updates until they accumulated enough new functions to warrant a brand new big version that they can charge for. Or to go the Apple way of charging once. And this only works if you sell A LOT of licenses.

I think it would be good if they also allowed developers to charge an update fee...

I've been using a web-making-app called EverWeb. They try to be a bit of an iWeb replacement. They have a subscription thing... As long as you subscribe you can download any updates but if you cut the description the app remains fully functional but you cannot upgrade it. I think this is a pretty great way. And should push developers to keep adding to their apps so people have a reason to keep subscribing...

All this talk about subscription is making my bank card nervous, I really cannot afford to pay a rental for FCPX, that would just plain be bad for business!!!

I can sort of understand the need for rental/subscription for some things, but for others, it simply does not make sense, it to my mind makes zero logic for Apple to have FCPX as rental only, look if it was Final Cut Studio X, with Color-Soundtrack Pro-LiveType-Motion-Compressor all 64bit running on El Cap, even then the rate of updates simply does not justify subscription.

Having dealt with Avid, I was informed by Avid that the small number of active users has forced them into a subscription model, as the costs of coding with the small user base, there is simply too few users to justify free updates, Apple simply has too many users to have this excuse, being both a hardware and software seller, yes yes, Avid has hardware, a tiny range, and not everyone buys new every year!!

Adobe has the cloud, a vast infrastructure that needs to be maintained, so I guess how would you have the users pay for that, if you sell apps, a 2 tier price model? That sort of really makes sense, 2 incomes instead of 1, but then how many users would elect for cloud access??

Apple does not force you to use icloud with Logic or Final Cut, I really hope this never happens, I way prefer working off the net, without having my app call home to find out if I am paying my bills...That is one of the best features of old and new FCP, it was install and use, not linked to any cloud or account checking.

If Apple Pro Apps was to go rental, many users would simply elect to pirate, and how does that help Apple, it damages the brand, Adobe is highly pirated, simply due to the illogical wisdom of being rental only, people do what they see as in their best interest, the rate of convictions of pirates simply not enough are prosecuted, and Adobe does not invest it seems in anti piracy.

I wonder what is the actual rate of stolen versions of Adobe cloud users using pirated software out of the total number of Adobe creative app users???

Apple is mute on the subject of hackintosh, almost as if "oh well..." we do not pay for iOS/MacOSx, will the base operating systems revert to paid/subscription??

It is all speculation until Monday...