alt Hacker NewsYou are basically describing all software ever shipped before webapps and online updates became a thing.
Companies wrote software and sold them in boxes. You paid once and it was yours forever. You got exactly what was in the box, no more and no less.
The company then shipped a new verson in a different box 1-3 years later. If you liked it enough, and wanted the new features, you bought the new box.
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Yea, good old days :)
The catch was that old boxed software eventually breaks on new OS versions or devices.
However, SaaS has the potential to "freeze" features while remaining functional 20+ years down the road. Behind the scenes, developers can update server dependencies and push minor fixes to ensure compatibility with new browsers and screen sizes.
From the end-user's perspective, the product remains unchanged and reliable. To me, that’s very good!
And people liked that model, see the huge backlash when Adobe went subscription for creative suite.
I do wedding photography as a side hustle, I upgrade my camera maybe once every ~7 years. Cameras have largely been good enough since 2016 and the 5D Mark IV. I have a pair of R6 mk II that I'll probably hold onto for the next 10 years.
Point being, Lightroom has more or less been feature complete for me for a very, very long time. For about the price of 1/year subscription, I could have purchased a fixed version of Lightroom with support for my camera and not had to buy it again for another 10 years.
We are getting milked for every nickle and dime for no reason other than shareholder value.
It actually discourages real improvements. Before the subscription model, if Adobe wanted to sell me another copy of Lightroom they had to work really hard to make useful features that people actually wanted, enough to the point they'd buy thew version.
Now, they don't have to. You have to keep paying no matter what they decide to do.