Quote:
Originally Posted by P1et
You forgot to mention Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Adobe, my lawn care service. It's all moving to a pay-as-you-go model.
And bless Office 365. It's done very well for me over the years.
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Of course my examples are non-exhaustive.
Lawn care is a different category because human labor =/= a program.
Programs don't need sleep or time off work. Programs don't get tired.
You don't pay a flat, one-time rate for a person to do work for the rest of their life.
That'd be slavery lol.
The same reason why employees are given paychecks bi-weekly/monthly for as long as they continue to work.
I can't believe I even have to explain this.
Software though, is different.
It's already written, the hardware (incl. cost of MFG) is already accounted for in the sale, and keeping it operational doesn't cost anything for the developer unless they are consistently improving its features (which is the case of Netflix as i'll explain below).
But in the case of a parking assist software, the algorithms do the job on its own. There is no additional human labor involved after the sale. So to charge monthly to keep the program active is nickel-and-diming.
Netflix (and the like) though, I'll give a pass.
Because you're not paying for the software, per se, you're truly paying for new content that requires production/filming/development (i.e., new originals), and new licensing (for more added content as time goes by).
It's kind of like a magazine subscription in a way.
But Office 365?
You're basically paying in perpetuity for what is basically a digital typewriter.
There is only so much you can do to reinvent the wheel via "security patches", so no thanks, I'm perfectly content with Office 2010.