Subscription Hell
At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author&#x27;s bit about software:<p>&gt; It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments illustrate, that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the software (which I might add, is entirely hosted on iCloud infrastructure).<p>I have noticed this as well, that a not-small number of software programs have turned from &quot;give us one money for this version&quot; to &quot;give us slightly smaller amount of one money per month, but do it in perpetuity if you want to keep going with the data you&#x27;ve entered.&quot;<p>That, to me, is crap and is incredibly frustrating, especially when the subscription model is coupled with a data lockout threat.  A task manager, a word processor, even a drawing program...none of these ought to require a subscription to be able to use.  Sure, have a subscription service for something that needs upkeep, like a syncing service (but get out of here if all you do is just lump it into the user&#x27;s iCloud storage) or a data feed.  But it&#x27;s almost insulting to say &quot;we used to charge you $50 once, now we&#x27;re charging you $29.95 per month forever (if you want to see those notes in two years, and no, we don&#x27;t have a data takeout API); it&#x27;s such a deal!&quot;