I think a common factor on why torrents are having a resurgence and illegal streaming services are getting more traction, is subscription fatigue. Subscription fatigue doesn’t only contain itself to streaming services, movies or music, nowadays you’re also expected to subscribe to every app you download. Whether it’s a meditation app, a budgeting app (looking at YNAB that went from a one-time purchase to a really expensive subscription model), the Adobe suite, the MS Office suite, your Peloton bike that you’ve already paid hundreds of dollars for (referencing the earlier article on them establishing a startup fee for buying used bikes), or a podcast app where the money doesn’t even go to the podcasters themselves.
Is there a peak for this? I feel like subscriptions are becoming more of a rule than an exception. Having the ability to directly purchase digital goods seems more like a thing of the past. It’s just so stupid. But apparently people don’t care? They just keep paying for this? Apparently it’s still worth it for companies to establish a subscription model, even if there are no benefits for the customer, just the company. What are your thoughts? What can we do to stop it?
This is an interesting point as well. Before, if you weren’t happy with an update or whatnot, you could just keep running the older version. But nowadays that’s impossible in many cases.
TBF in most cases forced app obsolescence is on the developers. Some of them are super aggressive and will force you to update without really needing it. Like, come on, package tracking app, I really don’t believe you’re unable to show me the package pick-up barcode without updating. 🙄
But yeah, on iOS it’s completely impossible to get older versions, once you’ve updated something that’s it. And even on Android I’ve noticed that it’s become impossible to downgrade some apps even if I have the old apk, the Google installer simply fails to install it if I’ve ever had a newer version installed.