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Grayeagle said:

Maestro64 wrote: "...The third group just buys and hold for as long as they can and then start a new sometime in the future."

I'm in that third group. I have two SEs (64 and 128) And I intend to keep them until either they disintegrate or I can't get batteries. 

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My five female grandchildren are already complaining about the decision to stop selling the SE.  Maybe Tim Cook has forgotten that 51% of the population consists of females. 

I love my SE too, though for how it fits into pockets rather than hands. However, I also have the two-year itch and my SE is about two and a half years old.

I may represent a further premium demographic as I've given up waiting for an SE replacement and ordered Apple's smallest current phone ... which would be a Xs. I don't see many SE owners in my position moving off to Android and waiting only works for so long. Apple is likely to boost its bigger phone sales if no SE replacement arrives so further strengthening their ASP.

I have always assumed that Apple rolls all these functions into iTunes because of the Windows angle.

Anyone with an iPod, and nowadays an iPhone etc, pretty much has to load iTunes onto their computer. If that computer happens to be a Windows PC, it may be the only piece of Apple software that they feel they need. By lumping everything into iTunes, Apple uses its music player bridgehead to sell its services to people that otherwise wouldn't see them.

Apple even tried lumping Safari into the bundle (while there was a Windows version of Safari) by making it a default 'include' in iTunes downloads/updates. A bit naughty really and not appreciated by many Windows users. Still, PC users are accustomed to shovelware .

Soli said:

Adding to your comment about not actually owning SW, there are a lot of people that seem to be fine with having subscriptions to iCloud, Dropbox, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Why are those acceptable when you can buy movies and TV shows from other services like iTunes Store, Prime Video, and Sony Ultra? And why would they buy a digital copy when they can buy a DVD or Blu-ray copy since having a physical copy is what I've been told since the iTunes Store started. And, yet, we're seeing people movie to subscription-based music, and we're seeing subscription video services rise—which includes YouTube Premium nee YouTube Red—and this move to subscription apps only seems to be happening because Apple saw the trend, not because Apple invented the trend.

Isn't this about the nature of the product? I buy music because I use (play) it many times; I'm happy to rent movies because I only watch them once (and maybe once again after 5-10 years). [Didn't SJ say exactly this some years ago when talking about iTunes policy?]

With software, one typically builds a set of personal files that depend upon that app (say a Photoshop file with PS). When your interest wanes (you buy something new), you probably still need to access the old files. The purchase model lets you 'freeze' the app you had for, typically, years until it naturally stopes working (OS updates or whatever). The subscription model means your files stop working tomorrow - probably unacceptable. So you're forced to continue paying a subscription for something you're hardly using, along with the upgrades that you're not interested in.

welshdog said:

Somebody who either is a developer or knows people who are, tell me something.  Isn't this move to subscription based apps just a way for developers to make more money?  And to do it knowing they kind of have customers over a barrel in many cases, leaving them no option but to pay up?  I really hate this trend.  I fail to see what has changed in the app developement world that suddenly these coders are all starving and have to do this in order to survive.

There are several industries that rely on customer inertia to take more money than they would naturally receive (in the UK, insurance is one of those: reinsure with the same company each year and you are guaranteed to be charged more than 'new' customers elsewhere). I fear that software subscriptions will (often, not always) be a step in the same direction.

If a developer is producing a succession of upgrades, why not sell them as regular updates? If there aren't such upgrades (and assuming there isn't a costly service element to the product) then why is the developer entitled to a revenue-stream: they should be earning money from whatever they're doing instead of producing those upgrades?

Disclosure: been there, done that, earned money.

netrox said:

Context needs to be given in this article. Originally, when apps were created, Apple does not allow developers to charge for major upgrades of the same apps. That meant that developers could not charge again ever. Now, we have subscription model and it seems to be the best way to keep them existing if you want to support their businesses. Don't like it? Tough. Developers need to make a living. Pay up or use free apps.

I think chargeable upgrades are exactly the way to go. If the developer puts in significant work to produce a better version of an app, they should be able to charge for it. If they don't put in that work (as leading players have been accused of) then why do they deserve more money? The upgrade model puts the decision about the value of the updates into the users' hands.

If there aren't significant updates then why is the developer entitled to a continuing revenue stream anyway? If they're not updating, presumably they're working on something else that they will then sell, thus maintaining their income.

This model also addresses the common issue of 'feature-bloat' where a developer has to keep adding features, whatever their value to users, to justify continuing revenue. Some apps have a natural 'finished' state where more features will just degrade their core functions (iTunes anyone?); no update = no charge justifies ending updates and, hopefully, both developer and user will have a further happy relationship on a new product.