Here’s a long wordy effort post on software support and subscriptions if you are interested
It does, but it’s not like thats anything new and anyone who makes software for OSX would be well aware of it. If you went to ur accountant and they said ‘sorry i cant do ur tax this year parts of tax law has changed’ you might reasonably start to think they are not actually very good accountants, and maybe look elsewhere.
It seems this type of thing makes it more likely that OB would go on a subscription model, which kinda sucks but also actually can be better for everyone including us.
Over the years things will always be changing, the underlying hardware and software etc both on windows and OSX. Backwards compatibility, ie the hardware and software vendors (like apple, microsoft, ibm etc) promise that things will continue to work tomorrow as they do today, is less likely to be guaranteed. (Microsoft are famous for their backwards compat support but it causes its own issues they have largely given up on it too).
Anyway, things change and this means that software producing companies, like Elektron, need to spend money to employ developers to keep things up to date and hopefully fixing bugs and adding features along the way.
This costs money and generally a pretty material amount of money. If you have a subscription model it means that the company has a pretty good level of certainty of part of their revenue.
If I buy a Rytm $3000 and pay $30 this year for overbridge, Elektron can make a reasonable assumption im probably going to pay $30 next year as well. Multiply that by everyone who uses overbridge and they can ballpark how much money that will bring in every year, pretty reliably.
Now AS LONG AS Elektron uses that money to pay for people to work on overbridge, by fixing bugs, making it more stable, adding features, etc. I as an end user get a better product - a more stable OB maybe with cool new features added over time.
When there is no subscription model, the only way to make more revenue is to make more sales and the best way to make more sales is to put out new products. Or you know, maybe change the paint color and add some cool red racing stripes, stuff like that.
Fixing bugs in old products is appreciated, and maybe Elektron want to do it, but they have to put their resources into developing new products because that is what is going to sell, and without sales they go bust.
This is bad for me as a Rytm owner because I paid heaps for my Rytm and maybe there are bugs with the device OS or OB, but its not viable for Elektron to keep developers employed to fix all that stuff without some form of revenue coming in.
That is why subscription stuff doesnt necessarily have to be bad, as long as it is reasonably priced and the money is actually spent on improving things in a way that benefits existing users.
Effectively you get lifetime support for products you buy. Maybe we even get cheaper new products cause they dont need to build in the margin to fund long term support and improvement costs.
I think some of the pioneer dj stuff was effectively abandoned? Like theres still bugs but no updates, I havent looked for a while. ROLI also springs to mind that seems kinda on the edge but hard to say.
We should all be pretty leery of companies that continually put out newer and better models of gear while the older ones get abandoned. Cost to support vs revenue is a real issue.
Anwyay I am using Elektron and OB as an example, I have no idea if it will become a subscription thing or what, but if it does, it does not necessarily have to be a bad thing.
I am hard pressed to think of a better company than Elektron in terms of long term support for their products. I do scoff a bit at the idea that Apple updating its OS and hardware is some shocking event that there is no way it could have been forseen. It doesnt matter if someone thinks its right or wrong or MS is better than Apple or whatever, it’s something that literally every software company has to deal with, and that is what OB is.
Hardware and software will always be changing, and it costs money to keep things up to date. End users pay for it one way or another, if not them then who is?
Hope this comes across OK, I am just tying to explain my reasoning not having a go at anyone or anything.