Interesting read, this blog posits a plausible 'follow the money' motive for what we're seeing in society that I appreciate. Software as a service is and always has been about maximizing income streams for the software creators. Microsoft has claimed for decades that it had to continually update it's product to keep it working, and I have never believed them. How many times does Adobe need to be updated? Why did flash go away? It worked. Follow the money and you'll see that the idea is to create continuous income streams for the big companies. Apple doesn't want you to fix and keep using your old phone, they want you to buy a new one for $1,200. Same for otherwise durable goods such as cars, refrigerators, and televisions. If a company can turn off your car because you didn't pay the subscription fee this month, do you really own it?
As someone who works in the software industry I can tell you it‘s not that simple. Providers do want to maximize revenue, but consumers likewise want to optimize the value they receive. I paid around 80$ per month for the adobe suite, which is ridiculous for my use case. So I switched to affinity (40$ per major version). They are not as good, but good enough for what I need.
Another example is figma and sketch. I used to pay for sketch, but figma offered their software for free, so I seitched over. Figma was so good, I actually WANTED to pay them, because it makes my professional life so much easier. They pump out useful features like crazy. The only reason I don‘t want to give them any money now is their virtue signalling for blm and lgbtqm+ stuff.
We personally develop freemium software, and let me tell you: it‘s quite hard to make it profitable. You constantly have to talk to users - what are their pain points? How can you solve them better? How can you improve the product? Why are users leaving or not buying? And if one of your competitors makes a better product for a better price it gets really tough. You always have to improve or people will leave for something better. The flipside is: people are actually willing to pay for a good product.
And as much as I hate apples virtue signalling and politics, they just make very good products for the average computer user. They invest in usability a lot. I would switch in a heartbeat if there was a company that offered the same quality without the politics, even at a slightly higher price point.
But then you get into the issue of the big 5 personality traits. Highly creative people tend to be sjws because they are predisposed to it. Startups and software evolve through creative people, hence the politics.
I’m an engineer, also a creative professional. I do understand market forces. The point I was making was more about using the SaaS model to maximize profit in non-software applications. It’s not necessary to run a car with a computer, nor is it necessarily cheaper to build the systems to be computer controlled. It is necessary to do so to meet current emissions requirements for new vehicles. As a non-believer in the anthropogenic climate change narrative, I’ve always wondered what the motivation was to select studies with results that favor the ‘man is evil and raping mother earth’ conclusions. There are lots of studies and lots of actual science supporting the other side of the argument, that climate change is natural. I’m also skeptical of the conspiracy theory that some cabal somewhere is trying to subjugate all humanity and we’re headed for a neo-aristocracy and a techno-serf society. Applying SaaS methodology to as many hardware applications as possible to maximize revenue streams and make progress towards the forever-growth demands of a stockholder environment is a more believable theory, as is public-private cooperation towards such an end.
4 comments
7 u/Dicky 07 Jul 2021 17:01
1 u/Verum_Durum 07 Jul 2021 19:50
1 u/Dicky 07 Jul 2021 22:55
4 u/FrankFavorsFreedomFries 07 Jul 2021 17:02