> At the time, the common wisdom was that they'd go the same route as Adobe: you'd have to buy Final Cut X+1 in a couple years for another $299, and Final Cut X+2 a couple years after that... to their credit, that's not the way it's gone.

And that's despite Apple having zero interest in doing things that don't ultimately make them money.

I have a theory for how sales of these one-time-purchase yet indefinitely-updated apps happens to work out positively on Apple's balance sheet, while it doesn't for most other large players right now.

And that's that, due to Apple's vertical integration (they make the hardware, they make the OS that runs on the hardware, they make the apps that run on the OS) — and due to these apps only targeting their own OSes+hardware, with no consideration of portability to other platforms — a lot (like 90+%) of the "enablement" work for these apps ends up time-budgeted as OS work, rather than apps work.

Or, I guess, to be more charitable, you could say that Apple's engineers develop first-party apps not just to sell them, but at least in part to drive the development of the OS as a developer platform. You could even describe the OS frameworks as the product, and the apps themselves as the byproduct. (In that lens, the only reason FCP would cost anything at all is to avoid accusations of anti-competitive behavior.)

That is true, but it is also true that FinalCut lost big time against DaVinci for all semi-professional users which are exactly FinalCut's main target group.

I'd argue that it is very likely that Final Cut X+1 was Apple's plan. It just did not pan out and they were busy with other things. Now they made the first step correcting that (or cutting the losses, depending how you want to see it).

The one-time purchase version of Microsoft Office is not available worldwide. Where offered, it is reduced to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, with Outlook as a Business edition extra. Individual apps can sometimes be bought separately, but pricing usually makes this impractical. This is to push buyers to Microsoft 365 subscriptions which is the primary product.

Yes - but perpetual purchases have an interesting gotcha that Microsoft didn't realise at first. To encourage subscription over perpetual, ongoing or evergreen updates are limited to subscription version.

Office 2024 has every feature that was added since Office 2021 to the subscription version - while a chunk of loyal customers are unaware of them. Back when Google was competing hard with Google Suite, a big perception problem formed with the perpetual customers believing and convincing others that Google were far ahead, with collab editing and other features - after Office had added equivalent.

So for me, If there's a subscription and one-time option - I wonder if the one-time gets all updates going forward. If it doesn't, I realise that they'll regret that if competition picks up, and try to fix it later. If it does include updates... I worry it will be like many other lifetime updates one-time purchases - when competition is low they'll renege on that promise.

> Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office.

he writing is on the wall, they will remove it sooner or later.

*Microsoft 365 Copilot

Actually, you can buy only the 2024 version of MS Office for Mac, while the subscription is more up to date. You cannot buy a packaged 2025 version.

[flagged]

> and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”.

You're making up an individual to get mad at for no reason.

> The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need

There is no proof of this. So you're making up a situation to get mad at for no reason.

> I want exactly one of these apps

Perfect, Apple lets you buy the one app you want for a reasonable price! So what's the issue?

I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to get at but your analogy doesn’t really work here because a new chocolate bar would be a new product. Not a different way of buying the same product.

Exactly what I was thinking. I bought Pixelmator Pro 3 days ago… But I am happy, as I have absolutely no need for the others, except for the free ones.

> overpriced

Seriously? This is incredibly reasonable.

Yes, of course, ultimately every choice they ever do is for money, because they're a for-profit company. But maybe we can be slightly more granular about exactly how that choice makes them more money, which is because it gives them good PR. I was just being more specific, but we're saying the same thing :)

Parent isn’t insinuating otherwise. They’re saying the subscription model is more lucrative, so eventually they’ll remove the one time payment option, but keeping it as an option for the announcement keeps the bad PR at bay.

"PR purposes" IS doing it for money

That is definitely a break from the old Adobe model

I don’t think they have any trouble selling Studios. Pros, on the other hand…

The acquisition of the Affinity software by Canva I imagine motivated this.

It’s even a similar pricing model, though technically with Pages / Numbers / Keynote covers a little more ground but I think the main intent is to get creatives using Apple’s creative software again

Pixelmator being the only 3rd party software because Apple never made a competitor to Photoshop

Though since Canva went full on toward more robust tools I imagine they have started capturing the entire editing chain more than they did 2-3 years ago, hence the Affinity acquisition

Apple hardware has "only" a 36% margin, while their software and services have a 75% margin. They definitely want to make more money on software with absurd margins.

They don't need to.

They want marketshare to enhance their other market positions and give them optionality for future strategy.

They'd love the whole market, but they don't need it and they won't employ too many resources chasing that.

They're a powerful giant with hands in so many places. Each enforcing other endeavors.

This encourages people to stay in the Apple hardware ecosystem, for instance. It dog foods their silicon. It keeps people thinking of Apple as the creative brand and operating system. More creatives buying Apple -> more being produced and consumed for and on Apple.

Also the strategy of getting kids young has always been genius. They started that in the eighties, I think.

> What data centers? Does Apple even have data centers?

Apple absolutely has data centres. Where do you think Apple TV, Apple Music, iCloud, Maps, etc compute happens?

Here's a press release straight from the horse's mouth about one in Denmark, in late 2020: https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/09/apple-expands-rene...

> Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers?

Not to my knowledge, but that's not saying much.

YES! I was a happy Kanopy movie viewer until last year I got a message that my library card no longer worked on Kanopy and I had to physically go in to the library to get a new one. Maybe someday....

Indeed. But people are stuck on these archaic unrelated terms for now. AI firms will make the whole thing obsolete while luddites cry about “stealing from artists” and stuff like that.

There was no morality play. My point is your copy/use of software is equally "illegal" whether you just download a cracked copy or pretend to be an active college student and pay the student price, when you are not in fact an active college student. Either way, you won't have a valid license. So why bother paying?

Runs like a dream for me, albeit on workstation-hardware so YMMV. It runs better under X than Wayland, at least the version I'm still stuck on, but otherwise the performance is top notch and easily worth a try :)

Based on revenue estimates, if Apple wanted to be competitive here, they could buy Blackmagic for a billion or so ...

I bought a license for Pixelmator Pro a couple of years ago. IIRC it cost 30 or 40 EUR. I don't use it much, but it is unlikely you're going to need all of that software.

Oh, didn't know that. That's lame.

I could see using an iPad for automation, triggered by midi, but I use an Air for that (and even if I used an my Pro, I still have to use a USB C hub because for some reason Apple things 1 (or 2) USB ports is enough. Sigh.