It'd kind of sad, how the market went. I suppose there are pluses too.

But back in the 80s and 90s, margins were significantly higher. If you look at hardware, I recall selling hardware with 30% margin, if not more... even 80% on some items.

Yet what came with that was support, support, support. And when you sell 5 computers a month, instead of 500, well.. you need that margin to even have a store. Which you need, because no wide-scale internet.

On the software side, it was sort of the same. I remember paying $80 for some pieces of software, which would be like $200 today. You'd pay $1 on an app store for such software, but I'd also call the author if there was a bug. He'd send an update in the mail.

I guess my point is, in those days, it was fun to fix issues. The focus was more specific, there was time to ply the trade, to enjoy it, to have performant, elegant fixes.

Now, it's all "my boss is hassling me and another bug will somehow mean I have to work harder", which is .. well, sad.

High end enterprise products still come with support. That's literally what customers are paying for: a single throat to choke.