And yet, it would still take me multiple *years* of paying for Photoshop or Microsoft 365 on a monthly basis to make up for the cost of a single "perpetual" license to Photoshop CS or Office 2007 "back in the day", right?
And if I am starting out and have little money to spare, a $800 Photoshop CD or a $400 Office CD is basically unaffordable, and I'd somehow have to make do without it and somehow get my work done anyways just to eventually be able to afford it, right?
And those upgrades come out fast enough that if you were to pay for maintenance or upgrade costs, you would still be behind the ball compared to the monthly subscription fees, right?
And if you don't have the money up front for an $800 Photoshop CD, you would be forced to put it on a credit card at 29.73% APR, making it even more expensive, right?
The main argument is simply incorrect at a basic, factual level. If a Photoshop or Office license (just to name two obvious items that tons of people need and buy on subscription) worked out to be $100 or $200, you'd be absolutely right, OP would be absolutely right, and I'd be wrong.
But they weren't and they never were. There's a reason why so many people - who never in a million years would walk into the Comp USA, grab a Photoshop box and stick it under their jacket, and run out the door - were pirating software, and once they had the option of paying $10 or $20 a month for it, they were fine with that. It's why, despite the yearly spend coming out much lower per user compared to perpetual licenses, these companies discovered they could make a lot more money with cheap subscriptions.
This is the lesson that Apple taught everyone with iTunes. Give people a way to spend $0.99/song and you eliminate piracy; people don't mind (and can afford to) spend their money in small amounts, they don't want to (and can't afford to) spend it in large amounts.
Because if your budget is $80/month, and you need these tools now, you can't afford to wait 5 months to save up enough to buy Office then wait another 10 months to buy Photoshop, just to start your career as a graphic designer *today*. But spending $20/month on Photoshop and $15/month on Microsoft 365 leaves $45/month in your pocket for other things, and lets you start today.
Even if they raise the fees in the future, it's still much cheaper in the long run to get subscriptions... and that's even before we factor in the opportunity cost.
The main argument is simply wrong. Factually and logically, it's wrong.
Believe me, as someone who misses - in many, many ways - the "golden era" of software, when everything was shiny and new and interesting and you could write a simple utility and shareware it for $5/copy and make a decent living like that after getting it into the free CD that shipped with a magazine, who misses the good old days in SO many ways... I wish this were true. But it just isn't.
J.Ja
