Subscription as investment

Posted by Paul Korm
May 10, 2019 at 07:05 PM

The only subscription I have that regularly results in new features is Tinderbox. I think I started the annual payments during v5 and since then v6, v7, and v8, all with sophisticated features, have come along. I trust Mark Bernstein, and have no doubt he will deliver innovation and tell us when he no longer can. (May he live long and prosper.)

In other cases, less so. I paid in advance and was burned on the “Butler 5” scam—it never materialized—and for MailMate 2, which eventually showed up as an apparently perpetual beta. The few times I fell for crowdfunded gizmos on Kickstarter, the things that were ultimately produced were underwhelming. I think the lesson is not “avoid ill-willed developers”—though their being overly confident might be an issue—the lesson is don’t fall for tech bloggers flogging vaporware.

Dellu wrote:
>But, paying for a software just hoping the developer will bring the
>feature I like—sounds a very risky investment.