It's definitely true that Apple and Google have not allowed enough experimentation here

Yes, it's fine to nudge the world in the direction you want it to be, but it's also worth reconciling yourself to the world as it exists

To be honest it's also a little bit of rose-colored glasses. In the 2000s I probably spent the equivalent of thousands of dollars purchasing one-time commercial software licenses and I appreciate not having to save up for that any more.

I don't know what you're referring to but I own a podcast app and have nothing to do with robocalling

This is the app you're defending: https://cal.com/ai

First: this is obviously a robocalling application. It's probably illegal in half the world. And being against ads, but helping companies with robocalling ... that's not a very consistent attitude.

No it isn't. I was talking about this app

https://www.calai.app/

But I don't work on it I was just giving examples. And I'm not against ads, I just don't think they should be the only way to make money on the internet.

If you don't like or want any mobile apps whatsoever, I completely agree you should not pay for them.

I do the same. Then when I lose access and I actually care, I know that's something I should support.

Thanks for reading. Totally agree Apple can do more a lot here and it's disappointing they haven't tried.

The cheaper it is then the more people you need to sustain it. If there are only a small number of obsessives who want the sun tracking app, and the sun tracking app is really great and serving their needs, it should probably be more expensive not less. If the sun tracking obsessives want it to exist, they have to pay for it, because nobody else cares.

no, they really don't. if the sun tracking app didn't exist, I or some other enterprising fellow could make it, and release it for free. It's at best a series of calculations, or just taking data directly from some api.

Just because a business model can be made around something, does not mean a business model needs to exist to sustain that thing

That's totally fine, if you want to work on the sun tracking app in your free time and release it, I encourage it. But there's a lot of weird obsessive niches and I don't think you're going to make all of them, so the people who want weird things to exist should probably fund their obsessive niches. Of course, if you aren't interested in that niche, you shouldn't feel any obligation to use it or pay for it.

as I mentioned in my initial comment, I believe that a great many products are priced wrongly compared to the market. There may be some where it makes sense to go after power users (say, a train simulator game). I believe many more are common things most people will end up wanting at some point, just once or twice a year for a few seconds.

Can you list any examples of companies that have done this well? The products I have used that tried this either stopped trying it (Ulysses articulated it really well) or devolved into shinier objects. In practice I think it's pretty tough to pull off.

TablePlus is a good example. I buy their product and in exchange I get a year of updates. After that, it keeps on working without new features or updates. If I want new features or updates after that, I buy it again. Otherwise, I can keep on using the version I have pretty much until it stops working due to e.g. platform changes.

I think broadly your comment is true, and it would be better for the good actors if the bad actors didn't exist. Apple and Google do make it pretty easy to cancel though vs the wild west of the web