What is the most useless app that you have seen being given as a subscription?
For me, I tried a ‘minimalist’ launcher app for Android that had a 7 day trial or something and they had a yearly subscription based model for it. I was aghast. I would literally expect the app to blow my mind and do everything one can assume to go that way. In a world, where Nova Launcher (Yes, I know it has been acquired by Branch folks but it still is a sturdy one) or Niagara exist plus many alternatives including minimalist ones on F Droid, the dev must be releasing revolutionary stuff to factor in a subscription service.
Second, is a controversial choice, since it’s free tier is quite good and people like it so much. But, Pocketcasts. I checked it’s yearly price the other day, and boy, in my country, I can subscribe to Google Play Pass, YouTube Premium and Spotify and still have money left before I hit the ceiling what Pocketcasts is asking for paid upgrade.
Also, what are your views on one time purchase vs subscriptions? Personally, I find it much easier to purchase, if it’s good enough even if it was piratable, something if it is a one time purchase rather than repetitive.
I purchased pocketcasts years ago when it was a one time fee and when they moved to a subscription model they gave everyone who purchased a lifetime pass on the subscription model but that rubbed me so wrong I moved away from it. Currently I run Audiobookshelf on my server and have all my podcasts in a library on there. Works really well and I have control over it.
Yeah I’ve recently gone the self hosted route for video and may go for audio soon too, but not quite there yet. I think for now I can deal with the few minor annoyances I have with Overcast.
What I’d really like to see someone crack is an machine learning prodcast player that can snip out ads. A few of the podcasts I like have gotten fucking insufferable for ads lately.