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 was one of those old purchasers. There was a huge uproar on the subreddit back in the day cause they said everyone who purchased the app before the subscription model would only get like 1 or 2 years of subscription access instead of lifetime. People got so pissed they changed it to lifetime.
And yet it still has a bunch of ads for PC+ littered throughout it. Despite being grandfathered in, I abandoned it earlier this year for Podcast Republic, which hasn’t spammed me or locked me out of any features I’ve tried to play with despite not having paid them anything.
I myself switched to Audiobookshelf. I initially set it up for my wife to have her audio books while traveling but I found it does podcasts and normal epub books really well also.