Thought On Service Subscriptions

Watercooler
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Just read an article in the Washington Post about Apple and Amazon planning to use subscription fees for AI. Reminded me of another company.
:grin:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/10/apple-intelligence-subscription-fee/?itid=hp_business-tech_p006_f006

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Itā€™s a new source of easy income.

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I was unaware of the Apple move, but it doesnā€™t surprise me. I heard a few days ago that Amazon is supplementing Alexa with ā€œClaudeā€ because their own AI has been so miserable when compared to the competition.

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I generally hate subscriptions.

Until a few years ago, I only had subscriptions for critical things:

  • City utilities
  • Internet
  • Phone
  • Once in a while I paid for an audible subscription when I could get the specials under $8 (Iā€™m obsessed with audiobooks)ā€¦ But mostly I used the free library options.
  • Citizenship aka taxes

I didnā€™t even have TV subscriptions, software subscriptions, nothing. I guess in most cases I was still paying for things through advertising or my data in some way, but that was fine by me.

Donā€™t get me wrong, I understand that a lot of things certainly have ongoing costs to companies and those ongoing costs need to be covered, presumably through a subscription. Often that makes sense in some situations, especially when there arenā€™t alternatives.

The problem is that now it seems like everyone and everything is going out of their way To exclude free options and only allow subscription options. And if they canā€™t find a way to justify an actual subscription, they will make it a sort of pseudo subscription by making things not work properly after a certain period of time. Take Microsoft Windows for example. Itā€™s currently technically not a subscription, but is it really? Every few years they stop supporting the old versions and basically ban them or make them so insecure that itā€™s a high security risk to force you to buy their new version. So if you have to buy a new version every set period of time, isnā€™t that the same thing as a subscription? Planned obsolescence is a kind of subscription too. Apple and Samsung even got in trouble for purposely doing this with their phonesā€¦ Purposely not making them work right after a couple of years so people would get frustrated and have to upgrade. Now they just plan to create a new OS version and refuse to support it on older hardware and then make a lot of new software updates incompatible with the old OS versions so that you canā€™t use anything anymore and force you to continually buy more in the name of ā€œsecurity.ā€

Though, in a way I guess lots of other things are kind of a subscription too. My pets have a lot of ongoing costs. Even my kids have a lot of ongoing costs. So I guess kids and pets are subscriptions too. :joy:

I love how the article points out the good old days of when companies like car manufacturers would add new features for free just to add value to why you should pick them instead of everybody out competing each other for subscriptions. Though, to be fair, car manufacturers can afford to make cruise control free for example because their profit margins are way higher with a way higher priced hardware.

This is part of why I love the open source movement. It keeps a lot of this in check a little bit. Even for AI, itā€™s becoming better and easier to basically run a free local private llm for yourself. Itā€™s also becoming easier to do your own cloud system without any subscriptions. Pretty much everything that charges a subscription you can mostly do for free if you have intermediate technical ability, And itā€™s getting easier and easier for less technical people to do a lot of these things too.

Thereā€™s honestly a reasonable chance that a good portion of my estate when I die may be used for funding various open source project ideas and similar things. I think they really help keep runaway greed in check to a moderate degree.

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Me, too.

Just signed up for an iDrive subscription for 500GB backup and 500GB cloud storage for $9 a year. Price seems okay after the using the 10GB plan for freeā€¦

Some things you have to rent, like beer.

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Or just have others rent it for you:

:beer::wink::+1:

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Here is a great story from a year ago. BMW realized it was not a wise idea to try to charge BMW owners $18 per month to use heated seats.

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Thanks for sharing that. I particularly enjoyed this part:

BMW has dropped its plans for an $18 a month heated seats subscription after customers balked at the idea of paying extra to unlock existing functions in their cars.

On the other hand, Wyze continues to hold Cam v4ā€™s Edge AI Person Detection hostage unless customers pay the Cam Plus ransom. :man_shrugging:

Now that Iā€™m thinking about it again, I should re-watch the BMW Films The Hire series sometime. :thinking:

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Those were great. I wonder what I did with my copy. Clive Owen drives well.

Edit:

Google must be reading my Wyze posts. I found this suggestion in my YouTube feed. ā†’ BMW Films.

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Remember to cancel your subscription.
$9 a year is first year only.

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That is not true. I checked, multiple times.

I got the IDrive mini. Same price next year. They do have a 10 TB plan for $19.95 the first year only, but the mini plans donā€™t change. The 100GB x2 plan is $2.95 a year. The 500GB x2 fit me better. I donā€™t need to clone my PCs.

I did put the auto-renewal date on my calendar to keep track. I also can lock my virtual card till renewal time. I went with the free 10 GB x2 to test it out. I have a free Box account at 50 GB, but now I can back up voluminous travel and family photos and videos.

I will have to investigate saving my Wyze timelapses to the cloud. There does not seem to be an upload file size limit when I uploaded GB size videos.

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Whatā€™s with an affiliate link?, I canā€™t post need cause I put this crooked, thieving organization down for pointing these acts out and they letyou post affiliate links?? What is going on. Itā€™s bad enough they have stolen from every person here who has paid a subscription fee, but affiliate links are now allowed? What a CROOKED ORGANIZATION.

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Not sure at whom this is directed but I donā€™t see any affiliate links in the thread. An affiliate link is one for which the poster receives remuneration if someone purchases from the link and none of the posts here are for anything like that.

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Who needs AI I have real intelligence

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:raised_hand:

Honestly, there are a ton of things that AI/machine learning can do better and faster than me, or anyone alive, or that provide a significant benefit to me &/or humanity in genera. Some of which lots of people donā€™t realize couldnā€™t as Machine learning but affect them every day, directly or indirectly.

I love AI and machine learning so much.

But loving AI doesnā€™t necessarily mean that I want to pay a thousand subscriptions though.

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People are afraid of what they donā€™t know or canā€™t explain.

Fire.
Rotary-dial phones
elevators
calculators
escargot

Luckily someone took a step forward or we would still be living in a cave without conveniences. :thinking:

I can understand the job displacement issue, but then as a child I wanted to be an elevator operator when I grew up. I had to go into electronics and computers instead when that job line was deleted. Maybe we can replace Hollywood instead. :grinning:

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I guess you canā€™t run for political office. :rofl:

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Can we add Analog Clock to your list? I know young people today that canā€™t tell the time on the clock in this link.

To be fair, I donā€™t know Morse Code. When I watch the movie Titantic I donā€™t know exactly what they are tapping when they are calling for help.

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Thatā€™s a good one :+1: nope and I never would but one does have to wonder

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Please no. Analog takes up too much screen real estate.