The Core

You Have to Pay a Subscription to Use Pantone Colors in Photoshop Now | PetaPixel

https://petapixel.com/2022/10/28/you-have-to-pay-a-subscription-to-use-pantone-colors-in-photoshop-now/

>Mercedes intentionally limited performance to later sell as an optional extra

I hope this model fails miserably.

Note also, the link that RC posted a few days ago about brand reliability showed Mercedes has the worst reliability of any brand. I don't know anything about the auto industry. Are they circling the drain?

For the price of a Mercedes I would expect it to be a lot more reliable and I would not expect them to be playing Yugo games with performance and subscriptions.

IMHO, Mercedes has not come out with an iconic looking car in decades. You used to know when a Mercedes drove past.  They have succeeded in looking like Toyota's for three times the price and less reliability.

Polestar 2 gets an over-the-air performance boost ‘without the hassle of a subscription’ - The Verge

(SCREW THAT: The EV company is offering a 68 horsepower upgrade to customers for a one-time fee of $1,195)

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/6/23495253/polestar-2-performance-ota-upgrade-software-subscription

>makes it hard

Didn't I post this?

This Apple trick lets you delete online accounts, finally

https://www.fastcompany.com/90824355/apple-simple-trick-delete-online-accounts

Then I remembered Apple—or a little-known directive that Apple mandated upon iOS developers this past June.

The Apple directive decreed that starting on June 30, 2022, any iPhone or iPad app that allowed a user to create an account inside of it must also allow the user to easily delete their account and all associated data. This mandate applied even if the app user did not use the app to create their account and instead created their account on the web.

And—voilà—I suddenly had an easy way to delete those stubborn accounts. I downloaded the iOS app of any website or web account I could find that hadn’t provided an easy or clear way for me to request account deletion online. And when I opened the apps on my iPhone and navigated to the settings of my account in the app—there before me was the glorious “Delete Account” button. And just like that, I was able to erase the accounts and all associated data from nearly 90% of the sites that hadn’t offer an easy way to do this on the web.

>>I don't have any subscriptions

If I really, really start to look at it, we have a lot. For example...

 - Theresa's TSA Pre subscription is ending. It's "only" $70 for five years, but there it is.
 - domains
 - VPS
 - fundamentally, my utilities are subscription services.
 - so is car insurance and homeowner's insurance
 - for "media" we "only" have Audible (which we are about to cancel), Netflix (which I actually keep partly for my dad who is on our subscription), and NYT (which we cancelled then restarted under Theresa's name for the $2/week deal).
 - Starlink and Hughesnet and the Speedify service that makes them work together as a bonded connection
 - Zoom for Theresa's business
 - Google Workspace for Theresa's business and for our rental because I genuinely like GMail better than anything else I've used.

I even have my toilet paper on subscription from Who Gives a Crap (50% of profits go to building toilets in places that don't have them).

Admittedly, the toilet paper is fundamentally different. I actually *own* the toilet paper. But in the other cases, these are all payments for ephemeral services that I lose 100% as soon as I stop paying, which to me is the distinction between a subscription and owning something.

Utilities might strike you as odd, but actually maybe half the people I know *own* their water and sewer infrastructure. They have a well and a septic. Yes, there are ongoing costs and I don't necessarily want to own those things, but it is basically a subscription as far as I'm concerned.

You Have to Pay a Subscription to Use Pantone Colors in Photoshop Now | PetaPixel

https://petapixel.com/2022/10/28/you-have-to-pay-a-subscription-to-use-pantone-colors-in-photoshop-now/

Trying to make this computer with a legacy lifetime Adobe subscription last as long as I do, though rolling the dice sometimes by putting it in the luggage when I travel.

One big thing with subscriptions is the friction upfront is much higher than it is given credit for unless people think they can dip in and out of it easily. It is easier to sell something for say $80 than it is to sell a $7 a month recurring subscription. This also has implications for affiliates.

Some merchants who provided lifetime recurring splits on affiliate driven sales eventually see the affiliate channel slow down as the core brand rise, which in turn has them go through with opening up a second affiliate channel on a different platform as pretext for needing to simplify the affiliate channel by nixing the legacy one so they can scrub out those recurring affiliate payments.