Ownership vs. Evil Subscription?

People are surprised that I don’t own any Apple products and don’t plan to. I developed an aversion to Apple as a grad student, designing scientific instruments based on the newly emerging personal computers. Apple kept their hardware “closed” to outside connections. The IBM PC had its own problems, using the horrible Intel processor of the time. Apple used the far superior Motorola processor then. But at least you could design your own board to plug into their IBM “open bus.”

But my aversion turned into outright loathing when I discovered that Apple later worked on a “subscription” business model. You might wonder why this fits with my Big Questions theme. In part, because subscriptions raise deep questions about what it means to own something.

I was a fairly early adopter of the Palm Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). I had suffered a traumatic brain injury from being hit by a car. My speech therapist urged me to offload what used to be stored in my brain onto the PDA. I indeed found it useful. I still use a Palm TX for daily needs. Young people see me taking notes using the Palm and a folding full-size keyboard that all fits in my pocket. They want to know where to get this cool new technology.

I am forced to remind people that the opposite of progress is fashion. The Palm was a masterful work of engineering. But it was killed off by the Apple iPhone. Not because the iPhone was better. It was not. Because it was more profitable. Did I mention that I am still using my Palm? I bought it once and it keeps on working.

But Apple keeps sucking users with subscriptions for everything. Not to mention the planned obsolescence that forces users to keep buying new hardware. A huge waste of resources and a huge economic drain on people who can’t afford it.

I bought legal copies of Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop. I owned them and so far have been able to keep using them. But then Adobe adopted the evil subscription model. You can no longer own their software. I refuse to give in to such extortion.

I also used to own Microsoft Office. When they switched to an evil subscription, I discovered that LibreOffice did everything I needed for free. Microsoft has since apologized and tried to woo me back. But it is too late.

Interestingly, I did not care much about the one ownership that is an obsession for most Americans: Home ownership. I was happy to rent. For decades. Until we were evicted by a greedy new property owner from my home of 31 years.

Many people are happy to back up their precious data in “the cloud.” For a monthly fee. In the words of Bob Seger, “Say I’m old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill.” I back up my precious data on hard drives and thumb drives. I own them. I can put them where I want and know where to find them.

Subscriptions would not feel so evil if not for a couple of problems. One is the cost. Far more than owning. But they can also just go away. Or change. If I buy an e-book, the publisher can “recall” or edit it and I can no longer read it. It happens.

With software, not every “upgrade” is an improvement. You may find that the forced “upgrade” is missing a feature you depend on.

There is one exception I am open to: A product that becomes a service. I would be happy to ride in a driverless car and not have to own one. The same way I use public transit now. Some carpet manufacturers offer carpets as a service to businesses. They maintain and replace them as needed. They have an incentive to make the carpet last and stay clean. But these are the exception.

We should not reward bad behavior. Let manufacturers know that you are happy to pay a fair price to own their product. But you will not be extorted to pay a monthly fee with no guarantee it even will keep working in the future.