I’m still using the previous version. I really love its design and functionality, but no more subscriptions for me, sorry. 

This is an App Store review of an app I, too, have been using on my iOS devices for years. I have translated the review because it only appears on the Spanish App Store. The ‘previous version’ the reviewer refers to is the last version of the app to use the ‘free with in-app purchases’ model. Since then, the developer has switched to a ‘free with strict limitations unless you subscribe’ model.

(In this piece I won’t mention any app or developer specifically because I don’t want to point fingers and single out people or apps. My criticism is focused on certain practices, and I simply want to look at things from a customer’s perspective.)

For the past few years, my purchases in the App Stores (iOS and Mac) have been rapidly slowing down to a trickle. The main reason is saturation. I’ve been using iPhones since 2008, and the first years since the App Store started operations were rather wild. I remember constantly hunting for cool apps to add to my device, especially photo apps. I remember getting to a point where I had more than 40 different photo apps, and sometimes I was missing a crucial snapshot because I couldn’t decide which photo app to shoot with.

But obviously, sooner or later, we all reach a stage where we feel we have all the apps we need. Occasionally there’s a new entry in a certain category which looks and feels better than one of our favourite apps, and so we try it out and stick with it if it’s worthwhile. Other times something happens in the tech world that creates an interest in a new area, like what’s happening now with [airquote] AI [airquote], which spawns a new category of apps to check out. Or a particular platform loses popularity (Twitter) and another gains interest (Mastodon) and we see dozens of new clients pop up everywhere. And so forth. You get the idea: I still browse the App Store every so often, but the platform is quite mature now in terms of app selection, so I’m not constantly looking for something new like I used to back in, say, 2010–2012.

But I do routinely check the App Store. And today, whenever I find something of interest, 8 times out of 10 the app requires a subscription to function at its best, or even to function at all.

If you’ve been visiting the App Store for as long as I have, you’ll certainly be familiar with the expression race to the bottom. If you look for the definition on the Web, you’ll likely encounter serious economic explanations like this one from Investopedia: The race to the bottom refers to a competitive situation where a company, state, or nation attempts to undercut the competition’s prices by sacrificing quality standards or worker safety (often defying regulation), or reducing labor costs. A race to the bottom can also [occur] between governments to attract industry or tax revenues.

What happened in the App Store that created a ‘crisis’ in the pre-in-app purchases and pre-subscriptions era wasn’t so stark; the race to the bottom there simply meant that, in an effort to be competitive and drive purchases, developers kept lowering the price of their apps to an unsustainable level (for the developers). Customers were happily buying apps priced at $1.99 or $0.99, but in the medium-to-long term it wasn’t really sustainable for the developers, except for those rare exceptions where an app sold literally millions of copies. Smaller developers with more modest success were finding themselves in a bit of a predicament. Sure, their app’s low price had attracted enough customers to make a good launch in the App Store, but as interest and visibility waned, and with Apple taking its 30% cut of the pie, they realised that what was gained barely covered the cost of development (at best). Plus, the app may need further adjustments and fixes, as bugs and issues could appear down the road. And for how the App Store works, customers sort of expected free updates. 

The most deleterious effect of this race to the bottom within the App Store has been software depreciation. If you accustom people to obtain great-quality apps for a couple of dollars or less, many customers will keep expecting the price of most software and apps to be this low. It’s a vicious circle that’s hard to free yourself from.