But why would Apple stop supporting a subscription product that brings in revenue?
You've unintentionally alluded to the reason why single-purchase software is such a flawed business model. If I buy a piece of software from a company that's using a one-time purchase business model, I basically have to expect them to go out of business or constantly be on life support because their only revenue comes from new customers. Once their market is saturated, they're done.
Persistent licenses are really still licenses, not truly buy it and keep it forever product. The time scale is just longer. Aperture was discontinued, so now it's a matter of "good luck finding a machine that still runs it." While it's great that you got to keep the software forever, that doesn't guarantee the software has value anymore.
Almost all of the purchased objects in our life degrade in some way, whether it's fast or slow.
Also, I think that Apple's persistent license professional suite was priced well below cost to attract users to the Mac platform. In contrast, these are applications that are intending to turn a profit on their own.
> now it's a matter of "good luck finding a machine that still runs it." While it's great that you got to keep the software forever, that doesn't guarantee the software has value anymore.
On a system that can be virtualized the software may very well run forever.
I can virtualize Disk Defragmenter on a Windows 98 VM, but what value does that have?
I can virtualize Visual Studio ‘97, but what value does that have?
The examples of old pay-once software that has no value to today is basically endless. Even the ones that still have value eventually get an open source competitor that surpasses them.
For example, Gimp is certainly better than some very old versions of Photoshop, and a modern Linux distribution is better than an old version of Windows (even if you believe Windows 11 to be the best OS currently available).
You've unintentionally alluded to the reason why single-purchase software is such a flawed business model. If I buy a piece of software from a company that's using a one-time purchase business model, I basically have to expect them to go out of business or constantly be on life support because their only revenue comes from new customers. Once their market is saturated, they're done.
Persistent licenses are really still licenses, not truly buy it and keep it forever product. The time scale is just longer. Aperture was discontinued, so now it's a matter of "good luck finding a machine that still runs it." While it's great that you got to keep the software forever, that doesn't guarantee the software has value anymore.
Almost all of the purchased objects in our life degrade in some way, whether it's fast or slow.
Also, I think that Apple's persistent license professional suite was priced well below cost to attract users to the Mac platform. In contrast, these are applications that are intending to turn a profit on their own.