31: Subscription Antics

We give an overview of why we feel good about moving to subscription pricing for Castro and then discuss some of the issues we’ve experienced preparing for the transition.

Phil Schiller, quoted on Macworld:

The reason we haven’t done it is that it’s much more complex than people know […] And the upgrade model, which I know very well from my days of running many large software programmes, is a model from the shrink-wrapped software days that for some developers is still very important, for most, it’s not really a part of the future we are going.

I think for many developers, subscription model is a better way to, go than try to come up with a list of features, and different pricing for upgrade, versus for new customers. I am not saying it doesn’t have value for some developers but for most it doesn’t, so that’s the challenge. And if you look at the App Store it would take a lot of engineering to do that and so would be at the expense of other features we can deliver.

Apple Developer Documentation and Videos:

• What’s New in StoreKit - WWDC 2017
• Advanced StoreKit - WWDC 2017
• StoreKit Documentation
• In-App Purchase Programming Guide

Tweets mentioned:

• Erik Tjernlund on subscriptions being difficult to cancel
• Russ Shanahan on “Cannot connect to iTunes Store” errors