I’m not as down on subscriptions for apps as other people seem to be. If—and I recognize these are big “ifs” here—the annual price is reasonable (which I’d roughly define as “no more than what you’d be paying for upgrades if they were amortized over a yearly basis”), and developers use this stable recurring revenue to make frequent updates to their apps on a rolling release rather than holding big features back for major updates every one to three years, I’m happy enough to pay for them this way.
Granted, I’d prefer to see the ability to handle subscriptions the way Panic does for their editor Nova, in which you get all the updates as long as your subscription is valid, and if you stop paying you stay on whatever the most recent version was when your subscription expires. (This is distinct from Jetbrains’ take on this, where when you stop paying you stay on the version that was current when your subscription started.) This is something I don’t think the App Store supports, either.
Granted, I’d prefer to see the ability to handle subscriptions the way Panic does for their editor Nova, in which you get all the updates as long as your subscription is valid, and if you stop paying you stay on whatever the most recent version was when your subscription expires. (This is distinct from Jetbrains’ take on this, where when you stop paying you stay on the version that was current when your subscription started.) This is something I don’t think the App Store supports, either.