- Selling SaaS is very new, and almost still a "niche" especially for consumer software like Sparrow. Software without subscriptions is still 99% of what the consumers buy. It's definitely a viable market. You can't just take one example (Sparrow) and then claim the whole traditional ecosystem of software doesn't work. Of course it does.
- This is professional stuff used to build businesses on. Already it's quite risky to use this new tech made by a third party startup and invest hundres of hours of developer time to build an app. If something goes wrong in the future, for example Apple forbids RubyMotion apps, your investment (not in cost of RubyMotion but in the cost of developers which is obviously orders of magnitude higher) goes up in thin air. If you add the limitation that you need to pay a monthly fee to keep using it to that, it increases the risk that something might go wrong, decreasing the attractiveness of RubyMotion.
- They already have recurring revenue, based on the fact that after one year you need to pay half of the license fee again to get support and updates.
For a real business, $169 is peanuts. If it's $9 a month or $169 a year, that won't make any difference for a professional app developer. I'm sure you've heard of the Adobe products with price tags of around $1000. That's the price tag that software regularly goes for in this world. We're talking about developers who earn upwards of $200 an hour. I'm sure you can appreciate how a pro developer wouldn't blink an eyelash at $169.
The "added risk" of paying $169 is exactly zero. Anyone who buys this is either a hobbyist or a business. The business is about to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into making apps using RubyMotion. The upfront cost of $169 is peanuts.
Sure, hobbyists or amateurs might find it more attractive to try out that way, but the extra cost in support and the decreased perceived value are probably too big of a cost, and not worth it.
Ask your mom, dad, brother, sister, what software they pay for every month. They'll probably answer "there is software you need to pay for every month?". Mac OS X or Windows, both "regular" software without monthly payments. Office, same thing. Almost every app in the app store, software without monthly payments. 99% of the games, software without monthly payments.
I think you might underestimate the realities of the developer-tools business. I know how little $169 is compared to how much a fully loaded developer costs (I make developer-tools-as-a-service: https://circleci.com), but its pretty hard to convince people to see things how you want to see them.
If anyone understands SaaS though, its developers, so I disagree with your last point.
- Selling SaaS is very new, and almost still a "niche" especially for consumer software like Sparrow. Software without subscriptions is still 99% of what the consumers buy. It's definitely a viable market. You can't just take one example (Sparrow) and then claim the whole traditional ecosystem of software doesn't work. Of course it does.
- This is professional stuff used to build businesses on. Already it's quite risky to use this new tech made by a third party startup and invest hundres of hours of developer time to build an app. If something goes wrong in the future, for example Apple forbids RubyMotion apps, your investment (not in cost of RubyMotion but in the cost of developers which is obviously orders of magnitude higher) goes up in thin air. If you add the limitation that you need to pay a monthly fee to keep using it to that, it increases the risk that something might go wrong, decreasing the attractiveness of RubyMotion.
- They already have recurring revenue, based on the fact that after one year you need to pay half of the license fee again to get support and updates.