Well, until there's an OS update. Most of us have gone down this road before - the old software works until it doesn't, it runs on the old hardware until that doesn't, it's usable until it's not. The actuarial table for any given software release is north of 5 years and south of 10.
This is true on Mac but Windows is remarkably good at allowing most old software to still run. I still run games and professional applications from the 90s on Win11 and only occasionally need to set "compatibility mode" or change resolution. I haven't even had to resort to running a VM with an old version of Windows yet (although that's always an option).
And that's exactly what subscription model kills. Stuff only works for as long as you pony up - and it's only the newest, stuff. When the new version turns to be less useful and more bloated than previous versions, you're out of luck, because eventually the old version won't authenticate against license servers.
Not to mention, the push to run everything in the cloud, via the browser, means that for a lot of software, you literally have zero flexibility and control.
>The actuarial table for any given software release is north of 5 years and south of 10.
even at full price, $200 for 5 years of usage from a professional tool seems pretty good for me. That's $3.33/month if you want to convert to the subscription model way or thinking.
No way any potential subscription model would be cheaper here if you are in it for the long haul.
We're talking about professional software. If you're a professional you have a machine dedicated to that work. If a software update will break software you've paid for and need to use, you don't update that machine. Between 5 and 10 years is a perfectly reasonable run time for paid pro software. You can also keep the old machine around for the software and have a new machine for other needs.
> If you're a professional you have a machine dedicated to that work. If a software update will break software you've paid for and need to use, you don't update that machine.
Yes, that's exactly the right thing to do. Only then the security folks will start whining about factories and shipping terminals being controlled by ancient PCs with WinXP (not to mention power plants with hardware and software older than most of us on this site). In fact, the security folks and the business folks align enough on it that professional software is force-feeding you updates too, and you can't do anything about it unless you're a multinational megacorp and can afford to make bespoke deals with OS vendors.
> Between 5 and 10 years is a perfectly reasonable run time for paid pro software.
5 is the minimum. Legal minimum for some documents, in some cases.
Still, the problem usually isn't upgrades per se, it's that universally these days, newer versions of products are almost always inferior in terms of functionality, performance and ergonomics. So, I might be easily able to afford refreshing my software tools after 5 ways of using them to earn a living, but then I discover they all went to shit and new versions are worse than the versions I have (and even worse, half of the software is now subscription-only).
> So, I might be easily able to afford refreshing my software tools after 5 ways of using them to earn a living,
That's just how all of tech works. Some pockets of software may be able to be fundamentally unchanged over decades, but the fact is that the software I used 5 years ago is not the same as the software I used now. Your choices are the same as ever:
- Don't upgrade for as long as possible
- Upgrade and eat the inefficiency cost for a while until replacements are found/made
- go the FOSS route and either do it yourself or rely on the goodwill of the community until its inevitable next schism.
There is no perfect solution unless you're willing to become a domain expert in that specific kind of tech and roll your own.
The only silver lining is that most of the fundamentals remain the same so you're not starting from square one. Whatever new web stack is being used today is still probably based upon React, which is based on JQuery, which is based Javascript. ES6 isn't a complete recvolution from ES3 (even if there are new major concepts to learn over those 15 years). So you have some knowledge transfer of seeing where and how things.
If I was successful with my career, I hope I would have saved up 50 dollars in 10 years so I could buy the new version of the software or buy an old used computer to run my old version on.
