Even simple apps nowadays have become subscription only. Whilst I used to pirate most stuff in the past, but if the app in question is a small one time purchase, it’s not bad considering you don’t need to sideload updated apk’s from Mobilism each time a new version is released (looks at some great cheap apps like Pano Scrobbler).
However, the trend has shifted towards the other side with everything from video recording apps(AZ Recorder), Weather apps(Today Weather) and Battery monitoring apps(Battery guru) offering subscriptions. Some have a high one time purchase option but some like the latter don’t.
Battery Guru is an example of enshittification. If phones still came with removable batteries and companies supported them, then for the price of say, a 4 year subscription to the app, I could have just gotten a new replaceable battery. It’s not like the app will magically stop my battery from degrading.
Whilst I have done piracy ( and still pirate stuff like films because no alternative, screw you Netflix), I tried to go the legal route for some apps since then updation and management of them becomes easier. But with the subscription scourge, I doubt devs are going in the right direction.
the offline gps app that I use and absolutely love I initially pirated for my iphone 3, then for my samsung galaxy vibrant and then actually bought and bought extras. I love this app.
then a few years ago they offered more features that I found useful but put them behind a subscription instead of buying them as a premium option as before and I don’t like that. I still get to keep the options I bought, but any future add-ons forces me to subscribe and I’m not doing that.
honestly it might push me to see if it’s possible to to pirate an app I already paid for to get any new features I may find useful.
Reminds me somewhat of the Pocketcasts app. It had a one time purchase option once but then switched to a subscription tier instead. Ironically, if Google Podcasts were alive and being developed, then no one would have any need for Pocketcasts since the former had desktop playback and Google would have developed a first party Wear OS app as well(like Pocketcasts).
However, as is evident, Google killed the app and YT Music is not at all built for podcasts. If it categories as a podcast app, then it is the single worst I have seen for podcasts.
I had the pocket cast app but never paid for it. The only reason I kept it was due to my listen history. When I moved to antennapod, I exported the file and learned that it did not export listen history, and their website says that it’s not a high priority.
Probably because they want to keep you in their app.
So I manually moved my listen history.
I honestly don’t know what Pocketcasts folks are working on. Their forum has lists of issues where the official Wear OS app lacks so many features, doesn’t sync properly and apparently can’t run fluidly on my Galaxy Watch 6 even [Like how much memory does it need? Gnome on Linux probably is more resource efficient than their Wear OS app].
Let me guess: Sygic
When Sygic initially introduced their Android Auto integration, they put it behind a $50 paywall. I’d invested in that app multiple times because I liked it as an alternative to Google Maps, but asking me to pay that much just for AA was incredibly over the top.