Apple, Microsoft, Sony…it’s cool to hate them but can we please direct some fucking ire to this absolute pinnacle of piece of shittery that’s always on the frontier of the shittiest business practices in all things IT?
How has this compamy escaped a class action lawsuit by the entire population of the world?
They survived the 90's because they weren't subscription-based back then. They could charge a lot more, but they had to actually invest in development so that clients would be willing to pay for an upgrade. Once development started stagnating, and they had an enormous market share, they could switch over to the subscription model and start charging people to access the software (and their files) in perpetuity.
That one thing I hate about technology as it is. It's not modern tech is inherently bad, it's that technology is engineered around becoming more profitable rather than better. They aren't making better products anymore, they just finding new ways to charge you for them. UGH.