> Name one company that was successful in just selling their product one time to a customer.

Every funeral home.

Anyway, I find the term "subscription" misleading. A lot of software nowadays is more accurately termed "rental". If you have a traditional newspapers/magazine/comic book subscription, you get to keep the issues forever if you want. I still have some old comic books.

Whereas a lot of so-called "subscription" software stops working entirely when you stop subscribing. This is more like rental. You lose everything when you stop renting. In fairness, there is some software that has a subscription model for software updates, where you get updates for a year if you pay a subscription, but the last downloaded version works indefinitely. But that's a minority of "subscription" software.

The key difference between rental and ownership is that with ownership, the buyer gets to decide if and when to buy the product again, whereas with rental, the seller decides.

The washing machine in particular is not a subscription in disguise. You'll only pay (a well defined price) when the machine actually breaks (in a way that is not economical to repair), and you are free to choose any provider, with no pressure or default to just buy the same brand again. Especially if the machine asked for a "renewal" too early for your taste, you're probably not going with them again. They have to sell to you again.

With a subscription, by doing nothing you just keep paying to the same company in perpetuity. You even keep paying if you stop using the product unless you actively cancel. The company sells to you by default, not by convincing you to make an active decision for them.

A washing machine is also a big purchase that you'll probably spend some time to think through to some extent, much more than you will with your Netflix subscription - despite being quite small compared to typical subscriptions! A $600 washing machine that lasts 8 years is $6.25 per month. The subscription models are generally abused to charge way more for a product by making the payment seem small to people who are bad with money. A subscription washing machine would likely be "only" $3.99 per week...

For example, at rent-a-center a washing machine that costs $520 at Best Buy costs $1223.28 if you pay it off as planned (and I believe their business model also revolves around preying on people who miss payments).

Phones are also commonly sold as part of mobile plans, where you pay approximately the purchase price of the phone each year.

That's why most people who do the math hate subscriptions: They realize that they're now asked to pay 2-3x (and often even more) of what they were paying previously (or would typically be paying without a subscription model).

You don't have to buy a washing machine every few years, and you shouldn't have to buy an iPhone every few years either. That's just consoomer nonsense. Washing machines of all kinds are repairable. Subscription software is different. It's closed source, and often times there's no way to fix it.

My Omnifocus 2 outright purchase for what is effectively a todo app bugged out in one of the MacOS upgrades in a way where it was still completely functional, except now there's a permanent grey box in front of the interface. I could buy a new version, but they haven't added or changed anything of value, and it costs more, so guess what, not buying it. I'd buy an upgrade for $5, maybe $10 if I really used it. That's digital capitalism. Subscription services, where you don't get access to anything if you stop paying, are even more disgusting.

Old iPhones don’t support latest OS and can then no longer support latest apps. Batteries get crap and the whole thing slows down.

I have an iPad 3 that was more or less useless when I bought it, beyond the use of a few apps that I still have installed. The battery is crap, but the only reason it hasn't been replaced is because it can't.

If i sell you lunch, is it a subscription just because you will eventually eat again? That doesn't make sense. The important criterion is that a subscription will make you pay automatically without you making another choice.

I get it, but when it comes to Photoshop, you buy it and then can use that one version of the software for 10 years if you don't care about all of the upgrades, which aren't necessary, or you can pay ten years worth of monthly subscription fees.

The subscription is massively more expensive.

Buying a product and then buying a replacement at some point in the future is massively preferred to me over paying every month for that product. It allows me to budget and update when I want to depending on what features are released that I need or want or to replace the item when it wears out a subscription generally costs more and robs me of any flexibility.

Production quality and innovation is also better without subscriptions. Businesses have to win me over with there new product or version and convince me it's worth paying to upgrade, if i'm already on a subscription, they don't really care as long as there are competitive to alternatives.

Interesting you chose Photoshop: I've stayed on my older version of Lightroom because Adobe moved to a subscription based model and I just don't use it enough to justify that. They're clearly addicted to that revenue stream over their former model.

This isn't how Photoshop works anymore sadly. Now it's all under "Creative Cloud" subscription so you pay monthly/yearly, and if you stop paying you lose access. For a while it was common for users to keep the last "purchased" version (called CS6) but it's been so long I see this less and less.

I fully agree tho when you stop subscribing you should be able to keep the previous version. It's a tool, not entertainment like Netflix/Spotify.

> But what about the washing machine we have to buy again after X years? The iPhone we have to buy again after X years or any other product we use? Basically all subscriptions in disguise.

The big difference here for me is that you own those, so you have equity in them. You bought a washing machine? You can sell it 3 years later, or purchase one used to begin with.

Musical instruments are a good example. Nobody _needs_ to replace their guitar/piano/violin/pipe organ/harmonica after x years, but they might build a collection based on the quality.

The washer/dryer my parents bought in 1989 was still working 20 years later.

Remember when Maytag's advertising shtick was how reliable their appliances were?

> Basically all subscriptions in disguise

Good luck selling your lightly used subscription on Craigslist.