Finding the corrilation between two Daring Fireball posts i happened upon today in my RSS feeds (i’m a bit behind due to the holidays). In reverse order of reading there is first the story from Fast Company on The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart (DF) in which we read about how Jim Wier, CEO of Simplicity Manufacturing, Inc., sat down rather awkwardly with the VP of Wal-Mart to inform him that he would no longer be selling his line of lawn tractors at Wal-Mart because, in short, he couldn’t lower his product line to the level to which Wal-Mart shoppers were accustomed. This was an interesting read for sure, but it also immediately brought to mind another story i’d read on DF earlier today in which Alex Payne talks about Software I Paid For But No Longer Use (DF). Being in the software business myself (or so i tell myself) the parallels caught my eye. So much software, if not the whole lot, is designed to be disposable just like the lawn tractors at Wal-mart. And for the large part this is completely accepted by buyers. The reasoning, obviously, is much the same – low prices. Sure, the inevitable jump in computing capability plays into it, but let’s face it – the first deciding factor in purchasing a piece of software is how much it costs. And really what software developer would pass down the opportunity to sell the more-or-less same piece of software again the next year?
I don’t think we’ll ever see software being passed down through the generations like you would a good tool or piece of furniture but there’s something to be said for the shortcuts taken – specifically relating to quality – to keep prices low and maintain a disposable product driven market. There may be something to be said for the subscription models that some software vendors have been toying with as of late.