I guess I’m confused because PC component pricing isn’t based on how critical those pieces are. There isn’t any “the computer wouldn’t run without this” fee tacked on to mission critical components or software.
Also, what component can you just not buy and still run your computer? Aren’t they all equally critical? You say CPU and motherboard, but why are those any more important than a power supply or RAM?
Because what you are describing is not what the music model is - the music model is either “I pay a monthly/yearly fee to play all the music licensed by ASCAP/BMI/ whatever other service there is and then ASCAP/BMI/ whatever other service decides how the payments get divided up between the songwriters” , a custom negotiation when music is used in a TV show, movie , etc. or a third scheme used for situations when someone downloads a song from iTunes or buys a CD.
And nobody is saying it can’t be done - sure it could if the content makers and the streaming services agreed to it. What everybody is saying is that it won’t be done - because if it would actually benefit the content makers and the streaming services , it would have already been done.
They’re not… but the CPU for a long time had/has been one of the most expensive single components and for a long time, one without significant competition for Intel.
Microsoft STILL doesn’t have significant competitors in the desktop OS space, so why are they pricing it so cheap? Why price the OS in the same ballpark as a power supply, and not like a GPU, or even higher? It’s not like you can go choose between 2-3 OS publishers and they’re all inter-compatible, unlike just about every other component of a PC.
It doesn’t make sense- there’s no good reason for them not to charge a lot more for it, except if they’re trying to avoid litigation or something like that. It’s not like the vast majority of users can actually switch to Linux without a lot of effort and without losing a lot of compatibility. They literally have the market over a barrel, but choose not to price accordingly for… reasons? The market would bear a LOT higher price, considering the criticality of the OS, and the lack of alternatives.
That’s why I think a subscription model would be a good way for them to get some of that money, without actually looking like they raised prices threefold overnight or something.
Maybe that’s why? If they raised the price, maybe they would start seeing competition?
I’ll bow out of my defense of my streaming business model, but I have to say, this statement is…naive. It’s like saying “everything has already been invented”. People find new ways to make money everyday. The business world is full of inefficiencies and underserved markets.
The CPU is not the most expensive single component, video cards are. Interestingly, video cards are one of the very few components that aren’t mission critical; I ran my computer fine for several months with just the onboard graphics built into the CPU, no video card needed. To play games at good framerates I needed to buy a discrete video card, but that’s a much higher level need than an OS or CPU (or motherboard, RAM, power supply, etc…) where the computer won’t even turn on without them.
Also, AMD has been competition for Intel in the CPU space for many years.
I am possibly a little confused - there are a number of services I can subscribe to through Prime like Paramount plus and shows on those services showed up on a Roku search even if I didn’t subscribe to the service at all. Is PBS Masterpiece only available through Prime or something.
PBS Masterpiece does not offer its own streaming app, presumably saving a decent chunk of change not having to build one. Instead, it works inside other streaming apps like Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Essentially renting space inside existing frameworks.
PBS Masterpiece is not unique in this respect. There are many streaming services with no dedicated app. Content from those services is not visible to Roku search.
Try searching for Sandition. When you search for something with the Roku search feature, the question you’re really asking is “What service do I have to subscribe to to watch this?” The Roku search gives you no indication that the answer to that question for Sandition is “PBS Masterpiece.”
(I’ve never seen Sandition; I was just looking for a unique title for simple searching, as opposed to something like All Creatures Great and Small.)
EDIT: Don’t get me wrong, the Roku search feature is a mountain of win with an avalanche of awesomesauce sliding down it. It’s just a minor irritation that it’s not quite complete.
You’re looking at about the past 10, maybe 15 years there. I’m talking over the entire Windows time frame.
Either way, there’s no reason the OS shouldn’t be priced similarly to the most expensive thing in the computer.
You haven’t presented any reason why it should. I have presented an example of why it shouldn’t, which is that computer “things” are not priced based on how critical they are to the computer’s functioning.
What are you talking about? They’re priced as the market will bear, except for operating systems. There’s ample evidence that there’s no reason they couldn’t charge more- realistically, Linux isn’t an option for 90% of Windows users, there’s no alternative, and it’s absolutely vital to a functioning computer.
A power supply is cheap because there’s about nothing keeping anyone from making a competing power supply- they’re just not all that complicated in terms of design/engineering or manufacturing relative to a lot of the other stuff in a PC that requires dedicated and specific fabs to make those chips, as well as billions of dollars of R&D. So there are lots of companies making them and selling all sorts of options- wattages, efficiencies, cable styles, etc…
Same thing for memory- there are several chip makers, and even more outfits who integrate them into DIMMs. Same for monitors, keyboards, mice, hard drives, SSDs, etc…
But that’s not the case for CPUs and GPUs. They’re highly specialized components that are essentially only made by two companies- Intel and AMD. So they cost more. A lot more than a power supply for example.
My point is that an OS is something on the same tier of complexity as a CPU/GPU, equally vital to the operation of the PC, and one that has no alternatives, meaning there is no meaningful competition.
All that means that what the market will bear is probably actually on par with, or higher than a CPU or GPU. Microsoft could charge $300 per copy of Windows, and people would pay. Some would certainly pirate it, but corporate customers would suck it up, and it would be passed on to the customer for new laptop/PC builds. They’re like the old Bell system- they have a de-facto monopoly over the desktop operating system.
So why don’t they charge more? Only one real reason comes to mind- they’re afraid that if they were to charge what the market would bear for Windows, that their monopoly would come under a lot more scrutiny due to consumer outcry.
I have to believe that Microsoft (a massive corporation, with, presumably, a large market research department) has extensively explored charging a higher price for Windows, and determined that it didn’t make financial sense. Maybe the current model keeps competitors at bay, or whatever, but if they aren’t charging more for it today, there’s likely a business reason, even if it’s not immediately evident.
If you’re talking about video cards, that’s not really true. For more than 20 years onboard video has been pretty common. I say this as someone who was a retail salesman for home computers in 1999-2000.
If you’re talking about CPUs, that has never been true. Intel has never had a monopoly. The market has narrowed down primarily to Intel and AMD, but there used to be even more competitors for the build-your-own PC market. (RIP Cyrix.)
Case in point; I’ve been building my own PCs for decades and I’ve never used an Intel chip.
There is Apple.
Intel doesn’t make GPUs. The two companies that do are AMD and NVidia. Intel is currently trying to break into the market, but their initial release date keeps getting pushed back. (We’re already at or past the original release date.)
Your point about AIB resellers is fair enough, but you still haven’t established any particular relationship between how critical something is to run a computer vs how that thing is priced.
This point is true, or at least true enough for your argument, but I will say that in my current computer, I intentionally spent $180 on the cpu (10400) and $150 on my psu. (Seagate Focus 750W platinum.) But in fairness, my build priorities started out weird and have recently taken a turn into the outright bizarre.
(And then I spent $380 on a 2016-model 1050 ti video card thanks to shortages, but worse, I just upgraded to a modern budget card for another $276 that I don’t want and can’t return. I swapped my 1050 ti back in, which at this moment effectively cost me $656.)
Oooooh yeah.
I have an ancient copy of MS Office on our home PC (2003 or so, I think!) and have not felt the need to subscribe to anything newer. For my work computer, I had to get permission, a few years back, to install Office because it was what our client used; my employer was pushing us all to use a different suite.
My password manager (1Password) STRONGLY pushes you to go with the “as a service” model, which winds up being something like 60 bucks a year - I could be wrong about the amount, but whatever it was, purchasing a one-time license was barely more than a year’s worth of that “service” (which, incidentally, required all your stuff to be stored on THEIR servers). On the other hand, this meant a more streamlined sync between devices. I called BS, managed to find out how to buy the one-time license (they did NOT make it easy) and just continued to use Dropbox to sync.
An alarm clock tool I use (Alarmy) has a premium version that has a few enhanced features that sound nifty. But not at 42 to 60 bucks a year. 10-20 bucks for a one-time purchase, I might consider. 60 bucks a year? Yeah… no. Similarly the fuel logging app I use (I specifically wanted one where both my husband and I could enter the data on our phones and sync it between devices - and he’s IOS while I’m in the robot realm). I think it was 10 bucks a month, or 100 bucks a year, but they had a Black Friday sale that was 25 bucks one-time - which I happily paid.
Quicken, I’m kinda stuck with: I have 20+ years of data, so I’m pretty heavily invested. Used to be, you could keep using it forever, you’d just lose your ability to download stuff unless you “downgraded” (new features rarely worth it, tended to be buggy) every 3 years or so. Now it’s annual - and given the time and sheer volume of data, I have had to stick with it.
All in all, phone apps and other software are really overpriced when they go to the SaaS model (Software as a Service) - especially given how expectations have been set over the years of “a dollar or two, or FREEEEE”. The thing is, I can sort of understand the business model: if you sell the tool once, you get no further income from it; if you go with SaaS, it’s an ongoing income stream. But the tool has to either have enough ongoing improvement that it’s worth it, or the fees have to be a lot more reasonable.
I remember venting here some years back about things like Apple Music or some such - a subscription service for, say, 10 bucks a month where you have access to pretty much any music, as long as you remain a subscriber. Someone said that this was preferred by a LOT of people. I don’t buy that (pun intended). I personally prefer to purchase my music (frequently via CD, in fact… same reasons as I cited above for movie purchases), and then it’s mine forever - but with music, I often DO listen to the same favorites time after time. I can see where that kind of service fills a need for some people - just not my listening style.
Video streaming services are sort of the same, except for me, it’s worth it given my viewing preferences. I definitely agree with the frustration over how scattered the services are - and there’s no way in hell I would (or could) subscribe to enough of them where I could watch anything I wanted. I’m just glad it’s become so easy to activate a service for a month at a time to binge a specific show.
I changed our cell phone plans a week or so back, and was kind of tickled that the plan gets us access to Disney+ and Hulu. Except… we’ve gotten Disney Plus once or twice in the past when there was something specific I wanted to see - and there’s almost nothing there I’m interested in any more since I’ve seen them already. The occasional new movie, but I’m pretty much caught up at this point - so woohoo. The plan also gives us ESPN+ (haven’t even set that up!) and Hulu+ - which has the occasional series that looks interesting, but not something I’d have spent money for otherwise.
But (and I’m an old timer myself, I guess), for all intents and purposes, I DO own that DVD. Short of the house being burgled, it cannot be taken away from me. I don’t have the right to copy and sell it, true. But just like a dead-tree book: if I’m done with it, I can sell or give away the book or the DVD. Anything installed on the computer, ditto, though of course the computer might crash - and in that case I might lose it, but it’d be my own fault.
In all these cases, I’m limited as to where / how I can consume the information: if I left the DVD at home, I cannot watch it somewhere else. This is one area in which something purchased from Amazon / Verizon / whatever beats the physical media: I could log in from anywhere and watch “my” movie. I’d still prefer a way to back it up myself, in case Amazon fires me for having the wrong Zodiac sign or something, but I know a lot of people would abuse that.
Two things I buy electronically only: tax software (I need that for a year or so at most), and the occasional piece of music from Apple. Interestingly, with iTunes, you CAN burn a CD of downloaded music - or at least you could at one point; I have not tried this, and the one time I tried it with an audiobook, it didn’t work well.
But note the distinction that @bump made: you own the DVD, but you don’t own what’s on the DVD.
And owning the DVD gives you license to do certain things with what’s on the DVD (e.g. watch it at home as often as you want), but not to do other things with what’s on the DVD (e.g. broadcast it, show it to a theaterful of people, sell copies of it).
With streaming or downloaded content, it’s not all that different; there just isn’t any physical object to own.
I use Quicken as well, and in recent years was able to save a little by entering the keycode from a retail copy bought cheaply on Black Friday to extend my subscription. But this year, I’ve found that the keycodes on the retail copies are only good for new subscribers and I had to renew my subscription directly from the company at full list.
Every song I’d ever want to listen to is available on YouTube for free. At most I might have to put up with a short ad. It’s like trying to sell me water that’s basically tap water. I already have that.
That reminds me of another benefit of obsolete physical media: It’s generally (much) higher quality than the streaming version. Watching a movie on bluray on my plain old 1080p HDTV looks and sounds far superior to anything on streaming or even cable looks on the same tv. (Cable looks better than streaming.)
As for music, well, I went kind of nuts. Back in 2018 actually bought and ripped 400+ used CDs (mostly 10 for $10 kind of deals) with Exact Audio Copy into lossless flac files, then individually opened up all 800+ songs I wanted from those albums and manually normalized the volume level then exported once (and only once) from flac to 320 kbps mp3 files. Took the better part of a year, but now if power/internet/cell service goes out, I could still theoretically listen to my music.
How obsolete are we talking? Bluray is arguably not “obsolete physical media,” the way VHS is.