> This might be one of the only cases where subscription model would work well to cover the maintenance cost.
Or -hear me out on this one, it is wild take- if you come out with a device, system or software that has fundamental flaws, you fix them at your own cost or get fined to oblivion if you don't.
If a company is not able to come up with reliable, quality products, then perhaps it shouldn't be in the business of creating said products to start with.
The fact that you suggest subscriptions to fix fundamental issues is a good reflection of how companies have managed to skew the general perception on what is "acceptable" as a product. In fact, they have pushed it so far, that they are feeding it to us backwards.
Pushing out minimal viable products and have subscribers pay to (perhaps, one day) get something that works shouldn't be the norm.
A car info/entertainment system that is too slow and buggy because the manufacturer couldn't be bothered to take the steps necessary to make sure it worked reliably? -> fix it
A phone manufacturer that throttles your system after a year because they couldn't be arsed to properly size their batteries originally? -> fix it
A router manufacturer shipping software so buggy their hardware needs to be rebooted periodically? -> fix it
Etc.
"Software is hard" or "product design is hard" are no excuses. Building airplanes that don't fall out of the sky is also hard, and yet we manage to do so. (Or, rather ironically, the ones that follow the "minimal viable product" software mentality do fall out of the sky. Looking at you, Boeing).
Those are the companies that abuse the customer trust and sell them something cheap under the guise of high quality, but in fact really cheap and not well thought.
Or -hear me out on this one, it is wild take- if you come out with a device, system or software that has fundamental flaws, you fix them at your own cost or get fined to oblivion if you don't.
If a company is not able to come up with reliable, quality products, then perhaps it shouldn't be in the business of creating said products to start with.
The fact that you suggest subscriptions to fix fundamental issues is a good reflection of how companies have managed to skew the general perception on what is "acceptable" as a product. In fact, they have pushed it so far, that they are feeding it to us backwards.
Pushing out minimal viable products and have subscribers pay to (perhaps, one day) get something that works shouldn't be the norm.
A car info/entertainment system that is too slow and buggy because the manufacturer couldn't be bothered to take the steps necessary to make sure it worked reliably? -> fix it
A phone manufacturer that throttles your system after a year because they couldn't be arsed to properly size their batteries originally? -> fix it
A router manufacturer shipping software so buggy their hardware needs to be rebooted periodically? -> fix it
Etc.
"Software is hard" or "product design is hard" are no excuses. Building airplanes that don't fall out of the sky is also hard, and yet we manage to do so. (Or, rather ironically, the ones that follow the "minimal viable product" software mentality do fall out of the sky. Looking at you, Boeing).