subscription fatigue

The Culling: The Verge

Yep, it happened.

Yesterday I went to the Verge homepage, but never clicked on anything. I appear to have not looked at any articles in the last few days, judging from my browser history. This makes sense, because I’ve de-prioritized the site since it added an “optional” subscription.

Today I clicked on the lead article and got this:

Yes, a paywall on the feature article, which was–hold onto your hats–about rearranging your home screen app icons. I did not get a Verge subscription, nor did I try any trickery to allow me to read the article. Instead, I closed the tab, removed the Verge from my new tab page list of bookmarks and will rarely check the site in the future.

I don’t begrudge the Verge wanting to extract money from its readers–you gotta cover expenses! But the way they are doing it sucks, and I’m not going to reward them (apart from the volume of clickbait junk opinion pieces is still too high, as well) with my money.

A partial/ambiguous paywall is bad design. It just is. I’ve barely looked at the site in the past week, so I don’t know if I’m getting hit by the paywall at random, if I reached my limit of “free” articles, or the feature article is paywalled by design. The pop-up doesn’t say, and I’m not going to dig around on my own to find out.

Asking people to fork over money and still serving them ads is also bad design. And tacky.

I don’t care about the newsletters. It’s not an enticement.

In a time when subscription fatigue is a real thing, the Verge has taken probably the second-worst approach to adding one (the worst would just be a complete paywall. I wonder if they’d still have ads then? Maybe!)

I don’t know how their two markets compare, but the way Ars Technica does subscriptions feels right to me:

  • If you don’t subscribe, the site is plastered with ads. Gotta pay the bills!
  • If you subscribe, you get some perks:
    • Article PDFs to download
    • A better layout for articles and the site in general
    • Customization options for text size, width and additional themes
    • No ads

Notice the last one? You get an ad-free experience and, knowing it is ad-free, subscribers get a layout that flows nicely without having to accommodate ads.

No content is locked behind a paywall. The sub is reasonable–as low as $25 per year. I like supporting the site this way and I get a nicer experience (to be clear, I do subscribe to Ars Technica).

Anyway, I suspect the Verge will do fine, since subs or not, they are still running ads. I’ll miss some of their content (but not their awful comments system). Having culled the site, I now have a tiny bit more time to devote to cat pics, so in a way, it’s win-win for me.

The Culling Continues: Blowing away iCloud Photos

While this is independent of the rather freaky story on MacRumors about corrupted videos and photos from unknown sources appearing on iCloud for Windows, I have still decided to ultimately turn off iCloud Photos. The biggest downside to this is I’ll no longer have photos taken on my iPhone automatically be made available on other devices, which is an admittedly nice feature.

Turning this off also means I’ll no longer have a backup of my photos on Apple’s servers (which may not be a bad thing if the above story hints to the stability and security of their infrastructure), so I’ll need an alternative. Here’s my plan, because I love a good plan and also lists:

  • Store photos in another cloud service. I have OneDrive, and it’s already automatically uploading photos from my phone to its cloud server, so this part is happening now.
  • Store photos in a NAS (local network storage). I’ve had a Synology NAS for awhile and have now set up the Synology Photos app to backup my photos from the phone. I’ll move the photos over in batches (I have…a few) until they are all in place, then will have the app on the phone set to only upload new photos going forward.

Once I have both of the above in place, I’ll delete the photos I have stored in iCloud and then turn off iCloud Photos. This will also make it easier to drop all Apple services save for Apple Music (I’m still paying for 200 GB of iCloud storage), and make it easier to move to a different phone in the future if I decide to do that.

You may be thinking I am souring on Apple–and you would be right! But that is a rant for another day.

The Great Culling of 2022 Continues

Yesterday I trimmed down a few more subscriptions. Yes, I am the poster boy for subscription fatigue. Beware, SaaS purveyors!

  • After dropping the Todoist sub, I have now also dropped the TickTick sub. I’ll see how the free version goes, but if it proves too limiting, I’m already running Microsoft’s To Do, and it seems to meet my needs, even if it’s “My Day” feature is a bit weird compared to a more conventional “Today” list (mainly, you have to move stuff to My Day, as it always starts blank).
  • Apple emailed me announcing my already expensive Apple One Premier subscription was going from $33.95 a month to $37.95 a month. Since they made $20 billion in PROFIT just last quarter, I opted to slim down to the Apple One Family package for $24.95 per month. I suspect the company will manage to scrape by. And I’ll save $13 by not getting stuff I don’t need, like:
    • Fitness+: I have literally never used this.
    • Apple News+: An ad-riddled hellscape, even as a paid service.
    • 2TB iCloud storage: I’m using 150 GB and only because of my photos. The new plan gives me 200GB. Since I’m now using OneDrive for photos, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Apple has become a fat, greedy company that seems determined to worsen the customer experience in exchange for squeezing as much revenue out of everyone as they can. I don’t think the company is going to fail or anything, but I think the long, gradual decline has begun. Maybe the ghost of Steve Jobs will visit Tim Cook at Christmas and be all, “WTF you doing, Tim?” and then Tim will retire on the few dollars he has put aside. BUT NOT $48 PER YEAR OF MY FEW DOLLARS. TAKE THAT, TIM.

Anyway, the number of subs I have is much slimmer now than at the start of 2022. My email is no longer full of newsletters I no longer read. I feel much less burdened now. And I like it!

The culling continues: MyFitnessPal ain’t no friend of mine

Or: Subscription fatigue, Chapter 21.

A few years back, Under Armour sold MyFitnessPal to a venture capitalist firm. Recently, the app (not website) was updated to make the starting screen more convenient for premium users, and…less so for free users (who see ads instead).

I was okay with this, because free is free, and I tolerated the ads on the iOS version. I primarily use the web version, anyway.

However, the company has now announced that the ability to scan barcodes is being locked behind a subscription. It’s not a huge deal for me in practical terms, because I rarely eat new packaged foods that I’d need to scan (I’m trying to eat more natural stuff like fruits and veggies that are not canned, bottled or whatnot), but it’s something I do use occasionally. I find it odd and irritating that MFP would gate this behind a pricey subscription ($20 US per month or $80 US per year), but it’s obvious they are relying on a sizable chunk of its user base to pony up to make mad money from them.

I won’t be paying, and this is further incentive to find an alternative to the app/site, even though I have a streak that spans over 9.5 years:

Apps/sites I am currently mulling:

  • Cronometer (it seems decent but gates some stuff behind a sub, including a few things that are still free on MFP)
  • FatSecret (seems good, but the UI is pretty utilitarian)
  • Macros
  • Lose It! (yes, they use an exclamation point!)
  • Others, possibly

I am currently using Noom, which is paid, but that’s only for three months, after which I will drop it–it was more to motivate me to lose weight than to become a permanent diet/exercise tracker. It’s been working, too, or it’s just a fancy coincidence that my weight started dropping a lot more once I started using it.

As of today, I am 160.4 pounds, with a 150 pound goal. On January 1 I was 182.8 pounds. That, on my body, is rather chunky.

I’ll post again after giving some of the alternatives some time. I’m not even opposed to paying on an ongoing basis, but the cost needs to be really reasonable (Noom is not, hence using it strictly as a boost to get started).