FSD price increase this Monday

[Glan gluaisne]

Lock-in to a particular software ecosystem is a really massive issue. I've been using Autocad for decades, since the time it was a DOS programme that I ran on a 286, with a maths coprocessor. I invested a great deal in learning how to drive it, and because AutoCad is quirky, those skills aren't readily transferable. I did try Fusion 360 a while ago, but went back to AutoCad, just because I know it inside out. I suspect it's much the same with any other big name app developer, they rely on people ending up with hard to transfer skills that lock them in to the product.

In my case, I only use Autocad for hobby stuff now (although I did design our house using it), and I can't possibly justify the price from AutoDesk (currently over £200/month). My sticking plaster fix is to keep the paid for version running on a stand-alone machine (has to be stand alone, as otherwise it will talk to AutoDesk and may possibly just stop working). Whether I can continue to keep an old stand alone machine, running XP (as the version of AutoCad I have won't run on anything newer) is debatable. If I was using it as a part of a business, this wouldn't be a viable solution. The daft thing is that my old copy of AutoCad is far more powerful than I'll ever need. Even when producing all the drawings for this house I barely used more than 10% of its capability. The additional features in any newer version would have no value to me, and the same is probably true for a lot of mature software, especially basic office stuff, like email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.

 

[Plagued]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're tempted to buy FSD on the sole basis of it going up £2k the week after a mystery beta, just put the money in Telsa shares. If they do truly achieve a useful FSD then their share price increase should easily cover any increase in FSD cost, if they don't manage it and their share prices start to crash for whatever reason you can get out having only lost a percentage of your money rather than nearly all of it on an unfishished system. in both cases you just need to be prepared to have thrown money away.

 

[spon88]

I've managed to negotiate a discount every year by either threatening to ditch everything (becoming a harder sell every year, Adobe know full well there isn't really anything comparable out there if your team uses several of their apps), or signing up with a completely new account (as new customers tend to get discounts), etc. It's ridiculous really.

As you say it's a sign of the times really. I understand the argument that SaaS pays for more development, but I do also believe that it encourages some bad practices too. If you're in contract with Creative Cloud then you've pretty much got no leverage.

The last interaction I had with them other than renewals was several years back when they got hacked and had all of our details stolen. Took ages renewing credit cards and so forth. Even though we told them that we needed a few days to arrange new payment details, they still blocked our account and withdrew services - complete idiots! Couldn't get any sense out of them at all. If there was an easy alternative we'd be long gone....

 

[Rooster6655]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're tempted to buy FSD on the sole basis of it going up £2k the week after a mystery beta, just put the money in Telsa shares. If they do truly achieve a useful FSD then their share price increase should easily cover any increase in FSD cost, if they don't manage it and their share prices start to crash for whatever reason you can get out having only lost a percentage of your money rather than nearly all of it on an unfishished system. in both cases you just need to be prepared to have thrown money away.

Problem is they can *always* be working towards FSD as classic Musk always does when he hasn't a firm deadline