TextExpander, a long-time utility for Mac and iOS, switched its pricing to a subscription service this week. Of course I have thoughts. I’m a long-time supporter of subscription pricing. Subscriptions are going to be the primary way we pay for productivity apps eventually. It’s going to happen. It has to happen. Upgrade pricing has been rejected by most consumers[1], and many businesses tend to prefer the predictable monthly costs of a subscription. As Adobe and Microsoft have shown, subscriptions may be a hard sell at first, but…

Playing in Gatekeeper’s sandbox: While pundits often seem to divide the computer-using public into “developers” and “people who can’t find where they saved their files,” there’s a lot of ground between those two extremes, and a lot of people in that ground are going to keep wanting desktops and laptops for the foreseeable future. While I can’t absolutely rule out Apple turning its back on them, I haven’t seen anyone make a particularly good business case as to why Apple would. “Because they can” is…

> Either way, Friday releases of major OS X upgrades have been somewhat of a tradition for Apple for nearly a decade. With the exception of Cheetah and Puma, which were released on a Tuesday and Saturday, respectively, back in 2001, all major new versions of OS X have made their debut on a Friday: Panther (Friday, Oct. 24, 2003), [Tiger](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/05/04/29/notes_of_interest_tiger_party_iwork_encyclipodia.html) (Friday, Apr. 29, 2005), [Leopard](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/26/an_…

> In other words, Serlet isn’t leaving because because Lion heralds some subsuming of OS X to iOS and the setting of his star at Apple. He’s leaving because he feels it’s time and likely because Lion seems a perfect monument to his legacy at Apple. via [digitaldaily.allthingsd.com](http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110323/mac-daddy-serlets-surprise-departure-more-of-a-planned-transition/)I’ll miss Serlet, because he was an interesting personality on the Apple team. But I agree, there’s no reason to read too much into this. By all accounts, this retirement…