I completely agree. This isn't about physical discs vs. digital stores. It's about ownership. When I, as a customer, pay a lot of money for something and get nothing more than a temporary right of use, then something is going seriously wrong here. And no, I don't think you can compare it to movie streaming. With streaming, I pay a monthly fee for access to the platform. I don't pay for every single movie I watch. That's a completely different deal.
If Sony offered a flat-rate gaming subscription for a monthly fee (and no, PlayStation Plus isn't that), then I'd be totally fine with losing access to the games included there after canceling the sub. But if I, as a customer, am expected to shell out 70-80 bucks for a single game, I want to actually own that game - physical or digital copy regardless!
I've built up a pretty large collection of physical games over the years on two shelves behind me. And every now and then, I really enjoy playing some of those older titles. It took me almost half a year just to get a disc drive for my PS5 Pro. Half a year where I couldn't play my favorite games anymore and had a useless new console just sitting there next to me. I'm actually a bit worried about the next console generation - is it going to make my entire game collection unplayable and useless?
Sooner or later, Anthropic will probably have to take this step if they want to actually make money.
Either way, they're going to lose a huge chunk of their user base because of it. I currently have a private Pro subscription for $20; I can just barely justify that amount for my personal hobby projects. Work-wise, my employer provides all of that for me, so I don't really care - this is just for my personal needs. But at $100, I'm out. The subscription isn't worth it to me just to run a few prompts in Claude Code once a week (yes, I'm still one of those people who is actually capable of, and enjoys, writing code by hand). I do use Claude Chat as well, but the free plan is more than sufficient for my needs (never ran into any limit until now). I simply have zero interest in Cowork and any products other than Claude Code.
In short: if Claude Code is removed from the Pro plan, Claude in general will no longer be interesting for people like me.
I absolutely disagree. Tools should always be built for humans, not for machines! Believe it or not, I'm still one of those people who is actually capable of operating their own computer and doing meaningful work without any AI assistant (and I am proud of it). If that possibility or ability is taken away from me because the applications on my computer can only be operated through an AI — then I'm out and start a carer in woodworking or something.
This might be the case for some users and basic use cases like surfing the web and text writing. But there are still a lot of issues for pro users and developers. If you rely on such a machine for your daily work, its not mature enough.
As much as I would like to get one of those M1 Macs, this is exactly the reason why I will wait for the 2nd generation of their processors. My Intel MacBook runs rock solid and stable. Until the ARM Macs haven't reached that level of stability, I am not willing to make the switch.
I've built up a pretty large collection of physical games over the years on two shelves behind me. And every now and then, I really enjoy playing some of those older titles. It took me almost half a year just to get a disc drive for my PS5 Pro. Half a year where I couldn't play my favorite games anymore and had a useless new console just sitting there next to me. I'm actually a bit worried about the next console generation - is it going to make my entire game collection unplayable and useless?