Yes, back in 2004 we did offer lifetime free updates for Professional Edition customers. We changed it to 1 year of updates a number of years ago, but indefinite access for the versions released during your free update period. But of course, we grandfathered in all licenses that came with lifetime free updates. I think when we started offering lifetime free updates back in 1998, we didn't expect to still be working on VueScan 27 years later!
VueScan Developer here. We have a subscription option - but that's really intended for customers who have short term scanning needs (ie. scan all of your slides). If you purchase a one-time VueScan license, you can use it indefinitely.
Not a ton has changed for the better - but a few things have:
1. Ticket prices have come down in real terms (especially with the advent of low cost airlines)
2. Fuel economy on newer jets has improved
3. Increased number of routes and frequencies
4. Lie flat seats in business and above on long haul
5. WiFi on planes
6. In-flight entertainment - both seatback units and video over WiFi
Spreadsheets and word processors are good examples. Visicalc was overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3 which was overtaken by Excel. WordPerfect was overtaken by Microsoft Word.
This is great. I continue to use bitbucket for all of my personal repos since they provide unlimited private repos for free. I would use github for my private repos but I have lot's of small repos that make private github cost prohibitive.
In-App purchases are for digital goods only (Content, Functionality, Services, Subscriptions). You are completely free to sell real/physical goods (ie. a train ticket) via your own payment system.
I think that all of that can be supported by file formats. There is no rule that an image file format can only hold the pixel information. The issue is that it's hard for all vendors to agree on a standard, and once it's agreed upon, people want to add more information to it. We have EXIF for images, but what happens when iPhoto and Picasa both add face tags?
I don't believe files are the issue, it's agreeing on the interchange format that is.
The person who invented the original traffic signal patented it in 1923 (http://www.google.com/patents?id=EHJoAAAAEBAJ&printsec=f...). The idea was unique, novel, and non-obvious at the time. It's easy to see an invention now that is ubiquitous and say that it's obvious.
Shameless self promotion - I'm the author of VueScan Mobile which will let you scan to your iPhone/iPad using WiFi printer/scanners from Epson/HP/Canon. I've been using this for awhile to scan all of those random forms I seem to accumulate and save them in Evernote. I especially love that evernote OCR's and indexes all of the documents so that I can search through every document I have scanned.
I think one very interesting case is services like directv, dish networks, comcast, tivo etc. They all offer services but their apps are ancillary to the subscription service that they provide. Does Apple want Directv to offer subscriptions within the app?