What choice do businesses really have?
If you're a business who needs to use Windows 10-exclusive software for your work, you're going to pay the subscription.
You see similar practices all over the professional world.
Here are some examples:
Here's Informatica, a piece of pro-level database integration software:
https://www.informatica.com/ca/products/clo...us-pricing.htmlIt costs $2,000 per month for the "basic" licence and $4500 / month for the advanced licence.
Here's Composer Cloud X, a music production suite:
http://www.soundsonline.com/composercloudStarts at $30 / month.
Autodesk suite went subscription-only recently:
http://www.cadalyst.com/management/autodes...only-2016-25644If you just want Autodesk Maya, it's $185 / month or $1470 / year
http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/subscribePeople have already mentioned Photoshop.
You see this sort of stuff all the time on the business side. From Microsoft's point of view, it probably makes a lot of sense. Businesses are used to subscription models for their software already. It probably won't really take off on the consumer side anytime soon but these costs are relatively low for businesses. Such a model makes upgrading much simpler AND encourages everyone using the software to always be running the same, most recent version as upgrades will generally always be free.
There are some reasons why this may not actually be awful on the corporate side. I'm not super concerned.