[quote=363992:@Dave S]But the MSDN subscription (for lack of a better term), provides access to ALL MICROSOFT products for a single fee (albeit a high one).
The company I used to work for gave a MSDN account to every developer and we downloaded what we needed, as we needed it…
Now that may very well have changed since then… but that was how it “used” to work…
I am still using Office 2011 for Mac that I got from back then… all the Windows stuff left when they laid me off and I had to return that computer… (the Mac was my personal machine)[/quote]
For sure @Dave S, an MSDN subscription does give you access to more than just Visual Studio.
To also get the latest MS Office software, you must have been on the Enterprise plan, which costs a few times more than the Pro level I’m at. But I still get access to all versions of the Windows OS’ and other Microsoft development tools, including SQL Server.
The catch though (at the Professional level anyway), is that I’m only allowed to use all those Microsoft goodies strictly for development and testing purposes only. Not for production use.
And as soon as I let my annual subscription expire, I’m supposed to uninstall everything (including the OS’), because technically speaking, I’m not licensed anymore.
So yeah, as good as the MSDN package is, it all goes away, or stops working, or goes into read-only mode, as soon as I stop paying my annual fee.
A good example, as Norman pointed out, is the later versions of MS Office, where you have to sign into your online MS account to verify your subscription, to keep Office working.
The later versions of Visual Studio also does this now. If your subscription is no longer current, Visual Studio Professional (or Enterprise) reverts to the community edition.
Granted, the free community version of Visual Studio is “almost” full-featured, which would work fine for a beginners or small projects. But to take a full-stack professional and/or enterprise project and downgrade it to the community version, would be… well, impossible without throwing away a lot of features, functionality or other necessary integrations and development capabilities.
Anyway, from my perspective (coming from the Visual Studio universe), the Xojo plans are pretty straight forward and accommodating for an individual like me.