I'm kind of proud of how popular this thread became, even though some parts collected some downvotes.

Key takeaways: People don't like subscriptions for on-device apps, and people really don't like telemetry.

The "indie apps" phenomenon has always selected for applications that are relatively simple in scope. If you're doing something that has a large scope, you either need a team large enough to start a business, or you need to go open source and take advantage of community contributions (either directly or by integrating yourself into a larger system that allows your particular application to have a narrower scope). However, simple applications are generally pretty easy to implement with AI, making it hard to justify paying for them.

Theoretically, there should be a gap of applications that are too niche to start a business off of and, prior to AI, too complex for an individual to write on their own, which is probably where any future for indie apps lies. I don't know of any examples of that sort of software though, does anyone know any?