I didn't downvote, but just to be clear - I'm not saying $10 for lifetime updates. Lifetime updates are a terrible idea and, yes, that does kill off software.
$10 is too low for a one-off purchase as well, I'm not saying to lowball the price. $29 for a small utility could be reasonable, and that gives you some room to offer discount pricing / sales if you want. As for major version upgrades, I'd be imagining a typical 50% off, $15 to buy an upgrade to v2 if the customer wants it. Of course, not every customer will want that.
You could offer both a subscription and a one-off purchase. It might put off some customers that you're even offering a subscription, but at least then you're offering everyone what they might want. And if you offer both, you'll have real data on what customers actually prefer, if you don't have that data already.
And as others have said - it's their business, they can choose their sales model! Offered only as a friendly suggestion and potential customer feedback.
> You could offer both a subscription and a one-off purchase.
Regardless of the presentation, $10 a year presumably represents what they want per user, per year, for this to be worth it for them. Don't rush to repackage that very conservative target into a 2nd format for people who won't pay $10 a year for a thing they'll use daily on a Mac in the first place.
> Offered only as a friendly suggestion and potential customer feedback.
And "please don't overindex on that comment OP" is offering an unreasonable response?