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Interesting discussion of service versus product. Service is a distribution of products but in itself is consider a product. It all comes down to semantics if you consider something a service.
True working as a JS developer, cross browser support is just freaking wonderful at times and yes updates to browser can break functionality but a real developer has access to canary builds of the browser to test with. Also most cross browser problems have well distributed polyfills that solve them already and if you stay with basic HTML 5 specs you can make a web application that runs very consistently and as bug free as any desktop application.
So for me whether a subscription based service has any value is in what it provides for its payment options. I will probably not use HLO because to me the subscription model seems broken. What do I mean by that? Netflix I pay a single price for and receive the ability to view movies. I don't have to pay more (price increases in services beyond my simple scope here) when they add new products or videos. Therefore there is value in my continued subscription in that I get new things to watch or do.
HLO seems to want you to pay for each product and license. So if I order SR6 but want to also add Pathfinder, I have to pay again above and beyond the subscription price. So my subscription price only has the value for updates to the web app and simple core rules updates. I assume that even new source books like in classic require more additional payments above and beyond the subscription price. This just does not add up to value for me considering what I am seeing as the subscription price of $35... (maybe that is just the up front price for the products plus subscriptions and the actual subscription price is lower which may change my opinion some). If Netflix charged me $15 a month and $10 every month to add new movies, I would not pay the $25 and definitely would not pay the $15 to just keep access to old movies.
The other issue I have with online is that where I play, we don't have access to reliable WIFI. So I cannot use the product during actual play so any features based around that would be of limited value to me. I would assume I can print a character sheet (or save it to PDF) to play off line so that would not be the worst deal breaker... but local applications like Chummer allowed me to update and work with my character as I was playing... It would be cool if they could create a react native port of the online services to handle gameplay features offline on a tablet from a character generated online and saved to say an iPad... much like they did for Pathfinder (loved that iPad app which is one of the reasons I loved supporting them with the classic app when I was playing pathfinder).
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