Hi, I'm the author behind the article referenced in this post.

As far as I know, Ubiquiti is not responsible for this 5$ per year "tax".

Apple takes about 3$ per user per year for usage of "Apple Access Platform", and the rest is spent for licensing the credential technology, like to NXP for Mifare DESFire in this case.

It's SSO tax applied to hardware devices. But at the same time, it's clearly a more premium feature and if you're a business you've got the $5000/year to pay for 1000 devices. $5/device/year is not exactly expensive. Heck, I'd pay Ubiquiti $15/year for my family to be able to use it at home. That's less than I pay for almost any subscription for anything.

What I can’t figure out is why the old readers, which clearly read NFC cards, can’t work to read iPhones, which emit NFC.

I understood in the past that iPhones weren’t supported because of the limitations described in the article. I figured once Apple opened up the system and Ubiquiti actually implemented it (both of which have now happened) that the old readers would work.

Although irritating, I’d consider paying $5/user/year, but I’m not about to rip out 6 card readers that I just installed.

> It just seems like a slow boil into subscriptions for a company whose entire value prop is prosumer networking without the contracts.

On the other side... look at the status quo in access control systems. If you never did, be happy you never had to because the status quo is shit because the entire ecosystem is suffering from a severe lack of money - for physical locks, most people buy the cheapest shit they can get at Home Depot or whatnot, and for "fancy" stuff involving smartphones they do just the same, or order right from Alibaba. And that is a damn horror show.

Ubiquiti, for all I dislike the trend for recurring revenue everywhere, at least makes high quality and secure stuff - but with anything interconnected, keeping updates available costs recurring expenses. So it's either "the product is cheap ass and will likely have multiple bypasses in a year or two", "the product is extremely expensive but you will get updates for a reasonable time" or "the product is affordable, but costs recurring money".