A guy bought a new Toyota Camry equipped with factory GPS navigation, remote start (via an app) and Apple Car Play. A year after he bought the car, these features stopped working – because the one-year "free" subscription to these features that was included when he bought the car ran out. If he wants to be able to use his car's GPS, the remote start and the Apple Car Play, he must henceforth pay to use them. Serially. Every month, a bill. Twenty-five a month bucks to be able to use the Apple Car Play. Another $25 to be able to use the remote start and $15 per month for the GPS.

It all comes to about $50 per month, which amounts to about $600 annually. Factor that out over a six year loan and the tab comes to $3,600. That's a tidy little revenue stream for Toyota.

It is not just Toyota that's doing this, either.

Tesla was the first to apply the Bill Gates/Microsoft model to vehicles. Microsoft used to sell software. This was a long time ago, back in the '90s. You bought the box that contained the CD that had the software and once you paid for it – once – it was yours, physically as well as legally. You could use what you had bought on more than one computer; you could give the CD that contained the software to your kid to use. It maybe got old (out-of-date) eventually, but it was like owning an older car that maybe didn't have the latest features but nonetheless still worked and – the important thing – it was yours to do with as you liked.

Then Gates – who is arguably the incarnation of Satan, if he exists, in a Mr. Rogers sweater – figured out that much more money could extracted from people by forcing them to rent his software, forever.

He did not use that word, of course. Satan is more clever than that. He styled the rent a subscription – which made it sound less evil, as if you were just paying to get your daily newspaper.