abriden

I would suggest those that seek integration without the costly Fantastical subscription, check out Calendar 365 II. The menubar calendar and iPhone app are particularly effective and aesthetically balanced. 

I would prefer it if Apple's priority with MacOS was fixing the numerous bugs in Finder that have been present for years, providing auto-sizing of columns (since they've nobbled every third-party app that enabled it in the last 20 years), and enabling system-wide font management that hides the numerous bloody fonts that are of no use and clog-up font menus.

Add to that a means to separate and label bookmarks in drop-downs, and allow white-listing of cookies (Safari), and organise genres in a user-defined order and stop attaching unconnected artwork to playlists (Music).

Marvin said:

People having tough circumstances in life is irrelevant to how a business with 30,000 employees runs its business, Adobe has ongoing payroll of around $1.5 billion / year. You're suggesting that businesses should structure their business model around scenarios where someone isn't able to pay $20-50/month. If someone's income stream depends on this, it's their responsibility to have measures in place, like insurance or pay for it on credit or ask their customers to pay something upfront. It's not Adobe's responsibility to deal with this, just like it's not the responsibility of an internet service provider, mortgage lender and so on.

Recurring revenue keeps businesses sustainable and every business aims to have long-term sustainable business models. Perpetual licenses aren't sustainable for big businesses or ones with cloud services. Adobe's integration of cloud-based AI across their product line is only possible with recurring revenue. Similarly, Canva could only exist with recurring revenue and it's why they were able to buy out Serif.

I am not against subscription models per se, but Adobe could offer greater flexibility with their offerings and may need to for their long-term survival.

I propose that models linked to hours-used would be to a developer's advantage if the alternative is that they lose customers who cannot sustain an all-in subscription model due to changing circumstances.

As I approach retirement, should I not be able to taper my overheads as my workload reduces. You have cited examples of other overheads, but actually they can be reduced on a graduated basis. I pay for my phone, electricity, consumables based on usage, so why not a software-service.

I supported Adobe over much of my working life, it is disappointing that their response is to effectively cut-off my access to the tools I've mastered and the work I've created, unless I keep paying in perpetuity.

Marvin said:

The combined monthly price of the full Adobe Suite ($60/m) and Cinema 4D ($80/m) is $140 per month.
The standalone purchase price of Cinema 4D used to be around $3600 and Adobe suite was $2600.

Adobe initially kept the standalone option but so many people jumped on the monthly option that it didn't make sense to keep it.
The arguments about health issues or whatever causing people to not be able to pay their subscription don't make any sense. If people reached that level of poverty, they'd lose access to their accommodation, food, internet, transport too. Software subscriptions would be the least of their worries.

Firstly, Cinema 4D was nowhere near the $3600 price-point when I first bought it and I was able to use the perpetual licences for several years at a time between upgrades, so my point stands. It was affordable to run Cinema 4D and other 3D software alongside the Adobe apps I needed, and now it is not affordable for peripheral use. Secondly, you seem to have limited life experience. If you had actually had the misfortune of an accident or chronic health condition that impacted your work life in the longer-term, you might realise how condescending your comment sounds. In the absence of any humility, perhaps you might consider just how fast your own circumstances could be up-ended.

9secondkox2 said:

You are wrong about this. I went through a very unexpected period of time where I had a health issue and couldn’t work. I had to pare down everything and my personal Adobe subscription had to go. That was rough and lasted quite a while. I did lose my car. Had to sell it to pay bills. If I didn’t have an old Mac with cs6, I’d have been destroyed. Thankfully that’s all in the rear view, but it can and does happen regardless of age, health status, etc. the subscription model sucks. 

I raised the issue of health out of personal experience. Glad to here that you've come out the other side too. Good luck.

Adobe Creative Cloud is a relative bargain if one is working professionally, on a full-time basis. However, what happens if one's employment is paused or reduced, either by market forces, family commitments or chronic health issues. In these situations, CC is immediately expensive and yet without it one loses access to much of their work as well as the ability to maintain and update their skill-set should circumstances improve.

Furthermore, it used to be possible to work across different disciplines but with each now subject to subscription-pricing it is almost impossible to ...for example, I spent years invested in Cinema 4D but it was not my core speciality and now it's impossible to sustain that subscription alongside Adobe CC and others.

It is fine incentivising students to use certain tools, but with an uncertain job market, globally, how many of them can afford to maintain the software between graduating and finding the roles for which they studied.

I believe that these developers need to rethink their strategies to serve real-world employment circumstances as they evolve throughout one's lifecycle.