While companies like Mathematica, Apple, M$, etc. all come down in software pricing, the company that stuck to the high price strategy of decades ago was Adobe
And Maxon, Autodesk, Blackmagic, Side Effects, The Foundry, Avid. The market for professional software is smaller than consumer-oriented software. It's unlikely that Da Vinci resolve or Nuke is going to be used for working on home movies so it doesn't make sense for them to follow Apple's pricing model. There's certainly a middle-ground market for higher-end software, which Final Cut X demonstrates but Apple can do this because they have some marketing leverage with consumers and if it doesn't sell well, no big deal. If Adobe's software doesn't make enough money, that's a big deal.
I think Adobe could have gotten away with lower pricing and I actually think that this cloud setup will give them a better opportunity to bring prices down.
And Maxon, Autodesk, Blackmagic, Side Effects, The Foundry, Avid. The market for professional software is smaller than consumer-oriented software. It's unlikely that Da Vinci resolve or Nuke is going to be used for working on home movies so it doesn't make sense for them to follow Apple's pricing model. There's certainly a middle-ground market for higher-end software, which Final Cut X demonstrates but Apple can do this because they have some marketing leverage with consumers and if it doesn't sell well, no big deal. If Adobe's software doesn't make enough money, that's a big deal.
I think Adobe could have gotten away with lower pricing and I actually think that this cloud setup will give them a better opportunity to bring prices down.
Adobe could easily get away with lower pricing, particularly with Photoshop. The vast majority of Photoshop Elements users is using it because they can't afford Photoshop. The entire thing of Photoshop Extended, Photoshop and Photoshop elements shows that the market is huge, but that Adobe tries to milk it to the max by charging a huge premium for some features that some pros just can't do without, and so everyone else, for whom the features would be useful, but not absolutely mission critical, or who simply can't afford them, they are left in the dust.
I was glad when Apple stopped the tired software thing with Logic Express vs. Logic Pro, etc. and as far as I'm concerned are all these "light" versions simply intentionally crippled software packages, better trial versions one has to pay for, and thoroughly annoying; just as retarded as the pricing of various factory and dealer options in cars.
A fair price for a fair product, vs. being taken for the most....
...and Adobe just thought they figured out a way to make the being taken thing less obvious by wrapping it into cloud buzz words.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
Anyone who "can't afford" $50/mo for a CC subscription has other issues. If you can't make FAR more per month with ONE of these apps, that says you're incompetent and seriously need to examine your education/training and/or your dedication to your chosen career. OR just 'fess up and admit Adobe just made it a lot harder to steal their software, and that pisses you off. Too frickin' bad, dude.
I feel personally insulted with your comment! Adobe didn't make it harder for me to pirate their software; it's quite the opposite, really, as it's the legal route which is now much, much harder to take for many people.
I come from a poor, ECB/EC/IMF interventioned country from southern Europe (Portugal, you may have heard of it on the news), and, as such, I have been unemployed for 18 consecutive months, and not for lack of trying to find a job; most job offers for designers around here are either unpaid internships (a popular euphemism for modern slavery), precarious contracts (borderline slavery) and even outright fake ones (market research in disguise done by employers so they can lower wages further)…
At last, I got a nice and big freelance commission (€2.350 for the entire communication of a cultural festival in the third biggest city in this country, so, no, I'm not some random inexperienced kid straight out of college, but I do know that price is ridiculously low – there's not much I can do about it, though, as that's how everything goes now with the ruling austerocracy) that will keep me afloat for a while. Through all of this, instead of pirating Adobe software, I've been using a legal education version of CS5 Design Standard (which I bought when, duh, I was both studying and working in education as a public servant and had a fixed income) for my pro-bono stuff for friends and start-ups (yes, around here entrepeneurs can barely get financing from banks to lift their companies from the ground, let alone to pay upfront for design work… a complete disgrace!), as well as for keeping my portfolio updated.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
Now, I feel betrayed, as my whole investment in self-training (my faculty was never very decent when it came to software classes, but it more than made up for it with other subjects like art/design theory and history, aesthetics, etc.) and in the aforementioned software licence will be laid to waste when I inevitably have to switch to a different software package. That's the *real* reason why I'm pissed. Though I've considered the option of pirating it, yes, at least while a credible and cheaper alternative doesn't show up. It's either that, starving, or waiting tables/washing restrooms/working in a call-center, menial tasks which I'm over-qualified for and personally refuse to do if I can avoid them by all means necessary (this is ethics 101, basically, and I may sound as an elitist prick myself, but I don't care; sue me then). Also, as a former trainee in FreeHand, which was (and still remains!) leagues ahead of Illustrator in terms of usability, I will never forget about Adobe's sleazy monopolistic schemes… They are now much, much worse of a company than, dare I say it, Microsoft in the 1990s.
Oh, by the way, I'm pretty damn sure of my career choices, and you have no right to make that kind of assumptions about other people's lives, financial outcome and professional talent. /rant
Damn skippy I'm arrogant. And I'm more than a little impatient with people like you who somehow expect the world to be "fair." Get a clue. It isn't. Adobe has been trying this new system out, and apparently it's working well enough for them to be making this paradigm shift. So you poor fence sitting dilettantes get left in the dust. Boo hoo. Time for you to make a choice, maybe. Put up with (eventually) outdated Adobe products, or jump in the deep end and go into business for yourself and get your production up so that you CAN afford CC.
Damn, you really are an elitist prick, aren't you? What's the matter, are you afraid of competing with people who make sensible business decisions, such as, say, only updating Adobe's C$ every other version?
“… go into business for yourself…”? Are you effin' out of your damn mind? That's the most bass-ackwards thing I've read about Adobe CC this week! If I had my own production house (you know, a registered company) I could, conceivably, fathom buying into the subscription model and declare it as a tax-deductible expense, whereas being a freelancer (which, by definition and depending on the economy, may or may not have a steady stream of income but never has a *fixed* one), perpetual licences make a lot more sense… Also, even if I did buy into the subscription plan, I'd like there to be an exit strategy, like an end-of-lease buyout system. As it stands now, this CC bull$hit is no more than a predatory move on Adobe's part, and provoked a massive (and potentially irreversible) breach of trust.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
I think everyone understands that times get hard for people but that's not really the issue. You are saying that all of the things you enjoy like taking baths, eating and paying for accommodation are more important than the software that allows you to pay for them. If you add up how much you pay for rent, food, utilities, insurance etc. surely the subscription fee is a small fraction of that (1/10th)? It's hard to believe that someone could afford all the things you mention but that 1/10th extra payment means losing it all.
They haven't stopped selling CS 6. If you prefer the standalone license, they offer that as an option. Also, you have a working copy of CS 5 so you aren't paying anything at all and have made a lot of money from it already.
Also, you have to consider how it would feel the other way round. Adobe employs a lot of people so imagine you are in that situation. You then read about someone buying your software say 3 years ago but recently made thousands from using it. You were instrumental in developing the eco-system that allows that transaction to take place but you haven't made any money from it.
Understandably, people don't like the idea of Adobe effectively taking a commission from their work but at the same time, would those people be happy for someone to reuse one of their designs without commission? We've been accustomed for years to think about software as products and it has caused a lot of frustration making the transition. One of the most apparent examples is buying a game from Amazon, getting the disc and finding that it gets tied to a Steam or Origin account. You bought a product but you really only get a license to use it. If Steam or Origin ceases to be, you lose the ability to use the games.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
I think everyone understands that times get hard for people but that's not really the issue. You are saying that all of the things you enjoy like taking baths, eating and paying for accommodation are more important than the software that allows you to pay for them. If you add up how much you pay for rent, food, utilities, insurance etc. surely the subscription fee is a small fraction of that (1/10th)? It's hard to believe that someone could afford all the things you mention but that 1/10th extra payment means losing it all.
Money doesn't grow on trees. Food, shelter, hygiene, healthcare are in a different category than a software tool.
And the reasoning "if you have money for that, you surely have money for something else" is a joke. No, one does not.
Example: I saved up money for a full-frame pro 35mm camera. I spend the money, and got the camera, but I only had some old, compatible lenses.
Dumbass comment from someone: "Hey, if you have money for such a good camera, you surely have money to buy a decent lens, too."
Sounds familiar? No, I didn't have the money, that had to wait until I had more money saved to buy a decent lens. It's a process of building infrastructure, focusing on what's the weak link at the moment. When it comes to my photography, e.g. Photoshop is not the weak link, some equipment upgrades do more for my picture quality than getting the latest version of Photoshop. So Adobe's subscription model is stealing money away from other more useful investments, and that's exactly their intent. They know that money can only be spent once, and that's why they want to get their paws on the money as soon as possible and as often as possible, lest you get the idea to spend it elsewhere.
Because if I have to spend $600 on the latest CS update, then I ask myself: better a new flashlight, an extra prime lens, a lighter photobag, or some extra bells and whistles in a software package that used for preferably minor postprocessing of images?
With a subscription model, that choice does not exist, the money is gone, all the time, every month. The piggy bank remains empty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mainyehc
Now, I feel betrayed
They haven't stopped selling CS 6. If you prefer the standalone license, they offer that as an option. Also, you have a working copy of CS 5 so you aren't paying anything at all and have made a lot of money from it already.
The issue is, that we all know this isn't going to last, because Adobe's code, particularly installer and DRM, is so fragile that it will break likely with one of the coming major OS updates. That is, of course, unless you go and download a pirated version, which sadly is often more robust. There were cases in the past when I had to resort to installing a cracked version even though I had the licensed box sitting in the shelf, because the original wouldn't install properly anymore.
Also, you have to consider how it would feel the other way round. Adobe employs a lot of people so imagine you are in that situation. You then read about someone buying your software say 3 years ago but recently made thousands from using it. You were instrumental in developing the eco-system that allows that transaction to take place but you haven't made any money from it.
Understandably, people don't like the idea of Adobe effectively taking a commission from their work but at the same time, would those people be happy for someone to reuse one of their designs without commission? We've been accustomed for years to think about software as products and it has caused a lot of frustration making the transition. One of the most apparent examples is buying a game from Amazon, getting the disc and finding that it gets tied to a Steam or Origin account. You bought a product but you really only get a license to use it. If Steam or Origin ceases to be, you lose the ability to use the games.
Software is a tool, not a design. Do you expect musicians to pay a running royalty to the instrument makers? Carpenters a running royalty to whomever made their hammers and saws? Do you pay a royalty each time you sit down on your sofa or chair to the company or carpenter that made it? Gosh, how horrible it must feel for the carpenter's family who made some of the heirloom furniture that generations of members of my family have been sitting on these chairs and they only got paid once the purchase price while we continue to have utility from these chairs. How unfair, how unfair!
No, Adobe has zero rights and deserves not a penny I make off my works. They provide a tool, and that should be for sale just like any other tool. If they do new work, i.e. create an improved version of that tool, that's the point when I can decide if the improvements are worth it to me or not.
Just like a carpenter doesn't need the latest and greatest hammer that's always shiny and can drive in nails with a rusty, banged up hammer, so there's no need to always have the latest software tools.
This drug-like addiction that people have brainwashed into, that they think they always need the latest release, even though often the new releases destroy functionality that was rather good. Remember the versioning document repository that older versions of CS came with? Thankfully I was a bit too lazy to set it up just for myself alone, but I'd been screwed with the next updates, because Adobe dropped it from the suites. There are other examples e.g. stock photo browsing, etc. that came and went. So newer isn't always better. With a subscription service and cloud based infrastructure you're at their mercy and have to follow whatever brain-fart of the month they have trying to make their product "hip".
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
Example: I saved up money for a full-frame pro 35mm camera. I spend the money, and got the camera, but I only had some old, compatible lenses.
Dumbass comment from someone: "Hey, if you have money for such a good camera, you surely have money to buy a decent lens, too."
More likely the comment would be that if you needed the decent lenses at that point in time, you should have budgeted for a cheaper camera but if your camera costs $2000 and the lens costs $200 then why wouldn't it be a valid thing to say that if you could acquire $2000, why is the extra $200 so difficult? The problem isn't acquiring money, it's managing money. If you want to budget for software in advance then you can budget for it - save up $600 at the start of the year and keep that for software.
The issue is, that we all know this isn't going to last, because Adobe's code, particularly installer and DRM, is so fragile that it will break likely with one of the coming major OS updates. That is, of course, unless you go and download a pirated version, which sadly is often more robust. There were cases in the past when I had to resort to installing a cracked version even though I had the licensed box sitting in the shelf, because the original wouldn't install properly anymore.
Do you mean an older version you bought wasn't installing properly and you got a newer cracked version or was the cracked one the same version? If it was the same version, did you contact Adobe to see if they knew about the issue?
Do you expect musicians to pay a running royalty to the instrument makers? Carpenters a running royalty to whomever made their hammers and saws? Do you pay a royalty each time you sit down on your sofa or chair to the company or carpenter that made it?
I was waiting for the sofa argument. The difference there is that physical items wear out by design. They used to make things to last but don't any more. The reason is to create a sustainable business. Digital content doesn't wear out so you could use one version of the CS Suite for the rest of your life without paying any more, even beyond generations. That's not a good business model for Adobe or any company. Car manufacturers/garages need cars to break down, computer manufacturers need them to break or become too slow, software developers need customers to keep upgrading. They can't always offer new features just like TV networks can't always have compelling content to watch but they need to stay in business so that they have the ability to create something compelling. Software is going to plateau and everyone is making moves into services.
Apple forces people to upgrade all the time by bundling new systems with hardware and removing compatibility with older hardware and when that happens, people blame Adobe when their software isn't compatible with it. They're all running through the same process, whether they are carpenters, sofa manufacturers or any kind of product sellers - they all need sustainable revenue.
No, Adobe has zero rights and deserves not a penny I make off my works. They provide a tool, and that should be for sale just like any other tool.
They are on sale like other software tools. Accountancy software is sold as a subscription. With some types of software there's not a well-defined line between a service and a product. If a company has to keep providing updates, they are offering a service.
A video game that lasts 10 hours can easily be a product because you won't keep using it. If it has a multiplayer component, you might - that's why Call of Duty Elite is a subscription service. Adobe will be updating their software constantly so their choice is either keep dropping support for old products and let users deal with the frustration of an OS update breaking their software, forcing them into an expensive upgrade when they don't expect it or treat the software as a service where everyone is up to date. It's not really a new concept:
Money doesn't grow on trees. Food, shelter, hygiene, healthcare are in a different category than a software tool.
Even if the software is the means by which you pay for all of that?
Yes, even then, because you can't eat and shower after you're done doing the work you do with the software you spend your food and living money on; you'll be dead by then, or at least so unpresentable that your potential clients will run away.
You really think you'll get business showing up starved and unkempt smelling like a homeless person at a client meeting?
Remember, there's a reason why we have a welfare system, because people really can go broke.
I know first hand examples of highly successful creative artists from advertising who through a variety of circumstances were in a situation where they didn't even have the money to buy the meds they needed, and tried to make money with creative work, within the limits of what their situation still allowed them to do, and they would certainly NOT have had the money to spend on some silly Adobe subscription. They were using Adobe Software that was a few years old, but it still worked, and didn't cost extra money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Example: I saved up money for a full-frame pro 35mm camera. I spend the money, and got the camera, but I only had some old, compatible lenses.
Dumbass comment from someone: "Hey, if you have money for such a good camera, you surely have money to buy a decent lens, too."
More likely the comment would be that if you needed the decent lenses at that point in time, you should have budgeted for a cheaper camera but if your camera costs $2000 and the lens costs $200 then why wouldn't it be a valid thing to say that if you could acquire $2000, why is the extra $200 so difficult? The problem isn't acquiring money, it's managing money. If you want to budget for software in advance then you can budget for it - save up $600 at the start of the year and keep that for software.
No, there is no such thing as a "cheaper" full-frame 35mm camera. It costs, what it costs, you can use internet search to find a good discounter to get a decent price (which I did). $2000 simply aren't $2200. No, there isn't a magic $200 somewhere, just because there is $2000. Because otherwise, if I were to spend $2000 on a camera and the magic $200 for a lens (never mind that a decent lens is more like another $2000, because a crappy $200 lens I already had) would materialis and also be spent, one could continue this line of reasoning and say: "If you could spend $2200 for lens and camera, you surely can spend another $200 for a flashlight. You just need to budget better, blah, blah, blah..." and ad infinitum. So that means: if I can spend $2000, I can spend infinite amounts of money. Crock....
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The issue is, that we all know this isn't going to last, because Adobe's code, particularly installer and DRM, is so fragile that it will break likely with one of the coming major OS updates. That is, of course, unless you go and download a pirated version, which sadly is often more robust. There were cases in the past when I had to resort to installing a cracked version even though I had the licensed box sitting in the shelf, because the original wouldn't install properly anymore.
Do you mean an older version you bought wasn't installing properly and you got a newer cracked version or was the cracked one the same version? If it was the same version, did you contact Adobe to see if they knew about the issue?
Same version. Adobe's tech support is useless. They have not resolved a single thing, the best you get is "we know it's an issue, get a newer version of the software..." or "this is no longer supported" or "we don't support installation on a case-sensitive file system" or ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Do you expect musicians to pay a running royalty to the instrument makers? Carpenters a running royalty to whomever made their hammers and saws? Do you pay a royalty each time you sit down on your sofa or chair to the company or carpenter that made it?
I was waiting for the sofa argument. The difference there is that physical items wear out by design. They used to make things to last but don't any more. The reason is to create a sustainable business. Digital content doesn't wear out so you could use one version of the CS Suite for the rest of your life without paying any more, even beyond generations. That's not a good business model for Adobe or any company. Car manufacturers/garages need cars to break down, computer manufacturers need them to break or become too slow, software developers need customers to keep upgrading. They can't always offer new features just like TV networks can't always have compelling content to watch but they need to stay in business so that they have the ability to create something compelling. Software is going to plateau and everyone is making moves into services.
Digital content doesn't get worn out, so what? My sofa doesn't get worn out either, at least not in my life time, and anyone who abuses it in a way that would wear it out would get my fist somewhere where he gets worn out.
Digital content however gets outinnovated. CPU architectures change, GPUs advance, high-res displays show up, HDR photography becomes viable, etc.
As long as there's actual value added, enough people will upgrade. If that changes, it's time for additional products or for downscaling the company.
For something to be a viable business, it doesn't have to be a billion dollar company. The proper size varies over time.
It's when business are used to be a certain size and feel entitled to be that size that trouble starts, because then the time has passed for them to be that size, the only way they can remain that size without new products or real, value generating innovation, is by price gouging or taking those customers hostage that rely on their products.
Everyone talks about downsizing government, the same should be done with many a company.
Apple forces people to upgrade all the time by bundling new systems with hardware and removing compatibility with older hardware and when that happens, people blame Adobe when their software isn't compatible with it. They're all running through the same process, whether they are carpenters, sofa manufacturers or any kind of product sellers - they all need sustainable revenue.
No Adobe doesn't get blamed when CS3 doesn't have retina display support. Adobe however does get blamed when Apple a decade ago says Carbon is a legacy technology to facilitate a transition to OS X, and a decade later Adobe still makes a fuss when Apple decides not to provide a 64-bit version of Carbon.
Adobe also gets blamed when OS X with a Unix base supports for many good reasons case-sensitive file systems, but Adobe's coding practices are so horrible that their software breaks or can't be installed on a case-sensitive file system. Or when their coding practices are so bad that their code breaks all over the place when the CPU architecture changes, which is all the more surprising given that most of their code is cross-platform and the windows versions are already running on that CPU, etc.
Adobe has been a nightmare to deal with for a long, long time. But just like M$ Office, in their respective market, they have a quasi monopoly, and it's very hard to get by in that market and deal with clients, print shops, etc. without using their software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
No, Adobe has zero rights and deserves not a penny I make off my works. They provide a tool, and that should be for sale just like any other tool.
They are on sale like other software tools. Accountancy software is sold as a subscription. With some types of software there's not a well-defined line between a service and a product. If a company has to keep providing updates, they are offering a service.
A video game that lasts 10 hours can easily be a product because you won't keep using it. If it has a multiplayer component, you might - that's why Call of Duty Elite is a subscription service. Adobe will be updating their software constantly so their choice is either keep dropping support for old products and let users deal with the frustration of an OS update breaking their software, forcing them into an expensive upgrade when they don't expect it or treat the software as a service where everyone is up to date. It's not really a new concept:
You really think you'll get business showing up starved and unkempt smelling like a homeless person at a client meeting?
Creatives have gotten away with that for years. I don't see how $50/month is the difference between being well-off and starved, smelly and unkempt. It's $1.67 a day. That's less than a Happy Meal. Skip the Happy Meal and pocket the change.
I know first hand examples of highly successful creative artists from advertising who through a variety of circumstances were in a situation where they didn't even have the money to buy the meds they needed, and tried to make money with creative work, within the limits of what their situation still allowed them to do, and they would certainly NOT have had the money to spend on some silly Adobe subscription. They were using Adobe Software that was a few years old, but it still worked, and didn't cost extra money.
What about the scenario where someone works for a company and loses their job but don't have a license themselves. They are hard up for money. The legal options are: $2000 for the CS Suite or $50/month for the Cloud apps, which is better?
"If you could spend $2200 for lens and camera, you surely can spend another $200 for a flashlight. You just need to budget better, blah, blah, blah..." and ad infinitum. So that means: if I can spend $2000, I can spend infinite amounts of money. Crock....
It doesn't go from $2000 to infinite. If you reach infinite, you've acquired 90% of infinite somehow. You keep weighing up $50/month against everything else that's important, which could easily total $1000/month. Being forced to pay the $50 doesn't mean you can't pay the $1000. There has to be some restructuring that allows you to get $50 out of that $1000 you manage to somehow acquire until you get back on your feet.
As long as there's actual value added, enough people will upgrade. If that changes, it's time for additional products or for downscaling the company.
Everyone talks about downsizing government, the same should be done with many a company.
If you were running the company, would you want someone doing that to you? In your own business, I assume you try to make as much money as you can while keeping clients happy. That's what Adobe's doing. The people who are subscribing seem to be happy. Companies tend not to voluntarily downsize because they run out of ideas.
The issue with the Creative Cloud so far is the opposite. Things change quickly and they want to update things more quickly than purposely hold back features for a year for a major release. Small algorithms like the sharpen or content-aware features shouldn't have to be held back when they can improve workflows. If Apple moves to AMD GPUs, people will want more OpenCL code and less CUDA but they'd likely have to wait another year for it under the perpetual license model.
The idea is 'Apple added this feature and it broke something I paid Adobe for years ago, Adobe should fix it'.
I'm not against the idea of paying up the subscription and at some point being able to stop paying and forego the updates or at least put it on hold for periods of time but I don't see that being practical to implement.
You really think you'll get business showing up starved and unkempt smelling like a homeless person at a client meeting?
Creatives have gotten away with that for years. I don't see how $50/month is the difference between being well-off and starved, smelly and unkempt. It's $1.67 a day. That's less than a Happy Meal. Skip the Happy Meal and pocket the change.
You demonstrate that you live in world of ridiculous plenty. Some people have but a value meal per day. There's nothing to skip.
Not everyone is a 200+ pound hunk of lard who easily can skip half the meals that he chooses to overindulge in.
No amount of money, regardless how small, is magically appearing out of thin air. The fixed costs are fixed costs, they got to be paid, only what's left over is freely disposable income. If the fixed costs add up to more than you make, you have a problem, and it doesn't matter by how much you're off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I know first hand examples of highly successful creative artists from advertising who through a variety of circumstances were in a situation where they didn't even have the money to buy the meds they needed, and tried to make money with creative work, within the limits of what their situation still allowed them to do, and they would certainly NOT have had the money to spend on some silly Adobe subscription. They were using Adobe Software that was a few years old, but it still worked, and didn't cost extra money.
What about the scenario where someone works for a company and loses their job but don't have a license themselves. They are hard up for money. The legal options are: $2000 for the CS Suite or $50/month for the Cloud apps, which is better?
You're the one who's trying to turn this into an either-or situation. I don't complain about Adobe offering a subscription, I complain about the subscription being the only offer. Nothing stops Adobe from offering the user a choice between subscription and purchase. It's the LACK OF CHOICE that's the issue, not the existence of a subscription plan.
The other issue is the product bundling: the cloud services should be a separate product. Regardless if I want to subscribe or buy the software, I may or may not be interested in the cloud services. By being forced to buy them, because it's all bundled into one, I'm forced to subsidize some people's use of cloud services (at the detriment of potential competition), even though I am not interested in using the cloud services myself.
Further, by the all-to-tight integration with cloud services, I have to constantly be concerned about my privacy. I want software where I can completely turn off and disable any sort of cloud functionality. Just because I'm creating some print layouts and edit some of my photos doesn't mean I want my personal information by siphoned off by Adobe and who-knows-whom-else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
"If you could spend $2200 for lens and camera, you surely can spend another $200 for a flashlight. You just need to budget better, blah, blah, blah..." and ad infinitum. So that means: if I can spend $2000, I can spend infinite amounts of money. Crock....
It doesn't go from $2000 to infinite. If you reach infinite, you've acquired 90% of infinite somehow. You keep weighing up $50/month against everything else that's important, which could easily total $1000/month. Being forced to pay the $50 doesn't mean you can't pay the $1000. There has to be some restructuring that allows you to get $50 out of that $1000 you manage to somehow acquire until you get back on your feet.
Again, it's not about only Adobe. Next comes M$, then all the Rest. I have probably a few hundred apps installed on my system. Many are not current, but they do the job. If they all start going to subscription, and even just charge $1/month, then I'm out several hundred bucks a month. And some would likely require charges similar to Adobe, and not just $1/month. That model is not sustainable, certainly not, if it's not an option where people can choose between subscription and purchase.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
As long as there's actual value added, enough people will upgrade. If that changes, it's time for additional products or for downscaling the company.
Everyone talks about downsizing government, the same should be done with many a company.
If you were running the company, would you want someone doing that to you? In your own business, I assume you try to make as much money as you can while keeping clients happy. That's what Adobe's doing. The people who are subscribing seem to be happy. Companies tend not to voluntarily downsize because they run out of ideas.
If they don't voluntarily downsize, then I guess they would have to need to be forced to do so. And yes, I do downsize. If I as a contractor can't drum up enough new business, I can't go to my old clients and extract a revenue stream from them because I fail to acquire new clients.
If Adobe can't innovate enough to keep up their business, that's their failure. Why should the users pay for their failure?
The issue with the Creative Cloud so far is the opposite. Things change quickly and they want to update things more quickly than purposely hold back features for a year for a major release. Small algorithms like the sharpen or content-aware features shouldn't have to be held back when they can improve workflows. If Apple moves to AMD GPUs, people will want more OpenCL code and less CUDA but they'd likely have to wait another year for it under the perpetual license model.
Nothing stops them to roll out features. Apple keeps adding features to OS X in minor releases as the release cycle goes by.
Major changes in GUI, workflow, etc. will have to wait for major updates, but things like adding a plug-ins, etc. can be done at any time.
Adobe has done minor bug-fix updates before, there's nothing stopping them to be a bit more generous in what they include in a particular release cycle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
No Adobe doesn't get blamed when CS3 doesn't have retina display support.
They do get blamed when they don't have Retina support, even though it was Apple that added the feature:
The idea is 'Apple added this feature and it broke something I paid Adobe for years ago, Adobe should fix it'.
*IF* the feature Apple added *breaks* Adobe's software, then they should be blamed. Because using Apple's APIs properly won't cause breakage. Non-retina aware apps, using Apple's APIs correctly, will not break running on a retina display enabled Mac.
On the other hand, simply not having the extra support for retina displays doesn't break anything, and that one shouldn't blame Apple or Adobe for, it's simply the price of technical progress.
I'm not against the idea of paying up the subscription and at some point being able to stop paying and forego the updates or at least put it on hold for periods of time but I don't see that being practical to implement.
The DRM technologies would make that rather easy. If Apple can manage rentals, purchases, etc. that's not a problem. Consider it a buy in installments plus a running support contract.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
I don't complain about Adobe offering a subscription, I complain about the subscription being the only offer.
It's not the only offer just now. Your complaints are over scenarios you've made up like Adobe stealing your personal data, raising prices, being forced to adopt the Cloud apps for lack of competition, discontinuing CS 6, being put out of business for lack of $50, not being able to access files when you stop paying. Adobe has commented on the latter point here:
You can see in the comments, people have signed up government petitions to force Adobe to stop doing what they are doing. Are people going to do the same with Facebook? People spend hours updating their Facebook pages with content but if they go under, you're not getting that back. That's worse than Adobe's model but nobody complains about it.
The other issue is the product bundling: the cloud services should be a separate product. Regardless if I want to subscribe or buy the software, I may or may not be interested in the cloud services. By being forced to buy them, because it's all bundled into one, I'm forced to subsidize some people's use of cloud services (at the detriment of potential competition), even though I am not interested in using the cloud services myself.
Like with iCloud you mean? Buying other products and services from Apple subsidizes that. Whether you use iCloud or not, Apple bundles the service to the detriment of potential competition like DropBox.
Further, by the all-to-tight integration with cloud services, I have to constantly be concerned about my privacy. I want software where I can completely turn off and disable any sort of cloud functionality. Just because I'm creating some print layouts and edit some of my photos doesn't mean I want my personal information by siphoned off by Adobe and who-knows-whom-else.
I have probably a few hundred apps installed on my system. If they all start going to subscription, and even just charge $1/month, then I'm out several hundred bucks a month.
If you have a few hundred apps and they all cost $50 at least, you'd have spent $30,000 on software. You'd never realistically be paying several hundred a month. Some software doesn't change much at all - an FTP app for example has little reason to be subscription-based.
If they don't voluntarily downsize, then I guess they would have to be forced to do so.
So you mean the government should step in and fire people when they determine there's not enough innovation? Facebook hasn't done much over the past few years but they generate billions so should the government start whittling that organisation down to just Zuckerberg?
I can't go to my old clients and extract a revenue stream from them because I fail to acquire new clients.
You can however change your business model and offer subscription services. If customers like it more than you expect, you would be free to promote subscription services as your primary business model. If customers don't adopt it, you can make changes.
If Adobe can't innovate enough to keep up their business, that's their failure. Why should the users pay for their failure?
Why should Adobe pay for the failure of their customers to generate revenue? You keep making the suggestion that users are being forced to pay and it all hinges around the notion that Adobe is a monopoly. Every one of their apps has competition, you aren't forced to use Adobe's apps at all.
Adobe has done minor bug-fix updates before, there's nothing stopping them to be a bit more generous in what they include in a particular release cycle.
If a customer said that to you and suggested you added a bit extra to be generous because they were struggling, what would you say? If they then said you should be more generous to all your clients, what would you say? Probably that it's none of their business how you run your business.
The DRM technologies would make that rather easy. If Apple can manage rentals, purchases, etc. that's not a problem. Consider it a buy in installments plus a running support contract.
Let's say they implemented that and after 3 years allowed you to stop updating so blocked access to cloud features, no updates and blocked the second license. If you stopped paying for the next 3 years, why would you be entitled to jump into the latest update when other customers have been paying during those 3 years? They couldn't force you to pay an upgrade fee because you'd just create another ID.
Perhaps what they should do is have a system where the longer someone is subscribed, the lower the fee becomes e.g after 3 years, the fee drops from $50/m to $30/m. Then if you choose to stop paying for long enough (e.g more than 6 months in a 2 year period), you lose that discount. The general idea is the same for all software content - make it more worthwhile to pay for than to steal. That's where cloud services are so important and the same goes for DLCs in games. You can't easily steal access to cloud services like you can with software products.
I feel personally insulted with your comment! Adobe didn't make it harder for me to pirate their software; it's quite the opposite, really, as it's the legal route which is now much, much harder to take for many people.
I come from a poor, ECB/EC/IMF interventioned country from southern Europe (Portugal, you may have heard of it on the news), and, as such, I have been unemployed for 18 consecutive months, and not for lack of trying to find a job; most job offers for designers around here are either unpaid internships (a popular euphemism for modern slavery), precarious contracts (borderline slavery) and even outright fake ones (market research in disguise done by employers so they can lower wages further)…
At last, I got a nice and big freelance commission (€2.350 for the entire communication of a cultural festival in the third biggest city in this country, so, no, I'm not some random inexperienced kid straight out of college, but I do know that price is ridiculously low – there's not much I can do about it, though, as that's how everything goes now with the ruling austerocracy) that will keep me afloat for a while. Through all of this, instead of pirating Adobe software, I've been using a legal education version of CS5 Design Standard (which I bought when, duh, I was both studying and working in education as a public servant and had a fixed income) for my pro-bono stuff for friends and start-ups (yes, around here entrepeneurs can barely get financing from banks to lift their companies from the ground, let alone to pay upfront for design work… a complete disgrace!), as well as for keeping my portfolio updated.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
Now, I feel betrayed, as my whole investment in self-training (my faculty was never very decent when it came to software classes, but it more than made up for it with other subjects like art/design theory and history, aesthetics, etc.) and in the aforementioned software licence will be laid to waste when I inevitably have to switch to a different software package. That's the *real* reason why I'm pissed. Though I've considered the option of pirating it, yes, at least while a credible and cheaper alternative doesn't show up. It's either that, starving, or waiting tables/washing restrooms/working in a call-center, menial tasks which I'm over-qualified for and personally refuse to do if I can avoid them by all means necessary (this is ethics 101, basically, and I may sound as an elitist prick myself, but I don't care; sue me then). Also, as a former trainee in FreeHand, which was (and still remains!) leagues ahead of Illustrator in terms of usability, I will never forget about Adobe's sleazy monopolistic schemes… They are now much, much worse of a company than, dare I say it, Microsoft in the 1990s.
Oh, by the way, I'm pretty damn sure of my career choices, and you have no right to make that kind of assumptions about other people's lives, financial outcome and professional talent. /rant
It's ironic that you're obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances.
Spend more time figuring out how to make more money with your language skills as well as CC tools.
Adobe's tools--especially the new CC ones--will help you very much with that.
While this may not change anything, it will at least prevent that they can pretend they didn't know it was unpopular with many of their users, and if their move hopefully eventually backfires, there's evidence for corporate heads to roll at the following board and shareholder meetings.
It's ironic that you're obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances.
Spend more time figuring out how to make more money with your language skills as well as CC tools.
Adobe's tools--especially the new CC ones--will help you very much with that.
Some people here act and write like spoilt brats. If there's no business, you can't compete for it.
What are going to say to Syrian refugees?
"It's ironic that you are obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances. Spend more time figuring out how to make political changes instead of running away like a coward."
Maybe you have a look at something like this: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/spain-is-beyond-doomed-the-2-scariest-unemployment-charts-ever/275324/ before you act like a brat. I guess in your assessment the people in Spain are simply all lazy whiners, who if they only got off their duff would be driving around in Porsches and eat caviar for breakfast, and instead of wiping their butts with money would instead spend it on a subscription for Adobe's Creative Cloud software.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
I don't complain about Adobe offering a subscription, I complain about the subscription being the only offer.
It's not the only offer just now. Your complaints are over scenarios you've made up like Adobe stealing your personal data, raising prices, being forced to adopt the Cloud apps for lack of competition, discontinuing CS 6, being put out of business for lack of $50, not being able to access files when you stop paying. Adobe has commented on the latter point here:
What Adobe "mulls" is irrelevant. Also long-term access is not what anyone needs: infinite editability. Whoopee if they allow me to view or print my old stuff. They can probably build that capability into Acrobat Reader and distribute that for free. Doesn't solve the problem, though.
As for the scenarios: If once complains when the scenarios are real, it's too late. One has to recognize the potential behind what's going on to grasp the long term consequences.
Your argument is like saying: "Don't complain climate change, these are all scenarios you made up but haven't happened yet." Sorry, when they happen, it's too late.
You can see in the comments, people have signed up government petitions to force Adobe to stop doing what they are doing. Are people going to do the same with Facebook? People spend hours updating their Facebook pages with content but if they go under, you're not getting that back. That's worse than Adobe's model but nobody complains about it.
Facebook is no productivity tool. Smart people stay away from Facebook as far as they can, because they value their privacy. If voluntarily hand over your valuable data to some cloud outfit, you get what you deserve. None of these companies would admit that they are in serious financial trouble, because that woud accelerate their demise, and if people tried to save their data, the massive spike in network activity cost them even more money and could bring the systems down. So instead you'd wake up one morning: "Many thanks to our long time customers, unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control we had to close shop...."
How ridiculous relying on cloud services is, was shown by Apple: You build an infrastructure build on things like keychain sync, (smart)-Mailbox sync, web hosting, photo galleries, and then whoops, it's all gone and instead you have some gimmicky iCloud crap, like PhotoStreams that's an inferior Facebook/Instagram wannabe service with no control over sequence of images, inferior presentation (compared to the Galleries), etc.
"the cloud" gets two thumbs down from me, except for encrypted off-site data backup to complement on-site backup.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The other issue is the product bundling: the cloud services should be a separate product. Regardless if I want to subscribe or buy the software, I may or may not be interested in the cloud services. By being forced to buy them, because it's all bundled into one, I'm forced to subsidize some people's use of cloud services (at the detriment of potential competition), even though I am not interested in using the cloud services myself.
Like with iCloud you mean? Buying other products and services from Apple subsidizes that. Whether you use iCloud or not, Apple bundles the service to the detriment of potential competition like DropBox.
I don't think I have said I was a fan of Apple's iCloud. However, except for some ridiculously small online storage, which barely competes with the offerings from AIM, Google, DropBox, etc. anything of value costs extra, e.g. iTunes Match, added storage (to a level where the online storage could actually be used for something useful, etc.) What Apple gives away is simply a teaser to get people hooked so they pay for more.
However neither their devices nor their other software is non-functional if you decide to not subscribe or turn off iCloud entirely.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Further, by the all-to-tight integration with cloud services, I have to constantly be concerned about my privacy. I want software where I can completely turn off and disable any sort of cloud functionality. Just because I'm creating some print layouts and edit some of my photos doesn't mean I want my personal information by siphoned off by Adobe and who-knows-whom-else.
What personal information would they be taking?
Ask them. They don't say. But they do say that they collect user information. And as we should know by now, information doesn't have to be directly identifiable (like name and address) to allow by means of statistical methods to identify a user. That's why the spooks care less and less about whether communication is encrypted or not, as long as they can figure who is sending whom messages so they can derive the information network.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
I have probably a few hundred apps installed on my system. If they all start going to subscription, and even just charge $1/month, then I'm out several hundred bucks a month.
If you have a few hundred apps and they all cost $50 at least, you'd have spent $30,000 on software. You'd never realistically be paying several hundred a month. Some software doesn't change much at all - an FTP app for example has little reason to be subscription-based.
If I consider the limited changes in Adobe software over the years since I first bought the original Adobe CS bundle, I'm rather underwhelmed.
Were it not for a variety of forced upgrades (PPC-intel, 32-64-bit, broken installers, etc.), which is why I could skip one or two releases in the upgrade cycle without shedding any tears.
An FTP app has the even more reason to be subscription based: because it changes so little it doesn't create a revenue stream through upgrades.
You should apply your reasoning equally. It was you who suggested that Adobe has to keep their business big and alive regardless if they deserve to be big and alive based on their level of innovation. The FTP app may exactly have that zero innovation level, so in order not to go out of business they would switch to subscriptions for the same reasons as Adobe: generating an indefinite duration revenue stream for a slow-evolving product with few compelling upgrade reasons.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
If they don't voluntarily downsize, then I guess they would have to be forced to do so.
So you mean the government should step in and fire people when they determine there's not enough innovation? Facebook hasn't done much over the past few years but they generate billions so should the government start whittling that organisation down to just Zuckerberg?
No, but the government should step in an prevent abuses of defacto monopolies, and should create laws that prevent that a combination of copyright laws can be used to take users' data hostage and essentially blackmail people into revenue stream generating schemes.
If corporations can't do that, they can't extort a revenue stream without actual user-relevant value added, and that means they are forced to right-size depending on market demand for their product.
A forced subscription scheme aims at disabling market forces, just as non-standard printer cartridges, patented razor-blades, non-standard lightbulbs, etc. do. These are all schemes to artificially disable competing forces that would lower prices if they had to compete on price and quality with standardized products.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
I can't go to my old clients and extract a revenue stream from them because I fail to acquire new clients.
You can however change your business model and offer subscription services. If customers like it more than you expect, you would be free to promote subscription services as your primary business model. If customers don't adopt it, you can make changes.
I'm sure customers will adopt it, if I put a gun to their head. That's what adobe is doing now: change your profession, or pony up....
...not exactly much of a choice here, is there? And don't get me the CS6 "option". That's a smoke and mirrors option: if they say they won't upgrade it anymore, it's not an option, it's a dead-end.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
If Adobe can't innovate enough to keep up their business, that's their failure. Why should the users pay for their failure?
Why should Adobe pay for the failure of their customers to generate revenue? You keep making the suggestion that users are being forced to pay and it all hinges around the notion that Adobe is a monopoly. Every one of their apps has competition, you aren't forced to use Adobe's apps at all.
Why should I have to make money? If I buy a tool, it's up to me what I use it for. That's why I pay a purchase price.
What Adobe does is make their products a non-option unless they are used in a similar revenue generating stream where essentially Adobe gets a fraction of the generated income stream. That may work for a busy agency with reasonably steady workloads.
Not a good model for artists, freelancers, non-profits, enthusiasts, advanced amateur photographers, etc.
You can't just turn things on its head. Adobe did work ONCE to create a particular version of the software, for that they deserve to be compensated ONCE, not indefinitely. They aren't providing a service, even if they rebrand it as such. If someone offers a shoe shine service, they'll buff my shoes every day, for that they get paid every day. For someone dropping off a shoe cleaning kit once they get paid once, not every day.
Creative Suite is a shoe cleaning kit, not a service that cleans my shoes daily.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Nothing stops them to roll out features. Apple keeps adding features to OS X in minor releases as the release cycle goes by.
Because Apple primarily makes money from hardware. Adobe makes money from software.
Oh, yeah, and what about everyone else in the software business who does the same? Ever noticed how the AppStore works? Or any of the other software vendors whose often massive maintenance releases I download daily using automated tools such as the Sparkle framework or MacUpdate Desktop.
There's essentially hardly a day going by without several updates either in the AppStore or through one of the other mechanisms.
The only hardware vendor among them being Apple.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Adobe has done minor bug-fix updates before, there's nothing stopping them to be a bit more generous in what they include in a particular release cycle.
If a customer said that to you and suggested you added a bit extra to be generous because they were struggling, what would you say? If they then said you should be more generous to all your clients, what would you say? Probably that it's none of their business how you run your business.
It's really not truly being more generous: because what's missing at the head (not that many more new features with the big upgrade), comes in through the tail end (more updates during the life of the product). The average total amount of changes over a particular time frame remains the same.
What gets lost is unfixed bugs that force you to buy a major upgrade because the vendor doesn't care about anything, as they clearly state:
[We Adobe] "DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS, AND TERMS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WHETHER BY STATUTE, COMMON LAW, CUSTOM, USAGE, OR OTHERWISE AS TO ANY MATTER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO PERFORMANCE, SECURITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS, INTEGRATION, MERCHANTABILITY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, AND FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
[...]
WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO CUSTOMER FOR ANY LOSS, DAMAGES, CLAIMS, OR COSTS WHATSOEVER INCLUDING ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, ANY LOST PROFITS OR LOST SAVINGS, ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY OR FAILURE TO MEET ANY DUTY OF CARE, OR CLAIMS BY A THIRD PARTY, EVEN IF AN ADOBE REPRESENTATIVE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH LOSS, DAMAGES, CLAIMS, OR COSTS. "
Yes, this is standard boilerplate legalese, but it's not devoid of content, and it shows both the distribution of power between "king customer" and "servant vendor", and how much vendor cares about the well being of its presumed king.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
The DRM technologies would make that rather easy. If Apple can manage rentals, purchases, etc. that's not a problem. Consider it a buy in installments plus a running support contract.
Let's say they implemented that and after 3 years allowed you to stop updating so blocked access to cloud features, no updates and blocked the second license. If you stopped paying for the next 3 years, why would you be entitled to jump into the latest update when other customers have been paying during those 3 years? They couldn't force you to pay an upgrade fee because you'd just create another ID.
The user in question also didn't take advantage of technical support and feature upgrades during these three years. Remember, you pay for a SERVICE. If Adobe is actually providing a service and not scamming users, then you obviously can't take advantage of these services while you're not subscribed.
If one thinks of it as purchasing in installments, then any subscription plan has a buy-in and a maintenance component. e.g. if you own CS6, there's no buy-in, you're already current, so you pay maintenance only. If you stop paying maintenance, you're frozen at that version. If later you reactivate, you'll have to pay the regular maintenance fee, plus you have to pay-off the upgrade to e.g. CS8 through a buy-in in installments, once your installments are over, you fall back down to the maintenance-only fee.
If you were to create a new Adobe ID, you'd have to pay-off the entire product purchase through buy-in installments, until you're current, at which point you drop to maintenance only rates.
It's not like someone has to sit there with pencil and paper to figure that out, computers handle much more complicated algorithms than something like that.
Perhaps what they should do is have a system where the longer someone is subscribed, the lower the fee becomes e.g after 3 years, the fee drops from $50/m to $30/m. Then if you choose to stop paying for long enough (e.g more than 6 months in a 2 year period), you lose that discount. The general idea is the same for all software content - make it more worthwhile to pay for than to steal. That's where cloud services are so important and the same goes for DLCs in games. You can't easily steal access to cloud services like you can with software products.
Sort of, except you'd not lose the use of the software if you stop paying, you just lose the use of the cloud services, support and future product updates.
Again, the issue isn't that subscription services are bad, what's bad is if they are the only choice.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
if [the lazy whiners] only got off their duff would be driving around in Porsches and eat caviar for breakfast, and instead of wiping their butts with money would instead spend it on a subscription for Adobe's Creative Cloud software.
You are suggesting that the $700-2000 perpetual license is for poor people? Adobe is expensive no matter which route you choose. The cloud option makes it accessible to people on fixed incomes, the perpetual license is cheaper for people who don't upgrade. If anything, I'd say the perpetual license is for well-off people who can budget something like a $2k expense on a software suite - it's poor people who pay things in instalments.
The FTP app may exactly have that zero innovation level, so in order not to go out of business they would switch to subscriptions for the same reasons as Adobe: generating an indefinite duration revenue stream for a slow-evolving product with few compelling upgrade reasons.
They would be free to do that, software sometimes has a single payment license that lasts for a fixed period of time.
You're not buying a tool though, you're buying a license to use a tool. It is not legal for example to resell certain versions of the Creative Suite. The only product you own is a license key. The binary you get belongs to Adobe - that's one of the major differences between software and hardware that people don't want to accept when they get a physical disc. Once you buy a piece of hardware, you can pretty much do what you want with it. If you buy a sofa, rent it out if you like. You can't rent out the Adobe Suite.
If at any point in time Adobe goes bankrupt, your perpetual license won't activate. If you have no internet access, it won't activate. The only real difference with the cloud model is that it's a time-limited license and not perpetual. The perpetual license relies on other means to coerce users into an upgrade. They really should never have existed because it's a very bad business model.
Oh, yeah, and what about everyone else in the software business who does the same?
They wish they could do what Adobe is doing. Do you believe that someone making a $0.99 app wants to give you a lifetime of free updates? People need to be paid in exchange for work. Adobe is paving the way for the viability of long-term software provision. Microsoft wrote a blog recently about this - they wrote that they believe this model is the way forward for software but thought Adobe may have been premature in dropping the perpetual license as customers aren't all accustomed to this model.
you'd not lose the use of the software if you stop paying, you just lose the use of the cloud services, support and future product updates.
That model would have to use the one-off payment method and be separate from the subscription model but it could be that you are allowed to pay a large fee first, say $2000 and you get updates for 3 years and after that, it effectively freezes your version. If you want to update a while after that, you'd have to do the large payment again or start from scratch with the cloud license. It would be quite good to be able to freeze the monthly payments and leave the updates but that would let you make huge updates without the upgrade fees while continuing to use it for free when others were paying.
I think they should stick to the exclusive cloud model for now and let it play out. They won't do anything to drive customers away on purpose, quite the opposite. Right now, there is a vocal minority (as usual) resisting the change - the Creative Cloud has 10-15 pages of negative reviews vs 130+ pages of 4/5 or higher reviews. This kind of thing happened when Steam first came along and made it obvious that games that are bought are licenses for games and not owned products. Even to this day, people resist this concept with games sold online but it's fairly widely accepted now.
if [the lazy whiners] only got off their duff would be driving around in Porsches and eat caviar for breakfast, and instead of wiping their butts with money would instead spend it on a subscription for Adobe's Creative Cloud software.
You are suggesting that the $700-2000 perpetual license is for poor people? Adobe is expensive no matter which route you choose. The cloud option makes it accessible to people on fixed incomes, the perpetual license is cheaper for people who don't upgrade. If anything, I'd say the perpetual license is for well-off people who can budget something like a $2k expense on a software suite - it's poor people who pay things in instalments.
For one, there's a difference between paying something in installments (e.g. mortgage) and perpetual payments (e.g. rent).
One can slap $2000 on a credit card, and after X months one is done, and owns the stuff free and clear.
For two, one can buy an older license on the secondary market, and work with that until a project pays for an upgrade. The timing and the size of the payment is under the control of the user. There is no commitment at any point, except whatever may have been charged to some credit card.
Second, there is poor, and there is bad times. A really poor person probably doesn't even have to education to know how to use say Photoshop.
On the other hand, for many creative people life goes in feast and famine cycles, transitions photo to video to multimedia to web design, etc. You buy tools when you are flush, and you skip expenses when business is slow. That's not an option with a subscription.
Imagine you're doing brochures and flyers for investment banks pre-2008: you may have had to decline work, because there was too much of it. Then Lehman goes belly up, financial world is in chaos, and you may have so little work that you don't know how to avoid eviction in your expensive broom closet in NYC. Last thing you need is an extra monthly expense to weigh on your budget, but you need the tools to make the little money that still keeps you afloat.
I'm not the person to wish anyone anything bad, but if you're so cynical or so clueless that you can't understand that and have to defend Adobe to the teeth, even though they could perfectly have stuck with leaving the subscription plan as an option for those who like it, and purchase/upgrades for the others, then you really deserve to be in a bad spot for a while to learn some of life's important lessons: No, trying is important, but it's not enough. Sometimes every penny counts, and the last thing you want in those situations is recurring obligations. You dread every damn utility bill, you don't need any more bills.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
infinite editability
Which is achieved by storing in open formats and saving projects in a way that allows them to be rebuilt in other apps.
Yeah, because Adobe is forthcoming documenting their file formats and doesn't change them on a regular basis...
If I have to "rebuild" them in other apps, then I might as well build them in other apps.
That doesn't help if the entire workflow is built around their stuff, be that on the client side or the print shop side.
Been playing around with Acorn. Great software, for private use. Not cool if you have to integrate into someone else's workflow.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Ask them. They don't say. But they do say that they collect user information.
Sure. Does that make it any better? You think I like when Google steals my info and ignores the "do not track" settings of my browser?
Or any of the other data vacuums out there? These privacy policies are a joke, they should be called the "lack of privacy policy", because if they respected privacy, they would need no policy, cause they wouldn't keep data other than data that's encrypted and to which they don't have the keys.
But that's not in their interest.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
the government should step in an prevent abuses of defacto monopolies
Like I say, there are alternatives for all of their apps and their customer base is small. It doesn't really qualify as a monopoly.
There are no real alternatives, because there are no open, editable file formats, and more or less industry standard is that Adobe stuff. With the exception of InDesign where Xpress is a reasonably strong competitor, and some of the A/V stuff.
The size of the market doesn't matter to judge if something is a defacto monopoly or not. One holds a monopoly over a market, however big or small, not over the world. Governments tend to enforce anti-trust laws more on bigger markets because that has a bigger political PR effect. Unless people are in the design business they don't give a flying whatever about what happens to design software. If something happens with car tires, they may care. But from a legal perspective that makes no difference. It's just selective enforcement, not that size matters.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
If I buy a tool, it's up to me what I use it for
You're not buying a tool though, you're buying a license to use a tool. It is not legal for example to resell certain versions of the Creative Suite. The only product you own is a license key. The binary you get belongs to Adobe - that's one of the major differences between software and hardware that people don't want to accept when they get a physical disc. Once you buy a piece of hardware, you can pretty much do what you want with it. If you buy a sofa, rent it out if you like. You can't rent out the Adobe Suite.
If at any point in time Adobe goes bankrupt, your perpetual license won't activate. If you have no internet access, it won't activate. The only real difference with the cloud model is that it's a time-limited license and not perpetual. The perpetual license relies on other means to coerce users into an upgrade. They really should never have existed because it's a very bad business model.
No, what never should have existed is the idea of a software license. Software purchases should be just that: tool purchases, with full applicability of first sale doctrine, and all that goes with it, just like is the case with Books, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Oh, yeah, and what about everyone else in the software business who does the same?
They wish they could do what Adobe is doing. Do you believe that someone making a $0.99 app wants to give you a lifetime of free updates? People need to be paid in exchange for work. Adobe is paving the way for the viability of long-term software provision. Microsoft wrote a blog recently about this - they wrote that they believe this model is the way forward for software but thought Adobe may have been premature in dropping the perpetual license as customers aren't all accustomed to this model.
Of course M$ thinks that's the way forward. They are running out of ideas of what more features to stuff into their bloatware. So with no more new features and a maturing hardware market, how to extract increasing revenue streams from customers who are quite happy to use what they have? Force them to subscribe.
Everyone wants to get paid for doing nothing, some software companies just think they have discovered a way of doing it.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
you'd not lose the use of the software if you stop paying, you just lose the use of the cloud services, support and future product updates.
That model would have to use the one-off payment method and be separate from the subscription model but it could be that you are allowed to pay a large fee first, say $2000 and you get updates for 3 years and after that, it effectively freezes your version. If you want to update a while after that, you'd have to do the large payment again or start from scratch with the cloud license. It would be quite good to be able to freeze the monthly payments and leave the updates but that would let you make huge updates without the upgrade fees while continuing to use it for free when others were paying.
I think they should stick to the exclusive cloud model for now and let it play out. They won't do anything to drive customers away on purpose, quite the opposite. Right now, there is a vocal minority (as usual) resisting the change - the Creative Cloud has 10-15 pages of negative reviews vs 130+ pages of 4/5 or higher reviews. This kind of thing happened when Steam first came along and made it obvious that games that are bought are licenses for games and not owned products. Even to this day, people resist this concept with games sold online but it's fairly widely accepted now.
What should be, and what people are brainwashed into believing are two different things. Variable rate mortgages were also considered dangerous until the mortgage industry with the backing of Greenspan sold it as a "more efficient" tool to finance property. Millions started to accept that notion and have their asses foreclosed upon now. And I'll skip the various examples in politics where people "accepted" things that are provably plain wrong, like WMD in Iraq or Saddam being involved in 9/11 or.... and still a majority of people still believes these two fairytales.
The public can be made believe and be made to accept almost anything if proper PR, spin and marketing is employed. The ones who protest are always marginalized, ridiculed, called loons, etc. Nothing new.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
you may have so little work that you don't know how to avoid eviction in your expensive broom closet in NYC. Last thing you need is an extra monthly expense to weigh on your budget
Of course but the same applies to other subscriptions, which people might consider essential. In a scenario where someone has only a $700/m rent, $200/m utility bills, $200/m food bills, maybe the $50 is hard to come by but so would a $600 upgrade be if there was a bug that caused a project to keep crashing and they were outside of their support contract. I am aware that one is mandatory and the other a potential upgrade but at some level of income, software piracy is the only option no matter which payment model is preferred.
I agree with you that having perpetual license options are beneficial for buyers in some cases. However, I think Adobe has the right to sell the software how they choose. Demanding that they support alternative license models forces their software developers to do extra work that nobody has a right to force them to do.
Apple has a monopoly on iOS, you can't force them to sell you a phone without any profit like Google does under an ad-subsidized model in order that the payments fit better with your own income stream.
What would happen if Adobe decided to shut down and discontinue their entire software suite? What would you ask the government to do then? Licenses wouldn't work, projects would be stuck in certain formats no matter if you had a perpetual license or not.
No, what never should have existed is the idea of a software license. Software purchases should be just that: tool purchases, with full applicability of first sale doctrine, and all that goes with it, just like is the case with Books, etc.
Software has to be considered separately from physical items due to the fact it can't degrade and can be easily duplicated. Being able to run software from a server requires that time-limited licenses exist because some intellectual property is just not feasible for you to own a physical copy of. If Adobe ran all their apps from a server instead of locally, would you object to the exclusive subscription model? There wouldn't be an alternative in that case.
This is in fact the case with Salesforce, which tens of thousands of companies use. If anything happens to Salesforce, the companies using them have no right to a copy of their server code. The government can't really do anything about that.
Everyone wants to get paid for doing nothing, some software companies just think they have discovered a way of doing it.
Insurance is getting paid for doing nothing but almost everyone pays for it. While it's a distinct possibility, I don't think Adobe would ever have the luxury of standing still in the creative industry and you could easily say the same about Google with their advertising presence.
The public can be made believe and be made to accept almost anything if proper PR, spin and marketing is employed. The ones who protest are always marginalized, ridiculed, called loons, etc. Nothing new.
There are perfectly valid arguments in favour of the perpetual license. Everyone can see that if you spend $2000 on the CS Suite and use it and keep a computer to run it for 20 years, you pay $2000 and the Cloud would be $12,000. But the same goes for owning a mobile phone for 20 years vs using a pay-phone when you need it. Should I petition government to force the largest phone provider to allow me to pay for their flagship phone on a per-use basis? Should I petition government to prevent utility companies from shutting off gas and electricity when I can't pay the subscription because my income is unsteady?
Company owners have rights just as consumers have rights and you can't deny them their rights to profit to favour your own.
The key difference, when you buy something, YOU make the decision on when to spend the money. You can make do without the latest gear, in a pinch, and upgrade and splurge when the money train has arrived.
Particularly in times of rising economic uncertainty, being able to control the timing of expenses can be crucial to economical survival, if that weren't the case, then everyone who doesn't rack up his credit card debt and "only pay small monthly installments" were an idiot.
Adobe's move takes exactly that control away from you. It's only $50 some say. Maybe, but even $50 is a lot if you don't have it and need it. Further, you don't just use Adobe's products. If this business model becomes the new normal, you're enslaved by recurring monthly payments, and if you can't make them all various pieces of business critical infrastructure just self-destruct, and you end up in a "you can't afford what you can't afford not to afford" situation.
Who wants to live under a dangling sword of destruction?
Nobody went out of business for using a piece of software that was a release or two out of date. But people go out of business not having the tool at all.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
Here is my problem with the argument as I understand it: People who want to be 'in business' but do not want to be troubled with keeping their software current should be allowed to keep using outdated software as long as they like.
I have been in the graphic design business for nearly 20 years. the first version of Photoshop I used was 2.5 and didn't even include layers. I only mention this because I've been around for a while.
I have ALWAYS stayed as up-to-date as I could, never more than one version behind the current. Sometimes the lump sum was too costly at a particular time.
What I find irritating, and a waste of MY TIME is the emails from suppliers or vendors after I have delivered asking me to save down to CS4 or CS3. I'm already working on new work and I need to change gears to accommodate these people who are too cheap to bring their systems up-to-date. That costs me money.
I know that there are prepress workflows that need to be validated before deploying new software, blah, blah...I'm a designer, not a prepress operator. If the prepress shop cannot validate CS6 in their workflow yet, at least have a single copy of CS6 so you can open my file and backsave, outline type, expand effects, whatever and leave me alone.
You know, if this new model cleans out the hobbyists & non-pros who I find to be thorns in my side, I'm all for it.
Sorry if that sounds elitist, but I am a pro user of Adobe software and I'd be happy if it were restricted to other, fully-commited pros.
You know, if this new model cleans out the hobbyists & non-pros who I find to be thorns in my side, I'm all for it.
Sorry if that sounds elitist, but I am a pro user of Adobe software and I'd be happy if it were restricted to other, fully-commited pros.
Photoshop isn't a civil right.
I don't think that's the agenda. The pricing model makes it more accessible to many hobbyists and non-pros on fixed incomes. It's unlikely that a hobbyist would drop $1-2k on a software suite in a single payment.
It should help with the scenario you describe of having to save files in legacy formats for people who don't upgrade. I'd say the purpose of the pricing model is more to create a one-size fits all rather than create a class divide, which is rarely beneficial and I don't think this will create a divide. There will always be people who don't fit comfortably into a one-size model and businesses make decisions about whether or not to make adjustments for them.
Changes are always going to be met with resistance and immediate changes more so than gradual. It will run its course and people will let Adobe know how they feel. I don't think the complaints will be ignored by them as I don't think it's their goal to alienate customers so they'll listen to constructive feedback about their plans. What's not constructive is to say they're just being greedy and try to get the government to stop them because it's not going to work and it just creates unnecessary tension.
Adobe's business model needs to be sustainable for the long term and it needs to be accessible to all creatives. I think the model they are going with is the best model so far to achieve this. It may cause complications for people with uneven income but it's not a unique complication, just an additional one.
Comments
When did the Cocoa version of Final Cut Pro arrive?
And Maxon, Autodesk, Blackmagic, Side Effects, The Foundry, Avid. The market for professional software is smaller than consumer-oriented software. It's unlikely that Da Vinci resolve or Nuke is going to be used for working on home movies so it doesn't make sense for them to follow Apple's pricing model. There's certainly a middle-ground market for higher-end software, which Final Cut X demonstrates but Apple can do this because they have some marketing leverage with consumers and if it doesn't sell well, no big deal. If Adobe's software doesn't make enough money, that's a big deal.
I think Adobe could have gotten away with lower pricing and I actually think that this cloud setup will give them a better opportunity to bring prices down.
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And Maxon, Autodesk, Blackmagic, Side Effects, The Foundry, Avid. The market for professional software is smaller than consumer-oriented software. It's unlikely that Da Vinci resolve or Nuke is going to be used for working on home movies so it doesn't make sense for them to follow Apple's pricing model. There's certainly a middle-ground market for higher-end software, which Final Cut X demonstrates but Apple can do this because they have some marketing leverage with consumers and if it doesn't sell well, no big deal. If Adobe's software doesn't make enough money, that's a big deal.
I think Adobe could have gotten away with lower pricing and I actually think that this cloud setup will give them a better opportunity to bring prices down.
Adobe could easily get away with lower pricing, particularly with Photoshop. The vast majority of Photoshop Elements users is using it because they can't afford Photoshop. The entire thing of Photoshop Extended, Photoshop and Photoshop elements shows that the market is huge, but that Adobe tries to milk it to the max by charging a huge premium for some features that some pros just can't do without, and so everyone else, for whom the features would be useful, but not absolutely mission critical, or who simply can't afford them, they are left in the dust.
I was glad when Apple stopped the tired software thing with Logic Express vs. Logic Pro, etc. and as far as I'm concerned are all these "light" versions simply intentionally crippled software packages, better trial versions one has to pay for, and thoroughly annoying; just as retarded as the pricing of various factory and dealer options in cars.
A fair price for a fair product, vs. being taken for the most....
...and Adobe just thought they figured out a way to make the being taken thing less obvious by wrapping it into cloud buzz words.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
I feel personally insulted with your comment! Adobe didn't make it harder for me to pirate their software; it's quite the opposite, really, as it's the legal route which is now much, much harder to take for many people.
I come from a poor, ECB/EC/IMF interventioned country from southern Europe (Portugal, you may have heard of it on the news), and, as such, I have been unemployed for 18 consecutive months, and not for lack of trying to find a job; most job offers for designers around here are either unpaid internships (a popular euphemism for modern slavery), precarious contracts (borderline slavery) and even outright fake ones (market research in disguise done by employers so they can lower wages further)…
At last, I got a nice and big freelance commission (€2.350 for the entire communication of a cultural festival in the third biggest city in this country, so, no, I'm not some random inexperienced kid straight out of college, but I do know that price is ridiculously low – there's not much I can do about it, though, as that's how everything goes now with the ruling austerocracy) that will keep me afloat for a while. Through all of this, instead of pirating Adobe software, I've been using a legal education version of CS5 Design Standard (which I bought when, duh, I was both studying and working in education as a public servant and had a fixed income) for my pro-bono stuff for friends and start-ups (yes, around here entrepeneurs can barely get financing from banks to lift their companies from the ground, let alone to pay upfront for design work… a complete disgrace!), as well as for keeping my portfolio updated.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
Now, I feel betrayed, as my whole investment in self-training (my faculty was never very decent when it came to software classes, but it more than made up for it with other subjects like art/design theory and history, aesthetics, etc.) and in the aforementioned software licence will be laid to waste when I inevitably have to switch to a different software package. That's the *real* reason why I'm pissed. Though I've considered the option of pirating it, yes, at least while a credible and cheaper alternative doesn't show up. It's either that, starving, or waiting tables/washing restrooms/working in a call-center, menial tasks which I'm over-qualified for and personally refuse to do if I can avoid them by all means necessary (this is ethics 101, basically, and I may sound as an elitist prick myself, but I don't care; sue me then). Also, as a former trainee in FreeHand, which was (and still remains!) leagues ahead of Illustrator in terms of usability, I will never forget about Adobe's sleazy monopolistic schemes… They are now much, much worse of a company than, dare I say it, Microsoft in the 1990s.
Oh, by the way, I'm pretty damn sure of my career choices, and you have no right to make that kind of assumptions about other people's lives, financial outcome and professional talent. /rant
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Originally Posted by DanielSW
Damn skippy I'm arrogant. And I'm more than a little impatient with people like you who somehow expect the world to be "fair." Get a clue. It isn't. Adobe has been trying this new system out, and apparently it's working well enough for them to be making this paradigm shift. So you poor fence sitting dilettantes get left in the dust. Boo hoo. Time for you to make a choice, maybe. Put up with (eventually) outdated Adobe products, or jump in the deep end and go into business for yourself and get your production up so that you CAN afford CC.
Damn, you really are an elitist prick, aren't you? What's the matter, are you afraid of competing with people who make sensible business decisions, such as, say, only updating Adobe's C$ every other version?
“… go into business for yourself…”? Are you effin' out of your damn mind? That's the most bass-ackwards thing I've read about Adobe CC this week! If I had my own production house (you know, a registered company) I could, conceivably, fathom buying into the subscription model and declare it as a tax-deductible expense, whereas being a freelancer (which, by definition and depending on the economy, may or may not have a steady stream of income but never has a *fixed* one), perpetual licences make a lot more sense… Also, even if I did buy into the subscription plan, I'd like there to be an exit strategy, like an end-of-lease buyout system. As it stands now, this CC bull$hit is no more than a predatory move on Adobe's part, and provoked a massive (and potentially irreversible) breach of trust.
I think everyone understands that times get hard for people but that's not really the issue. You are saying that all of the things you enjoy like taking baths, eating and paying for accommodation are more important than the software that allows you to pay for them. If you add up how much you pay for rent, food, utilities, insurance etc. surely the subscription fee is a small fraction of that (1/10th)? It's hard to believe that someone could afford all the things you mention but that 1/10th extra payment means losing it all.
They haven't stopped selling CS 6. If you prefer the standalone license, they offer that as an option. Also, you have a working copy of CS 5 so you aren't paying anything at all and have made a lot of money from it already.
Also, you have to consider how it would feel the other way round. Adobe employs a lot of people so imagine you are in that situation. You then read about someone buying your software say 3 years ago but recently made thousands from using it. You were instrumental in developing the eco-system that allows that transaction to take place but you haven't made any money from it.
Understandably, people don't like the idea of Adobe effectively taking a commission from their work but at the same time, would those people be happy for someone to reuse one of their designs without commission? We've been accustomed for years to think about software as products and it has caused a lot of frustration making the transition. One of the most apparent examples is buying a game from Amazon, getting the disc and finding that it gets tied to a Steam or Origin account. You bought a product but you really only get a license to use it. If Steam or Origin ceases to be, you lose the ability to use the games.
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Originally Posted by Marvin
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Originally Posted by Mainyehc
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
I think everyone understands that times get hard for people but that's not really the issue. You are saying that all of the things you enjoy like taking baths, eating and paying for accommodation are more important than the software that allows you to pay for them. If you add up how much you pay for rent, food, utilities, insurance etc. surely the subscription fee is a small fraction of that (1/10th)? It's hard to believe that someone could afford all the things you mention but that 1/10th extra payment means losing it all.
Money doesn't grow on trees. Food, shelter, hygiene, healthcare are in a different category than a software tool.
And the reasoning "if you have money for that, you surely have money for something else" is a joke. No, one does not.
Example: I saved up money for a full-frame pro 35mm camera. I spend the money, and got the camera, but I only had some old, compatible lenses.
Dumbass comment from someone: "Hey, if you have money for such a good camera, you surely have money to buy a decent lens, too."
Sounds familiar? No, I didn't have the money, that had to wait until I had more money saved to buy a decent lens. It's a process of building infrastructure, focusing on what's the weak link at the moment. When it comes to my photography, e.g. Photoshop is not the weak link, some equipment upgrades do more for my picture quality than getting the latest version of Photoshop. So Adobe's subscription model is stealing money away from other more useful investments, and that's exactly their intent. They know that money can only be spent once, and that's why they want to get their paws on the money as soon as possible and as often as possible, lest you get the idea to spend it elsewhere.
Because if I have to spend $600 on the latest CS update, then I ask myself: better a new flashlight, an extra prime lens, a lighter photobag, or some extra bells and whistles in a software package that used for preferably minor postprocessing of images?
With a subscription model, that choice does not exist, the money is gone, all the time, every month. The piggy bank remains empty.
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Originally Posted by Marvin
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Originally Posted by Mainyehc
Now, I feel betrayed
They haven't stopped selling CS 6. If you prefer the standalone license, they offer that as an option. Also, you have a working copy of CS 5 so you aren't paying anything at all and have made a lot of money from it already.
The issue is, that we all know this isn't going to last, because Adobe's code, particularly installer and DRM, is so fragile that it will break likely with one of the coming major OS updates. That is, of course, unless you go and download a pirated version, which sadly is often more robust. There were cases in the past when I had to resort to installing a cracked version even though I had the licensed box sitting in the shelf, because the original wouldn't install properly anymore.
Also, you have to consider how it would feel the other way round. Adobe employs a lot of people so imagine you are in that situation. You then read about someone buying your software say 3 years ago but recently made thousands from using it. You were instrumental in developing the eco-system that allows that transaction to take place but you haven't made any money from it.
Understandably, people don't like the idea of Adobe effectively taking a commission from their work but at the same time, would those people be happy for someone to reuse one of their designs without commission? We've been accustomed for years to think about software as products and it has caused a lot of frustration making the transition. One of the most apparent examples is buying a game from Amazon, getting the disc and finding that it gets tied to a Steam or Origin account. You bought a product but you really only get a license to use it. If Steam or Origin ceases to be, you lose the ability to use the games.
Software is a tool, not a design. Do you expect musicians to pay a running royalty to the instrument makers? Carpenters a running royalty to whomever made their hammers and saws? Do you pay a royalty each time you sit down on your sofa or chair to the company or carpenter that made it? Gosh, how horrible it must feel for the carpenter's family who made some of the heirloom furniture that generations of members of my family have been sitting on these chairs and they only got paid once the purchase price while we continue to have utility from these chairs. How unfair, how unfair!
No, Adobe has zero rights and deserves not a penny I make off my works. They provide a tool, and that should be for sale just like any other tool. If they do new work, i.e. create an improved version of that tool, that's the point when I can decide if the improvements are worth it to me or not.
Just like a carpenter doesn't need the latest and greatest hammer that's always shiny and can drive in nails with a rusty, banged up hammer, so there's no need to always have the latest software tools.
This drug-like addiction that people have brainwashed into, that they think they always need the latest release, even though often the new releases destroy functionality that was rather good. Remember the versioning document repository that older versions of CS came with? Thankfully I was a bit too lazy to set it up just for myself alone, but I'd been screwed with the next updates, because Adobe dropped it from the suites. There are other examples e.g. stock photo browsing, etc. that came and went. So newer isn't always better. With a subscription service and cloud based infrastructure you're at their mercy and have to follow whatever brain-fart of the month they have trying to make their product "hip".
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Even if the software is the means by which you pay for all of that?
More likely the comment would be that if you needed the decent lenses at that point in time, you should have budgeted for a cheaper camera but if your camera costs $2000 and the lens costs $200 then why wouldn't it be a valid thing to say that if you could acquire $2000, why is the extra $200 so difficult? The problem isn't acquiring money, it's managing money. If you want to budget for software in advance then you can budget for it - save up $600 at the start of the year and keep that for software.
Do you mean an older version you bought wasn't installing properly and you got a newer cracked version or was the cracked one the same version? If it was the same version, did you contact Adobe to see if they knew about the issue?
I was waiting for the sofa argument. The difference there is that physical items wear out by design. They used to make things to last but don't any more. The reason is to create a sustainable business. Digital content doesn't wear out so you could use one version of the CS Suite for the rest of your life without paying any more, even beyond generations. That's not a good business model for Adobe or any company. Car manufacturers/garages need cars to break down, computer manufacturers need them to break or become too slow, software developers need customers to keep upgrading. They can't always offer new features just like TV networks can't always have compelling content to watch but they need to stay in business so that they have the ability to create something compelling. Software is going to plateau and everyone is making moves into services.
Apple forces people to upgrade all the time by bundling new systems with hardware and removing compatibility with older hardware and when that happens, people blame Adobe when their software isn't compatible with it. They're all running through the same process, whether they are carpenters, sofa manufacturers or any kind of product sellers - they all need sustainable revenue.
They are on sale like other software tools. Accountancy software is sold as a subscription. With some types of software there's not a well-defined line between a service and a product. If a company has to keep providing updates, they are offering a service.
A video game that lasts 10 hours can easily be a product because you won't keep using it. If it has a multiplayer component, you might - that's why Call of Duty Elite is a subscription service. Adobe will be updating their software constantly so their choice is either keep dropping support for old products and let users deal with the frustration of an OS update breaking their software, forcing them into an expensive upgrade when they don't expect it or treat the software as a service where everyone is up to date. It's not really a new concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
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Originally Posted by Marvin
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Money doesn't grow on trees. Food, shelter, hygiene, healthcare are in a different category than a software tool.
Even if the software is the means by which you pay for all of that?
Yes, even then, because you can't eat and shower after you're done doing the work you do with the software you spend your food and living money on; you'll be dead by then, or at least so unpresentable that your potential clients will run away.
You really think you'll get business showing up starved and unkempt smelling like a homeless person at a client meeting?
Remember, there's a reason why we have a welfare system, because people really can go broke.
I know first hand examples of highly successful creative artists from advertising who through a variety of circumstances were in a situation where they didn't even have the money to buy the meds they needed, and tried to make money with creative work, within the limits of what their situation still allowed them to do, and they would certainly NOT have had the money to spend on some silly Adobe subscription. They were using Adobe Software that was a few years old, but it still worked, and didn't cost extra money.
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Originally Posted by rcfa
Example: I saved up money for a full-frame pro 35mm camera. I spend the money, and got the camera, but I only had some old, compatible lenses.
Dumbass comment from someone: "Hey, if you have money for such a good camera, you surely have money to buy a decent lens, too."
More likely the comment would be that if you needed the decent lenses at that point in time, you should have budgeted for a cheaper camera but if your camera costs $2000 and the lens costs $200 then why wouldn't it be a valid thing to say that if you could acquire $2000, why is the extra $200 so difficult? The problem isn't acquiring money, it's managing money. If you want to budget for software in advance then you can budget for it - save up $600 at the start of the year and keep that for software.
No, there is no such thing as a "cheaper" full-frame 35mm camera. It costs, what it costs, you can use internet search to find a good discounter to get a decent price (which I did). $2000 simply aren't $2200. No, there isn't a magic $200 somewhere, just because there is $2000. Because otherwise, if I were to spend $2000 on a camera and the magic $200 for a lens (never mind that a decent lens is more like another $2000, because a crappy $200 lens I already had) would materialis and also be spent, one could continue this line of reasoning and say: "If you could spend $2200 for lens and camera, you surely can spend another $200 for a flashlight. You just need to budget better, blah, blah, blah..." and ad infinitum. So that means: if I can spend $2000, I can spend infinite amounts of money. Crock....
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The issue is, that we all know this isn't going to last, because Adobe's code, particularly installer and DRM, is so fragile that it will break likely with one of the coming major OS updates. That is, of course, unless you go and download a pirated version, which sadly is often more robust. There were cases in the past when I had to resort to installing a cracked version even though I had the licensed box sitting in the shelf, because the original wouldn't install properly anymore.
Do you mean an older version you bought wasn't installing properly and you got a newer cracked version or was the cracked one the same version? If it was the same version, did you contact Adobe to see if they knew about the issue?
Same version. Adobe's tech support is useless. They have not resolved a single thing, the best you get is "we know it's an issue, get a newer version of the software..." or "this is no longer supported" or "we don't support installation on a case-sensitive file system" or ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Do you expect musicians to pay a running royalty to the instrument makers? Carpenters a running royalty to whomever made their hammers and saws? Do you pay a royalty each time you sit down on your sofa or chair to the company or carpenter that made it?
I was waiting for the sofa argument. The difference there is that physical items wear out by design. They used to make things to last but don't any more. The reason is to create a sustainable business. Digital content doesn't wear out so you could use one version of the CS Suite for the rest of your life without paying any more, even beyond generations. That's not a good business model for Adobe or any company. Car manufacturers/garages need cars to break down, computer manufacturers need them to break or become too slow, software developers need customers to keep upgrading. They can't always offer new features just like TV networks can't always have compelling content to watch but they need to stay in business so that they have the ability to create something compelling. Software is going to plateau and everyone is making moves into services.
Digital content doesn't get worn out, so what? My sofa doesn't get worn out either, at least not in my life time, and anyone who abuses it in a way that would wear it out would get my fist somewhere where he gets worn out.
Digital content however gets outinnovated. CPU architectures change, GPUs advance, high-res displays show up, HDR photography becomes viable, etc.
As long as there's actual value added, enough people will upgrade. If that changes, it's time for additional products or for downscaling the company.
For something to be a viable business, it doesn't have to be a billion dollar company. The proper size varies over time.
It's when business are used to be a certain size and feel entitled to be that size that trouble starts, because then the time has passed for them to be that size, the only way they can remain that size without new products or real, value generating innovation, is by price gouging or taking those customers hostage that rely on their products.
Everyone talks about downsizing government, the same should be done with many a company.
Apple forces people to upgrade all the time by bundling new systems with hardware and removing compatibility with older hardware and when that happens, people blame Adobe when their software isn't compatible with it. They're all running through the same process, whether they are carpenters, sofa manufacturers or any kind of product sellers - they all need sustainable revenue.
No Adobe doesn't get blamed when CS3 doesn't have retina display support. Adobe however does get blamed when Apple a decade ago says Carbon is a legacy technology to facilitate a transition to OS X, and a decade later Adobe still makes a fuss when Apple decides not to provide a 64-bit version of Carbon.
Adobe also gets blamed when OS X with a Unix base supports for many good reasons case-sensitive file systems, but Adobe's coding practices are so horrible that their software breaks or can't be installed on a case-sensitive file system. Or when their coding practices are so bad that their code breaks all over the place when the CPU architecture changes, which is all the more surprising given that most of their code is cross-platform and the windows versions are already running on that CPU, etc.
Adobe has been a nightmare to deal with for a long, long time. But just like M$ Office, in their respective market, they have a quasi monopoly, and it's very hard to get by in that market and deal with clients, print shops, etc. without using their software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
No, Adobe has zero rights and deserves not a penny I make off my works. They provide a tool, and that should be for sale just like any other tool.
They are on sale like other software tools. Accountancy software is sold as a subscription. With some types of software there's not a well-defined line between a service and a product. If a company has to keep providing updates, they are offering a service.
A video game that lasts 10 hours can easily be a product because you won't keep using it. If it has a multiplayer component, you might - that's why Call of Duty Elite is a subscription service. Adobe will be updating their software constantly so their choice is either keep dropping support for old products and let users deal with the frustration of an OS update breaking their software, forcing them into an expensive upgrade when they don't expect it or treat the software as a service where everyone is up to date. It's not really a new concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
Who said it's a new concept? Murder isn't a new concept, either, but just because it's not new doesn't mean it's right.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Creatives have gotten away with that for years. I don't see how $50/month is the difference between being well-off and starved, smelly and unkempt. It's $1.67 a day. That's less than a Happy Meal. Skip the Happy Meal and pocket the change.
What about the scenario where someone works for a company and loses their job but don't have a license themselves. They are hard up for money. The legal options are: $2000 for the CS Suite or $50/month for the Cloud apps, which is better?
It doesn't go from $2000 to infinite. If you reach infinite, you've acquired 90% of infinite somehow. You keep weighing up $50/month against everything else that's important, which could easily total $1000/month. Being forced to pay the $50 doesn't mean you can't pay the $1000. There has to be some restructuring that allows you to get $50 out of that $1000 you manage to somehow acquire until you get back on your feet.
If you were running the company, would you want someone doing that to you? In your own business, I assume you try to make as much money as you can while keeping clients happy. That's what Adobe's doing. The people who are subscribing seem to be happy. Companies tend not to voluntarily downsize because they run out of ideas.
The issue with the Creative Cloud so far is the opposite. Things change quickly and they want to update things more quickly than purposely hold back features for a year for a major release. Small algorithms like the sharpen or content-aware features shouldn't have to be held back when they can improve workflows. If Apple moves to AMD GPUs, people will want more OpenCL code and less CUDA but they'd likely have to wait another year for it under the perpetual license model.
They do get blamed when they don't have Retina support, even though it was Apple that added the feature:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5000094
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5101008
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5024157
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4490869
http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2013/01/retina-display-support-and-photoshop-cs6.html
The idea is 'Apple added this feature and it broke something I paid Adobe for years ago, Adobe should fix it'.
I'm not against the idea of paying up the subscription and at some point being able to stop paying and forego the updates or at least put it on hold for periods of time but I don't see that being practical to implement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
You really think you'll get business showing up starved and unkempt smelling like a homeless person at a client meeting?
Creatives have gotten away with that for years. I don't see how $50/month is the difference between being well-off and starved, smelly and unkempt. It's $1.67 a day. That's less than a Happy Meal. Skip the Happy Meal and pocket the change.
You demonstrate that you live in world of ridiculous plenty. Some people have but a value meal per day. There's nothing to skip.
Not everyone is a 200+ pound hunk of lard who easily can skip half the meals that he chooses to overindulge in.
No amount of money, regardless how small, is magically appearing out of thin air. The fixed costs are fixed costs, they got to be paid, only what's left over is freely disposable income. If the fixed costs add up to more than you make, you have a problem, and it doesn't matter by how much you're off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I know first hand examples of highly successful creative artists from advertising who through a variety of circumstances were in a situation where they didn't even have the money to buy the meds they needed, and tried to make money with creative work, within the limits of what their situation still allowed them to do, and they would certainly NOT have had the money to spend on some silly Adobe subscription. They were using Adobe Software that was a few years old, but it still worked, and didn't cost extra money.
What about the scenario where someone works for a company and loses their job but don't have a license themselves. They are hard up for money. The legal options are: $2000 for the CS Suite or $50/month for the Cloud apps, which is better?
You're the one who's trying to turn this into an either-or situation. I don't complain about Adobe offering a subscription, I complain about the subscription being the only offer. Nothing stops Adobe from offering the user a choice between subscription and purchase. It's the LACK OF CHOICE that's the issue, not the existence of a subscription plan.
The other issue is the product bundling: the cloud services should be a separate product. Regardless if I want to subscribe or buy the software, I may or may not be interested in the cloud services. By being forced to buy them, because it's all bundled into one, I'm forced to subsidize some people's use of cloud services (at the detriment of potential competition), even though I am not interested in using the cloud services myself.
Further, by the all-to-tight integration with cloud services, I have to constantly be concerned about my privacy. I want software where I can completely turn off and disable any sort of cloud functionality. Just because I'm creating some print layouts and edit some of my photos doesn't mean I want my personal information by siphoned off by Adobe and who-knows-whom-else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
"If you could spend $2200 for lens and camera, you surely can spend another $200 for a flashlight. You just need to budget better, blah, blah, blah..." and ad infinitum. So that means: if I can spend $2000, I can spend infinite amounts of money. Crock....
It doesn't go from $2000 to infinite. If you reach infinite, you've acquired 90% of infinite somehow. You keep weighing up $50/month against everything else that's important, which could easily total $1000/month. Being forced to pay the $50 doesn't mean you can't pay the $1000. There has to be some restructuring that allows you to get $50 out of that $1000 you manage to somehow acquire until you get back on your feet.
Again, it's not about only Adobe. Next comes M$, then all the Rest. I have probably a few hundred apps installed on my system. Many are not current, but they do the job. If they all start going to subscription, and even just charge $1/month, then I'm out several hundred bucks a month. And some would likely require charges similar to Adobe, and not just $1/month. That model is not sustainable, certainly not, if it's not an option where people can choose between subscription and purchase.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
As long as there's actual value added, enough people will upgrade. If that changes, it's time for additional products or for downscaling the company.
Everyone talks about downsizing government, the same should be done with many a company.
If you were running the company, would you want someone doing that to you? In your own business, I assume you try to make as much money as you can while keeping clients happy. That's what Adobe's doing. The people who are subscribing seem to be happy. Companies tend not to voluntarily downsize because they run out of ideas.
If they don't voluntarily downsize, then I guess they would have to need to be forced to do so. And yes, I do downsize. If I as a contractor can't drum up enough new business, I can't go to my old clients and extract a revenue stream from them because I fail to acquire new clients.
If Adobe can't innovate enough to keep up their business, that's their failure. Why should the users pay for their failure?
The issue with the Creative Cloud so far is the opposite. Things change quickly and they want to update things more quickly than purposely hold back features for a year for a major release. Small algorithms like the sharpen or content-aware features shouldn't have to be held back when they can improve workflows. If Apple moves to AMD GPUs, people will want more OpenCL code and less CUDA but they'd likely have to wait another year for it under the perpetual license model.
Nothing stops them to roll out features. Apple keeps adding features to OS X in minor releases as the release cycle goes by.
Major changes in GUI, workflow, etc. will have to wait for major updates, but things like adding a plug-ins, etc. can be done at any time.
Adobe has done minor bug-fix updates before, there's nothing stopping them to be a bit more generous in what they include in a particular release cycle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
No Adobe doesn't get blamed when CS3 doesn't have retina display support.
They do get blamed when they don't have Retina support, even though it was Apple that added the feature:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5000094
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5101008
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5024157
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4490869
http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2013/01/retina-display-support-and-photoshop-cs6.html
The idea is 'Apple added this feature and it broke something I paid Adobe for years ago, Adobe should fix it'.
*IF* the feature Apple added *breaks* Adobe's software, then they should be blamed. Because using Apple's APIs properly won't cause breakage. Non-retina aware apps, using Apple's APIs correctly, will not break running on a retina display enabled Mac.
On the other hand, simply not having the extra support for retina displays doesn't break anything, and that one shouldn't blame Apple or Adobe for, it's simply the price of technical progress.
I'm not against the idea of paying up the subscription and at some point being able to stop paying and forego the updates or at least put it on hold for periods of time but I don't see that being practical to implement.
The DRM technologies would make that rather easy. If Apple can manage rentals, purchases, etc. that's not a problem. Consider it a buy in installments plus a running support contract.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
It's not the only offer just now. Your complaints are over scenarios you've made up like Adobe stealing your personal data, raising prices, being forced to adopt the Cloud apps for lack of competition, discontinuing CS 6, being put out of business for lack of $50, not being able to access files when you stop paying. Adobe has commented on the latter point here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57583817-92/adobe-mulls-creative-cloud-tweaks-for-long-term-file-access/
You can see in the comments, people have signed up government petitions to force Adobe to stop doing what they are doing. Are people going to do the same with Facebook? People spend hours updating their Facebook pages with content but if they go under, you're not getting that back. That's worse than Adobe's model but nobody complains about it.
Like with iCloud you mean? Buying other products and services from Apple subsidizes that. Whether you use iCloud or not, Apple bundles the service to the detriment of potential competition like DropBox.
What personal information would they be taking?
If you have a few hundred apps and they all cost $50 at least, you'd have spent $30,000 on software. You'd never realistically be paying several hundred a month. Some software doesn't change much at all - an FTP app for example has little reason to be subscription-based.
So you mean the government should step in and fire people when they determine there's not enough innovation? Facebook hasn't done much over the past few years but they generate billions so should the government start whittling that organisation down to just Zuckerberg?
You can however change your business model and offer subscription services. If customers like it more than you expect, you would be free to promote subscription services as your primary business model. If customers don't adopt it, you can make changes.
Why should Adobe pay for the failure of their customers to generate revenue? You keep making the suggestion that users are being forced to pay and it all hinges around the notion that Adobe is a monopoly. Every one of their apps has competition, you aren't forced to use Adobe's apps at all.
Because Apple primarily makes money from hardware. Adobe makes money from software.
If a customer said that to you and suggested you added a bit extra to be generous because they were struggling, what would you say? If they then said you should be more generous to all your clients, what would you say? Probably that it's none of their business how you run your business.
Let's say they implemented that and after 3 years allowed you to stop updating so blocked access to cloud features, no updates and blocked the second license. If you stopped paying for the next 3 years, why would you be entitled to jump into the latest update when other customers have been paying during those 3 years? They couldn't force you to pay an upgrade fee because you'd just create another ID.
Perhaps what they should do is have a system where the longer someone is subscribed, the lower the fee becomes e.g after 3 years, the fee drops from $50/m to $30/m. Then if you choose to stop paying for long enough (e.g more than 6 months in a 2 year period), you lose that discount. The general idea is the same for all software content - make it more worthwhile to pay for than to steal. That's where cloud services are so important and the same goes for DLCs in games. You can't easily steal access to cloud services like you can with software products.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mainyehc
I feel personally insulted with your comment! Adobe didn't make it harder for me to pirate their software; it's quite the opposite, really, as it's the legal route which is now much, much harder to take for many people.
I come from a poor, ECB/EC/IMF interventioned country from southern Europe (Portugal, you may have heard of it on the news), and, as such, I have been unemployed for 18 consecutive months, and not for lack of trying to find a job; most job offers for designers around here are either unpaid internships (a popular euphemism for modern slavery), precarious contracts (borderline slavery) and even outright fake ones (market research in disguise done by employers so they can lower wages further)…
At last, I got a nice and big freelance commission (€2.350 for the entire communication of a cultural festival in the third biggest city in this country, so, no, I'm not some random inexperienced kid straight out of college, but I do know that price is ridiculously low – there's not much I can do about it, though, as that's how everything goes now with the ruling austerocracy) that will keep me afloat for a while. Through all of this, instead of pirating Adobe software, I've been using a legal education version of CS5 Design Standard (which I bought when, duh, I was both studying and working in education as a public servant and had a fixed income) for my pro-bono stuff for friends and start-ups (yes, around here entrepeneurs can barely get financing from banks to lift their companies from the ground, let alone to pay upfront for design work… a complete disgrace!), as well as for keeping my portfolio updated.
Had I been tied to a subscription, which payment I'd have had to forgo since my mortgage is a top priority (lest the bank seizes my place, which would be a big no-no), as are my other bills (you know, bathing and cooking are also nice activities to which we all got used to in first-world countries, and I don't intend to let go of those any time soon if I can avoid it), I couldn't even access my own stuff to update my portfolio and apply for jobs (freelance or otherwise)!
Now, I feel betrayed, as my whole investment in self-training (my faculty was never very decent when it came to software classes, but it more than made up for it with other subjects like art/design theory and history, aesthetics, etc.) and in the aforementioned software licence will be laid to waste when I inevitably have to switch to a different software package. That's the *real* reason why I'm pissed. Though I've considered the option of pirating it, yes, at least while a credible and cheaper alternative doesn't show up. It's either that, starving, or waiting tables/washing restrooms/working in a call-center, menial tasks which I'm over-qualified for and personally refuse to do if I can avoid them by all means necessary (this is ethics 101, basically, and I may sound as an elitist prick myself, but I don't care; sue me then). Also, as a former trainee in FreeHand, which was (and still remains!) leagues ahead of Illustrator in terms of usability, I will never forget about Adobe's sleazy monopolistic schemes… They are now much, much worse of a company than, dare I say it, Microsoft in the 1990s.
Oh, by the way, I'm pretty damn sure of my career choices, and you have no right to make that kind of assumptions about other people's lives, financial outcome and professional talent. /rant
It's ironic that you're obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances.
Spend more time figuring out how to make more money with your language skills as well as CC tools.
Adobe's tools--especially the new CC ones--will help you very much with that.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
While this may not change anything, it will at least prevent that they can pretend they didn't know it was unpopular with many of their users, and if their move hopefully eventually backfires, there's evidence for corporate heads to roll at the following board and shareholder meetings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielSW
It's ironic that you're obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances.
Spend more time figuring out how to make more money with your language skills as well as CC tools.
Adobe's tools--especially the new CC ones--will help you very much with that.
Some people here act and write like spoilt brats. If there's no business, you can't compete for it.
What are going to say to Syrian refugees?
"It's ironic that you are obviously articulate in English, but waste way too much time complaining about your circumstances. Spend more time figuring out how to make political changes instead of running away like a coward."
Maybe you have a look at something like this: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/spain-is-beyond-doomed-the-2-scariest-unemployment-charts-ever/275324/ before you act like a brat. I guess in your assessment the people in Spain are simply all lazy whiners, who if they only got off their duff would be driving around in Porsches and eat caviar for breakfast, and instead of wiping their butts with money would instead spend it on a subscription for Adobe's Creative Cloud software.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I don't complain about Adobe offering a subscription, I complain about the subscription being the only offer.
It's not the only offer just now. Your complaints are over scenarios you've made up like Adobe stealing your personal data, raising prices, being forced to adopt the Cloud apps for lack of competition, discontinuing CS 6, being put out of business for lack of $50, not being able to access files when you stop paying. Adobe has commented on the latter point here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57583817-92/adobe-mulls-creative-cloud-tweaks-for-long-term-file-access/
What Adobe "mulls" is irrelevant. Also long-term access is not what anyone needs: infinite editability. Whoopee if they allow me to view or print my old stuff. They can probably build that capability into Acrobat Reader and distribute that for free. Doesn't solve the problem, though.
As for the scenarios: If once complains when the scenarios are real, it's too late. One has to recognize the potential behind what's going on to grasp the long term consequences.
Your argument is like saying: "Don't complain climate change, these are all scenarios you made up but haven't happened yet." Sorry, when they happen, it's too late.
You can see in the comments, people have signed up government petitions to force Adobe to stop doing what they are doing. Are people going to do the same with Facebook? People spend hours updating their Facebook pages with content but if they go under, you're not getting that back. That's worse than Adobe's model but nobody complains about it.
Facebook is no productivity tool. Smart people stay away from Facebook as far as they can, because they value their privacy. If voluntarily hand over your valuable data to some cloud outfit, you get what you deserve. None of these companies would admit that they are in serious financial trouble, because that woud accelerate their demise, and if people tried to save their data, the massive spike in network activity cost them even more money and could bring the systems down. So instead you'd wake up one morning: "Many thanks to our long time customers, unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control we had to close shop...."
How ridiculous relying on cloud services is, was shown by Apple: You build an infrastructure build on things like keychain sync, (smart)-Mailbox sync, web hosting, photo galleries, and then whoops, it's all gone and instead you have some gimmicky iCloud crap, like PhotoStreams that's an inferior Facebook/Instagram wannabe service with no control over sequence of images, inferior presentation (compared to the Galleries), etc.
"the cloud" gets two thumbs down from me, except for encrypted off-site data backup to complement on-site backup.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The other issue is the product bundling: the cloud services should be a separate product. Regardless if I want to subscribe or buy the software, I may or may not be interested in the cloud services. By being forced to buy them, because it's all bundled into one, I'm forced to subsidize some people's use of cloud services (at the detriment of potential competition), even though I am not interested in using the cloud services myself.
Like with iCloud you mean? Buying other products and services from Apple subsidizes that. Whether you use iCloud or not, Apple bundles the service to the detriment of potential competition like DropBox.
I don't think I have said I was a fan of Apple's iCloud. However, except for some ridiculously small online storage, which barely competes with the offerings from AIM, Google, DropBox, etc. anything of value costs extra, e.g. iTunes Match, added storage (to a level where the online storage could actually be used for something useful, etc.) What Apple gives away is simply a teaser to get people hooked so they pay for more.
However neither their devices nor their other software is non-functional if you decide to not subscribe or turn off iCloud entirely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Further, by the all-to-tight integration with cloud services, I have to constantly be concerned about my privacy. I want software where I can completely turn off and disable any sort of cloud functionality. Just because I'm creating some print layouts and edit some of my photos doesn't mean I want my personal information by siphoned off by Adobe and who-knows-whom-else.
What personal information would they be taking?
Ask them. They don't say. But they do say that they collect user information. And as we should know by now, information doesn't have to be directly identifiable (like name and address) to allow by means of statistical methods to identify a user. That's why the spooks care less and less about whether communication is encrypted or not, as long as they can figure who is sending whom messages so they can derive the information network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I have probably a few hundred apps installed on my system. If they all start going to subscription, and even just charge $1/month, then I'm out several hundred bucks a month.
If you have a few hundred apps and they all cost $50 at least, you'd have spent $30,000 on software. You'd never realistically be paying several hundred a month. Some software doesn't change much at all - an FTP app for example has little reason to be subscription-based.
If I consider the limited changes in Adobe software over the years since I first bought the original Adobe CS bundle, I'm rather underwhelmed.
Were it not for a variety of forced upgrades (PPC-intel, 32-64-bit, broken installers, etc.), which is why I could skip one or two releases in the upgrade cycle without shedding any tears.
An FTP app has the even more reason to be subscription based: because it changes so little it doesn't create a revenue stream through upgrades.
You should apply your reasoning equally. It was you who suggested that Adobe has to keep their business big and alive regardless if they deserve to be big and alive based on their level of innovation. The FTP app may exactly have that zero innovation level, so in order not to go out of business they would switch to subscriptions for the same reasons as Adobe: generating an indefinite duration revenue stream for a slow-evolving product with few compelling upgrade reasons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
If they don't voluntarily downsize, then I guess they would have to be forced to do so.
So you mean the government should step in and fire people when they determine there's not enough innovation? Facebook hasn't done much over the past few years but they generate billions so should the government start whittling that organisation down to just Zuckerberg?
No, but the government should step in an prevent abuses of defacto monopolies, and should create laws that prevent that a combination of copyright laws can be used to take users' data hostage and essentially blackmail people into revenue stream generating schemes.
If corporations can't do that, they can't extort a revenue stream without actual user-relevant value added, and that means they are forced to right-size depending on market demand for their product.
A forced subscription scheme aims at disabling market forces, just as non-standard printer cartridges, patented razor-blades, non-standard lightbulbs, etc. do. These are all schemes to artificially disable competing forces that would lower prices if they had to compete on price and quality with standardized products.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I can't go to my old clients and extract a revenue stream from them because I fail to acquire new clients.
You can however change your business model and offer subscription services. If customers like it more than you expect, you would be free to promote subscription services as your primary business model. If customers don't adopt it, you can make changes.
I'm sure customers will adopt it, if I put a gun to their head. That's what adobe is doing now: change your profession, or pony up....
...not exactly much of a choice here, is there? And don't get me the CS6 "option". That's a smoke and mirrors option: if they say they won't upgrade it anymore, it's not an option, it's a dead-end.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
If Adobe can't innovate enough to keep up their business, that's their failure. Why should the users pay for their failure?
Why should Adobe pay for the failure of their customers to generate revenue? You keep making the suggestion that users are being forced to pay and it all hinges around the notion that Adobe is a monopoly. Every one of their apps has competition, you aren't forced to use Adobe's apps at all.
Why should I have to make money? If I buy a tool, it's up to me what I use it for. That's why I pay a purchase price.
What Adobe does is make their products a non-option unless they are used in a similar revenue generating stream where essentially Adobe gets a fraction of the generated income stream. That may work for a busy agency with reasonably steady workloads.
Not a good model for artists, freelancers, non-profits, enthusiasts, advanced amateur photographers, etc.
You can't just turn things on its head. Adobe did work ONCE to create a particular version of the software, for that they deserve to be compensated ONCE, not indefinitely. They aren't providing a service, even if they rebrand it as such. If someone offers a shoe shine service, they'll buff my shoes every day, for that they get paid every day. For someone dropping off a shoe cleaning kit once they get paid once, not every day.
Creative Suite is a shoe cleaning kit, not a service that cleans my shoes daily.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Nothing stops them to roll out features. Apple keeps adding features to OS X in minor releases as the release cycle goes by.
Because Apple primarily makes money from hardware. Adobe makes money from software.
Oh, yeah, and what about everyone else in the software business who does the same? Ever noticed how the AppStore works? Or any of the other software vendors whose often massive maintenance releases I download daily using automated tools such as the Sparkle framework or MacUpdate Desktop.
There's essentially hardly a day going by without several updates either in the AppStore or through one of the other mechanisms.
The only hardware vendor among them being Apple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Adobe has done minor bug-fix updates before, there's nothing stopping them to be a bit more generous in what they include in a particular release cycle.
If a customer said that to you and suggested you added a bit extra to be generous because they were struggling, what would you say? If they then said you should be more generous to all your clients, what would you say? Probably that it's none of their business how you run your business.
It's really not truly being more generous: because what's missing at the head (not that many more new features with the big upgrade), comes in through the tail end (more updates during the life of the product). The average total amount of changes over a particular time frame remains the same.
What gets lost is unfixed bugs that force you to buy a major upgrade because the vendor doesn't care about anything, as they clearly state:
[We Adobe] "DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS, AND TERMS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WHETHER BY STATUTE, COMMON LAW, CUSTOM, USAGE, OR OTHERWISE AS TO ANY MATTER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO PERFORMANCE, SECURITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS, INTEGRATION, MERCHANTABILITY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, AND FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
[...]
WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO CUSTOMER FOR ANY LOSS, DAMAGES, CLAIMS, OR COSTS WHATSOEVER INCLUDING ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, ANY LOST PROFITS OR LOST SAVINGS, ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY OR FAILURE TO MEET ANY DUTY OF CARE, OR CLAIMS BY A THIRD PARTY, EVEN IF AN ADOBE REPRESENTATIVE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH LOSS, DAMAGES, CLAIMS, OR COSTS. "
Yes, this is standard boilerplate legalese, but it's not devoid of content, and it shows both the distribution of power between "king customer" and "servant vendor", and how much vendor cares about the well being of its presumed king.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The DRM technologies would make that rather easy. If Apple can manage rentals, purchases, etc. that's not a problem. Consider it a buy in installments plus a running support contract.
Let's say they implemented that and after 3 years allowed you to stop updating so blocked access to cloud features, no updates and blocked the second license. If you stopped paying for the next 3 years, why would you be entitled to jump into the latest update when other customers have been paying during those 3 years? They couldn't force you to pay an upgrade fee because you'd just create another ID.
The user in question also didn't take advantage of technical support and feature upgrades during these three years. Remember, you pay for a SERVICE. If Adobe is actually providing a service and not scamming users, then you obviously can't take advantage of these services while you're not subscribed.
If one thinks of it as purchasing in installments, then any subscription plan has a buy-in and a maintenance component. e.g. if you own CS6, there's no buy-in, you're already current, so you pay maintenance only. If you stop paying maintenance, you're frozen at that version. If later you reactivate, you'll have to pay the regular maintenance fee, plus you have to pay-off the upgrade to e.g. CS8 through a buy-in in installments, once your installments are over, you fall back down to the maintenance-only fee.
If you were to create a new Adobe ID, you'd have to pay-off the entire product purchase through buy-in installments, until you're current, at which point you drop to maintenance only rates.
It's not like someone has to sit there with pencil and paper to figure that out, computers handle much more complicated algorithms than something like that.
Perhaps what they should do is have a system where the longer someone is subscribed, the lower the fee becomes e.g after 3 years, the fee drops from $50/m to $30/m. Then if you choose to stop paying for long enough (e.g more than 6 months in a 2 year period), you lose that discount. The general idea is the same for all software content - make it more worthwhile to pay for than to steal. That's where cloud services are so important and the same goes for DLCs in games. You can't easily steal access to cloud services like you can with software products.
Sort of, except you'd not lose the use of the software if you stop paying, you just lose the use of the cloud services, support and future product updates.
Again, the issue isn't that subscription services are bad, what's bad is if they are the only choice.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
You are suggesting that the $700-2000 perpetual license is for poor people? Adobe is expensive no matter which route you choose. The cloud option makes it accessible to people on fixed incomes, the perpetual license is cheaper for people who don't upgrade. If anything, I'd say the perpetual license is for well-off people who can budget something like a $2k expense on a software suite - it's poor people who pay things in instalments.
Which is achieved by storing in open formats and saving projects in a way that allows them to be rebuilt in other apps.
Pretty much every company has one of these:
http://www.adobe.com/privacy/policy.html
They would be free to do that, software sometimes has a single payment license that lasts for a fixed period of time.
Like I say, there are alternatives for all of their apps and their customer base is small. It doesn't really qualify as a monopoly.
You're not buying a tool though, you're buying a license to use a tool. It is not legal for example to resell certain versions of the Creative Suite. The only product you own is a license key. The binary you get belongs to Adobe - that's one of the major differences between software and hardware that people don't want to accept when they get a physical disc. Once you buy a piece of hardware, you can pretty much do what you want with it. If you buy a sofa, rent it out if you like. You can't rent out the Adobe Suite.
If at any point in time Adobe goes bankrupt, your perpetual license won't activate. If you have no internet access, it won't activate. The only real difference with the cloud model is that it's a time-limited license and not perpetual. The perpetual license relies on other means to coerce users into an upgrade. They really should never have existed because it's a very bad business model.
They wish they could do what Adobe is doing. Do you believe that someone making a $0.99 app wants to give you a lifetime of free updates? People need to be paid in exchange for work. Adobe is paving the way for the viability of long-term software provision. Microsoft wrote a blog recently about this - they wrote that they believe this model is the way forward for software but thought Adobe may have been premature in dropping the perpetual license as customers aren't all accustomed to this model.
That model would have to use the one-off payment method and be separate from the subscription model but it could be that you are allowed to pay a large fee first, say $2000 and you get updates for 3 years and after that, it effectively freezes your version. If you want to update a while after that, you'd have to do the large payment again or start from scratch with the cloud license. It would be quite good to be able to freeze the monthly payments and leave the updates but that would let you make huge updates without the upgrade fees while continuing to use it for free when others were paying.
I think they should stick to the exclusive cloud model for now and let it play out. They won't do anything to drive customers away on purpose, quite the opposite. Right now, there is a vocal minority (as usual) resisting the change - the Creative Cloud has 10-15 pages of negative reviews vs 130+ pages of 4/5 or higher reviews. This kind of thing happened when Steam first came along and made it obvious that games that are bought are licenses for games and not owned products. Even to this day, people resist this concept with games sold online but it's fairly widely accepted now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Some people here act and write like spoilt brats.
if [the lazy whiners] only got off their duff would be driving around in Porsches and eat caviar for breakfast, and instead of wiping their butts with money would instead spend it on a subscription for Adobe's Creative Cloud software.
You are suggesting that the $700-2000 perpetual license is for poor people? Adobe is expensive no matter which route you choose. The cloud option makes it accessible to people on fixed incomes, the perpetual license is cheaper for people who don't upgrade. If anything, I'd say the perpetual license is for well-off people who can budget something like a $2k expense on a software suite - it's poor people who pay things in instalments.
For one, there's a difference between paying something in installments (e.g. mortgage) and perpetual payments (e.g. rent).
One can slap $2000 on a credit card, and after X months one is done, and owns the stuff free and clear.
For two, one can buy an older license on the secondary market, and work with that until a project pays for an upgrade. The timing and the size of the payment is under the control of the user. There is no commitment at any point, except whatever may have been charged to some credit card.
Second, there is poor, and there is bad times. A really poor person probably doesn't even have to education to know how to use say Photoshop.
On the other hand, for many creative people life goes in feast and famine cycles, transitions photo to video to multimedia to web design, etc. You buy tools when you are flush, and you skip expenses when business is slow. That's not an option with a subscription.
Imagine you're doing brochures and flyers for investment banks pre-2008: you may have had to decline work, because there was too much of it. Then Lehman goes belly up, financial world is in chaos, and you may have so little work that you don't know how to avoid eviction in your expensive broom closet in NYC. Last thing you need is an extra monthly expense to weigh on your budget, but you need the tools to make the little money that still keeps you afloat.
I'm not the person to wish anyone anything bad, but if you're so cynical or so clueless that you can't understand that and have to defend Adobe to the teeth, even though they could perfectly have stuck with leaving the subscription plan as an option for those who like it, and purchase/upgrades for the others, then you really deserve to be in a bad spot for a while to learn some of life's important lessons: No, trying is important, but it's not enough. Sometimes every penny counts, and the last thing you want in those situations is recurring obligations. You dread every damn utility bill, you don't need any more bills.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
infinite editability
Which is achieved by storing in open formats and saving projects in a way that allows them to be rebuilt in other apps.
Yeah, because Adobe is forthcoming documenting their file formats and doesn't change them on a regular basis...
If I have to "rebuild" them in other apps, then I might as well build them in other apps.
That doesn't help if the entire workflow is built around their stuff, be that on the client side or the print shop side.
Been playing around with Acorn. Great software, for private use. Not cool if you have to integrate into someone else's workflow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Ask them. They don't say. But they do say that they collect user information.
Pretty much every company has one of these:
http://www.adobe.com/privacy/policy.html
Sure. Does that make it any better? You think I like when Google steals my info and ignores the "do not track" settings of my browser?
Or any of the other data vacuums out there? These privacy policies are a joke, they should be called the "lack of privacy policy", because if they respected privacy, they would need no policy, cause they wouldn't keep data other than data that's encrypted and to which they don't have the keys.
But that's not in their interest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
the government should step in an prevent abuses of defacto monopolies
Like I say, there are alternatives for all of their apps and their customer base is small. It doesn't really qualify as a monopoly.
There are no real alternatives, because there are no open, editable file formats, and more or less industry standard is that Adobe stuff. With the exception of InDesign where Xpress is a reasonably strong competitor, and some of the A/V stuff.
The size of the market doesn't matter to judge if something is a defacto monopoly or not. One holds a monopoly over a market, however big or small, not over the world. Governments tend to enforce anti-trust laws more on bigger markets because that has a bigger political PR effect. Unless people are in the design business they don't give a flying whatever about what happens to design software. If something happens with car tires, they may care. But from a legal perspective that makes no difference. It's just selective enforcement, not that size matters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
If I buy a tool, it's up to me what I use it for
You're not buying a tool though, you're buying a license to use a tool. It is not legal for example to resell certain versions of the Creative Suite. The only product you own is a license key. The binary you get belongs to Adobe - that's one of the major differences between software and hardware that people don't want to accept when they get a physical disc. Once you buy a piece of hardware, you can pretty much do what you want with it. If you buy a sofa, rent it out if you like. You can't rent out the Adobe Suite.
If at any point in time Adobe goes bankrupt, your perpetual license won't activate. If you have no internet access, it won't activate. The only real difference with the cloud model is that it's a time-limited license and not perpetual. The perpetual license relies on other means to coerce users into an upgrade. They really should never have existed because it's a very bad business model.
No, what never should have existed is the idea of a software license. Software purchases should be just that: tool purchases, with full applicability of first sale doctrine, and all that goes with it, just like is the case with Books, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Oh, yeah, and what about everyone else in the software business who does the same?
They wish they could do what Adobe is doing. Do you believe that someone making a $0.99 app wants to give you a lifetime of free updates? People need to be paid in exchange for work. Adobe is paving the way for the viability of long-term software provision. Microsoft wrote a blog recently about this - they wrote that they believe this model is the way forward for software but thought Adobe may have been premature in dropping the perpetual license as customers aren't all accustomed to this model.
Of course M$ thinks that's the way forward. They are running out of ideas of what more features to stuff into their bloatware. So with no more new features and a maturing hardware market, how to extract increasing revenue streams from customers who are quite happy to use what they have? Force them to subscribe.
Everyone wants to get paid for doing nothing, some software companies just think they have discovered a way of doing it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
you'd not lose the use of the software if you stop paying, you just lose the use of the cloud services, support and future product updates.
That model would have to use the one-off payment method and be separate from the subscription model but it could be that you are allowed to pay a large fee first, say $2000 and you get updates for 3 years and after that, it effectively freezes your version. If you want to update a while after that, you'd have to do the large payment again or start from scratch with the cloud license. It would be quite good to be able to freeze the monthly payments and leave the updates but that would let you make huge updates without the upgrade fees while continuing to use it for free when others were paying.
I think they should stick to the exclusive cloud model for now and let it play out. They won't do anything to drive customers away on purpose, quite the opposite. Right now, there is a vocal minority (as usual) resisting the change - the Creative Cloud has 10-15 pages of negative reviews vs 130+ pages of 4/5 or higher reviews. This kind of thing happened when Steam first came along and made it obvious that games that are bought are licenses for games and not owned products. Even to this day, people resist this concept with games sold online but it's fairly widely accepted now.
What should be, and what people are brainwashed into believing are two different things. Variable rate mortgages were also considered dangerous until the mortgage industry with the backing of Greenspan sold it as a "more efficient" tool to finance property. Millions started to accept that notion and have their asses foreclosed upon now. And I'll skip the various examples in politics where people "accepted" things that are provably plain wrong, like WMD in Iraq or Saddam being involved in 9/11 or.... and still a majority of people still believes these two fairytales.
The public can be made believe and be made to accept almost anything if proper PR, spin and marketing is employed. The ones who protest are always marginalized, ridiculed, called loons, etc. Nothing new.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Of course but the same applies to other subscriptions, which people might consider essential. In a scenario where someone has only a $700/m rent, $200/m utility bills, $200/m food bills, maybe the $50 is hard to come by but so would a $600 upgrade be if there was a bug that caused a project to keep crashing and they were outside of their support contract. I am aware that one is mandatory and the other a potential upgrade but at some level of income, software piracy is the only option no matter which payment model is preferred.
I agree with you that having perpetual license options are beneficial for buyers in some cases. However, I think Adobe has the right to sell the software how they choose. Demanding that they support alternative license models forces their software developers to do extra work that nobody has a right to force them to do.
Apple has a monopoly on iOS, you can't force them to sell you a phone without any profit like Google does under an ad-subsidized model in order that the payments fit better with your own income stream.
What would happen if Adobe decided to shut down and discontinue their entire software suite? What would you ask the government to do then? Licenses wouldn't work, projects would be stuck in certain formats no matter if you had a perpetual license or not.
Software has to be considered separately from physical items due to the fact it can't degrade and can be easily duplicated. Being able to run software from a server requires that time-limited licenses exist because some intellectual property is just not feasible for you to own a physical copy of. If Adobe ran all their apps from a server instead of locally, would you object to the exclusive subscription model? There wouldn't be an alternative in that case.
This is in fact the case with Salesforce, which tens of thousands of companies use. If anything happens to Salesforce, the companies using them have no right to a copy of their server code. The government can't really do anything about that.
Insurance is getting paid for doing nothing but almost everyone pays for it. While it's a distinct possibility, I don't think Adobe would ever have the luxury of standing still in the creative industry and you could easily say the same about Google with their advertising presence.
There are perfectly valid arguments in favour of the perpetual license. Everyone can see that if you spend $2000 on the CS Suite and use it and keep a computer to run it for 20 years, you pay $2000 and the Cloud would be $12,000. But the same goes for owning a mobile phone for 20 years vs using a pay-phone when you need it. Should I petition government to force the largest phone provider to allow me to pay for their flagship phone on a per-use basis? Should I petition government to prevent utility companies from shutting off gas and electricity when I can't pay the subscription because my income is unsteady?
Company owners have rights just as consumers have rights and you can't deny them their rights to profit to favour your own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
The key difference, when you buy something, YOU make the decision on when to spend the money. You can make do without the latest gear, in a pinch, and upgrade and splurge when the money train has arrived.
Particularly in times of rising economic uncertainty, being able to control the timing of expenses can be crucial to economical survival, if that weren't the case, then everyone who doesn't rack up his credit card debt and "only pay small monthly installments" were an idiot.
Adobe's move takes exactly that control away from you. It's only $50 some say. Maybe, but even $50 is a lot if you don't have it and need it. Further, you don't just use Adobe's products. If this business model becomes the new normal, you're enslaved by recurring monthly payments, and if you can't make them all various pieces of business critical infrastructure just self-destruct, and you end up in a "you can't afford what you can't afford not to afford" situation.
Who wants to live under a dangling sword of destruction?
Nobody went out of business for using a piece of software that was a release or two out of date. But people go out of business not having the tool at all.
Anyone who doesn't like Adobe's policy should make their voice heard here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model
Here is my problem with the argument as I understand it: People who want to be 'in business' but do not want to be troubled with keeping their software current should be allowed to keep using outdated software as long as they like.
I have been in the graphic design business for nearly 20 years. the first version of Photoshop I used was 2.5 and didn't even include layers. I only mention this because I've been around for a while.
I have ALWAYS stayed as up-to-date as I could, never more than one version behind the current. Sometimes the lump sum was too costly at a particular time.
What I find irritating, and a waste of MY TIME is the emails from suppliers or vendors after I have delivered asking me to save down to CS4 or CS3. I'm already working on new work and I need to change gears to accommodate these people who are too cheap to bring their systems up-to-date. That costs me money.
I know that there are prepress workflows that need to be validated before deploying new software, blah, blah...I'm a designer, not a prepress operator. If the prepress shop cannot validate CS6 in their workflow yet, at least have a single copy of CS6 so you can open my file and backsave, outline type, expand effects, whatever and leave me alone.
You know, if this new model cleans out the hobbyists & non-pros who I find to be thorns in my side, I'm all for it.
Sorry if that sounds elitist, but I am a pro user of Adobe software and I'd be happy if it were restricted to other, fully-commited pros.
Photoshop isn't a civil right.
I don't think that's the agenda. The pricing model makes it more accessible to many hobbyists and non-pros on fixed incomes. It's unlikely that a hobbyist would drop $1-2k on a software suite in a single payment.
It should help with the scenario you describe of having to save files in legacy formats for people who don't upgrade. I'd say the purpose of the pricing model is more to create a one-size fits all rather than create a class divide, which is rarely beneficial and I don't think this will create a divide. There will always be people who don't fit comfortably into a one-size model and businesses make decisions about whether or not to make adjustments for them.
Changes are always going to be met with resistance and immediate changes more so than gradual. It will run its course and people will let Adobe know how they feel. I don't think the complaints will be ignored by them as I don't think it's their goal to alienate customers so they'll listen to constructive feedback about their plans. What's not constructive is to say they're just being greedy and try to get the government to stop them because it's not going to work and it just creates unnecessary tension.
Adobe's business model needs to be sustainable for the long term and it needs to be accessible to all creatives. I think the model they are going with is the best model so far to achieve this. It may cause complications for people with uneven income but it's not a unique complication, just an additional one.