polymnia

blah64 said:

fastasleep said:

blah64 said:

fastasleep said:

blah64 said:

A lot more than two people care, I'm done with Adobe as well.  I used to buy their products years ago, but no more.  Subscription software is almost always bullshit, just a way for companies to extract more $ from their customer base.  Lest anyone think they're getting a "deal" with subscription software, you need to remember that companies are moving to this model because it better serves their bottom line, not the other way around.  This should be obvious.

But as long as people continue to buy into the BS, and treat Adobe's cloud storage as some sort of magical thing that they couldn't just as easily implement in a way that people could use their own arbitrary servers, then Adobe will keep sucking all of you suckers' money out even faster than before.  And forcing you to update on their timetable instead of your own.  It's really sad that people have fallen for this, but there are so many things people have stupidly fallen into in recent years, like facebook, so it's not surprising.

The vast majority of their users are like me. We use the software for our jobs, and don’t flinch at paying what ends up cheaper than Keeping up to date with the old Creative Suite Master Collection back in the day. I pay for my CC membership in about half an hour of billable work each month. If you don’t use it for work, there are plenty of cheap alternatives for nearly all their software across the board for you out there. 

But thanks for implying that everyone who uses CC professionally is stupid! /eyerolllllllll

The actual intent was to say that everyone who uses facebook is stupid, but poorly written in haste, and it's a different topic anyway.  Dropped.

But I'll say a little more on the other part.  The price of subscription software might not matter to you, and it might possibly be cheaper for you, personally (but only if you're one of those users that feels some obsessive need to update everything, all the time), but I guarantee you it's more expensive for the average user over time.  It's simple economics.  Adobe would not have made it the only option if that weren't the case.  This is a scheme that enables them to extract more money over time, and in a more "reliable" way.  They are able to make enough additional money this way to overcome the losses of previous users who won't play these games and have moved to other software.  My needs are lighter weight in any case, and I never felt the need to update every damn time a new version of photoshop came out, especially when there were often frustrating changes to deal with that offset the new features.  Everyone has a different use case.

However, when the user base didn't immediately say "WTF Adobe, I'm Not Doing This!" out of the gate, it provided them the ability to remove the option for the rest of us to freely spend a lot of coin to buy a valuable piece of software without having to rent it (and allow it to phone home).  So your choices affect me, and a lot of other people, in a negative way.

The other shit part about subscription software, and especially when tied to proprietary servers/services, is that in aggregate they're dangerous to people's privacy.  I'm not going to work on personal documents or private business documents and have them sitting out on data aggregating company servers, whether they're graphics or text.  Adobe is a small player in this market, but make no mistake they are still part of it.  The ability to do anything on one's computer without having a corporate entity peering over your shoulder is getting more and more difficult, mostly because people are willing to bend over for all the new business models that are being shoved down their throats.  Again, you might not care personally, but your decisions definitely affect other people's freedoms.

If you think a vocal minority of users was going to stop Adobe's pricing model to change, you're just as delusional as the people who repeatedly complain about Apple's hardware decisions in forum comments and expect them to change.

Again, I'm paying LESS than I did even updating about every other year or so back in the day. I also get bugs fixed and new features added much more quickly than back then as well, where I'd often be stuck with deal-breaker bugs until the next year's version of something as they'd push off updates to the next major release. Which you're also delusional about.

So what you're saying is that you didn't like the way Adobe released their software.  That's a fair assessment, but it doesn't mean subscription software is a good solution, it just means you prefer it in the case of Adobe compared with the even worse shit they used to pull.  I'm not ignorant of software development, I did it myself for over 30 years, released several products, at least one of which you've probably heard of, given the industry you're in. 

Your complaint of being stuck with "deal-breaker bugs" is mostly BS.  When you purchase and own a perpetual license for a piece of software rather than renting temporary use of it, you never have to move to the latest version if it's buggy.  If a company is so horribly incompetent that they can't release robust versions of their programs, AND they can't be bothered to fix "deal-breaker bugs" in a timely fashion, then they should not be supported.  You don't move to new, buggy versions, and as soon as customers stop supporting a software company for pulling that crap, they either get their shit in shape or they go out of business.  Oh but wait, Adobe has a monopolistic position...  which is also a terrible thing in the software world, and it's enabled by customers.  When people decide to subscribe to monopolistic software by renting it, that further embeds and emboldens monopolistic companies.

Anyway, I find it tiring to engage on this blog because so many people can't have civil conversations.  It's sad how you always seem to come up with individually derogatory comments ("you're delusional", multiple "eyeroll", etc.).  Have you ever thought about what that says about you personally?  Yes, that's a personal slight (though at least a meaningful one, if you take it to heart) in response because you started it for no good reason.  I know this industry, I know a lot of dirt behind the scenes, and I've been involved with decisions like this at several companies.  They love people like you.

While your comments below about average/casual users aren't wrong, they're beside the point.  And your personal experience is beside the point.  Adobe is extracting more money on average from their user base now.  I don't follow the company that closely anymore, I don't read their quarterlies, and I haven't even used any of their software for several years now, so I'm mostly out of the loop with them specifically.  But a quick scan of their stock price compared to when they moved to a subscription model tells you everything you need to know.  Their user base hasn't grown 10-fold in the past 7 years, but their stock price has because they're extracting more money per user, and they get a different multiple because you're presumed to be locked in.

One other thing, did you notice that this article is about iOS software?  Which at this point is clearly not dominated by professionals such as yourself.

MOST users of this suite of software are getting their seats paid for by their work. The next in line would likely be people like myself who are professional self-employed/small business owners who have no problem paying for the software that earns their income. If you think "average users" are casual home users, you're very, very wrong, sorry to say. So, it's fine for the "average" user, but don't pretend like you're the average user. You're not.

As for the privacy rant... I don't know what you're smoking, but I don't have to use Adobe's servers for anything if I don't want. You don't have to use shared libraries or cloud documents if you don't want. I don't, for the most part, and nobody is peering over any shoulders. My decision affect other people's freedoms? /serious eyeroll

You're using Adobe's servers to validate your software, and unless you're offline it's happening each and every time you launch, at the very minimum.  Which means it ties to your personal account information.  Did you happen to notice that 7.5 million CC accounts were exposed recently?  Your name, ID, email, information about which software you use, subscription statuses, etc.  That stuff doesn't need to exist when you buy a piece of software, but it does when you're renting.

Typically there's a lot more data traveling back and forth then you think, or that you'd want, when apps like this phone home.  I know you'll give another obnoxious eyeroll, because you don't work in this industry.  I do.  What most companies say publicly doesn't reflect reality.  I haven't tested any Adobe software for a long time because I don't use it personally, and to do thorough testing takes a good deal of time to set up.  But It's back on my radar, thanks.

GO USE SOMETHING ELSE. YOU DON'T NEED PHOTOSHOP.

What a weird and small-minded thing to say, and irrelevant.  Yes, thankfully I don't need photoshop.  In fact I don't give a rat's ass about photoshop.  I do care about the freedom for people to purchase and use software as they see fit, for as long as they want to keep it on a given machine, and when large numbers of people opt into bullshit software rentals without thinking about the bigger picture societal consequences, that's frustrating. 

The result of people buying into this with a few large pieces of software is that now everyone and their brother thinks they can do the same thing.  Just earlier this week I was researching several (mobile) apps in a particular area of interest, found about 5 or 6 or so of interest, and 3 of them appear to have arbitrarily decided to make their products subscription based.  With no justifiable reason in their cases (niche-educational apps with fixed content) other than it seems to be the fashionable way to try to extract more money from their users.  Obviously I didn't choose any of the subscription apps, but if they'd offered them up for purchase at say $10 it would have been a no-brainer.  Their loss.  But also my loss and society's loss, because this is going to get worse before it gets better.

Oh, and for what it's worth, it's not just me, I thought I'd go look up CC on wikipedia and there's a page worth of details in the Criticism section.  I should have just pointed you there.  30,000 signatures within the first few weeks alone.  Lovely.

seanismorris said:

When’s the last the you heard of someone repairing earbuds?
Ifixit exists for clicks... Kinda like ...

sflocal said:

As a heavy Lightroom/Photoshop user, I find Adobe's lack of preparedness with Catalina to be inexcusable and lazy.  They had literally years to get read for it, and they dropped the ball.  Unbelievable.