Adobe

[Doug Ladendorf]

Not happy about it myself. My team uses a few of the tools at work and I suppose we will be forced down the path at some point, though I don't think IT will be fond of anything that has to go through the firewall. For my personal use, I've been using Adobe tools since 1996 and have long lost my faith in Adobe. At home I'll go five years before upgrading. I don't use it that much and the software still works fine. The cloud based version effectively forces me into an upgrade-every-year payment schedule that I don't need. But of course that's what it's designed to do. When I eventually need to upgrade I will be looking at alternatives to PhotoShop, Dreamweaver and other tools they are pricing me out of. Hopefully they continue to upgrade and don't pull a Quark.

[William Adams]

Adobe has already cut off most older versions from upgrades --- even the newest version only nets one a 1 year price break.

Either buy into it, or look for an alternative --- unfortunately, Adobe bought my preferred drawing tool (twice! The FTC made them give it up for 10 years the first time). Quesado's Stagestack looks promising, Inkscape is workable, and I've started using Nodebox, Processing and Asymptote (w/ xasy GUI) for all my design work.

Next project is being done in Scribus, and I've used LaTeX for years. Adobe, Apple and Microsoft won't get another penny from me for software.

[Glen Monaghan]

I briefly used Adobe products back when Windoze was a shell on top of MSDOS, and disliked their corporate style and "our way or no way" interface. Mostly avoided since, and still use the same PaintShop Pro image editing and (gasp!) MediaStudioPro video editor I've used for so long I can't remember when I bought them or what I paid (and still using MS Office 2002...).

The old version of PSP works but has the occasional infuriating hiccough on Windows7 and, sadly, MSP only works (poorly) via emulator, so I've slowly and begrudgingly been converting to Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and AfterEffects via CS5. I figured it was pricey for my situation but it rose to the top of the evaluation when searching for alternatives and I figured it was new enough that it should be future proof for long enough that I'd eventually forget what I paid for it and have got my money's worth. Hey, I still drive the same '94 300zx I bought back in '95, which I vaguely remember as being the second biggest but hardest purchase of my life; still love the car and can't remember what I paid for it, so at least I'm consistent! ;^)

On the other hand, my CEO forced me into ditching my old flip phone last fall for a shiny new "smart" phone (which is anything but...) complete with required monthly data plan, which I see mainly as a redundant charge for internet access except via a crippled tiny little screen and virtual keyboard... I can't figure out why people get so enamored with the things. Sure it's sometimes convenient to look up a phone number on the road or check traffic and such, but it just hurts my feelings every month when I see the autopay for more than double what my phone bill used to be, plus I have to check every now and then that I'm not getting into "even more exorbitant fees for going over your limit" territory. (Remember that commercial where a guy was telling kids they had to guess in advance how many minutes they wanted to play with a ball each month, and how they'd have to pay a lot more if they actually played more, but got no refund for playing less?) Maybe the only thing I really like about it is that the GPS app has up-to-date maps and you can adjust them yourself when you find an error, unlike my ancient stand-alone GPS that hasn't seen a map upgrade in 3 years because I've been unwilling to pay for an update that still doesn't have my local neighborhood correct (even though I don't need/use the GPS in my neighborhood 8^P.

So, while the idea of getting updates and upgrades on a more regular basis is somewhat appealing, that change from "pay once and have something you can use until it falls apart" to "pay and keep paying every month and have nothing at all to show for it if you ever decide to stop paying every month" REALLY hurts my feelings and offends the Scotch in me... I might look for an upgrade to CS6 but I don't see a subscription model for this software in my future any more than I see a car lease...

[Chuck Stone]

I will have to change software companies.

The cloud? Give someone else access to proprietary info? And be at their mercy?
AND PAY THEM FOR THE PRIVILEGE? I think not.

I've never really needed the upgrades I've gotten and I can get by
with my older versions and a computer without internet access.
I haven't even tried the suites yet, and don't really see anything I'd
need in them. (have fun with? sure.. need? no.)

[Dee Gallo]

I'm with you Chuck, I dislike having to upgrade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? The "cloud" is just a scam to get my info, which I will not give up voluntarily and certainly not pay for them to take it. They can already take anything off the internet that I've posted anywhere, I don't need to give them more.

[Scott Shepherd]

But Dee, think of what you could do with these tools! I'd love to see you working with these things!

http://youtu.be/ULKXTKZor3A

[Mike Lassiter]

As far as getting the updates more often this way, why can't they continue improving the products AND update just like most programs do. When a update is available make it available and let it be downloaded and installed. Why do you need to wait for the next version when they can do updates for security patches or glitches now - they could also add the improvements so you could get them. I am like others, I am skeptical about the cloud and my work or programs.

[Bob A Miller]

Sorry I feel compelled to chime in here... As a laser geek I have only been learning & playing around with mine for about 7 months... However before that I retired as an IT Security manager...(with enough years in the business to offer the following comments)

I wouldn't trust anyone's cloud storage methodology...period. All the usual reasons, you never know where the servers are, who has outsourced to say India, what there security policies are.. Who gets access, Etc etc. While I won't & can't point or quote any juicy stories, just take my word there are a number of cloud based problems that haven't made front page news. Just be very carefully where you put your data... How important is it to you?

Large corporations reconsider things from their bottom line & how it effects them... Just ask Microsoft who announced a windows 8 rewrite to clarify things.... (today-yesterday) Seems there sales have fallen off dramatically.

Sorry I will now get off my soapbox..

Bob

[Dan Hintz]

I'm sure Corel won't be far behind, it does 2 important things, it generates a continuous income, and it kills off piracy.

Piracy is an oft-touted reason for going to the cloud, but the argument doesn't follow. The license server is a pretty simplistic attack surface, especially when you know where it's calling from (your computer) and where it's calling to (Adobe's fixed servers). The paradigm has already been hacked time and again, so nothing new to see here, folks.

Second, the folks who are (typically) pirating are hobbyists, folks who couldn't (wouldn't?) afford to pay the exhorbitant costs associated with such programs. So, Adobe has stopped a group of pirates that would never have purchased their products in the first place, and will continue to not purchase them. They will kill off some of the larger shops that pirate (like Chinese groups), but only temporarily as they wait for the hack to come out. These groups also will never pay for licensing.

Personally, I don't like the idea, mostly because of the quote below, partly because I'm forced into a monthly upgrade scheme with no guarantee I'll be happy with the "upgrade" I was just force-fed. Stable systems are a good thing to develop on, something I learned as a programmer many many moons ago.

The cloud? Give someone else access to proprietary info? And be at their mercy?
AND PAY THEM FOR THE PRIVILEGE? I think not.

[Scott Shepherd]

I wouldn't trust anyone's cloud storage methodology...period. All the usual reasons, you never know where the servers are, who has outsourced to say India, what there security policies are.. Who gets access, Etc etc. While I won't & can't point or quote any juicy stories, just take my word there are a number of cloud based problems that haven't made front page news. Just be very carefully where you put your data... How important is it to you?

Bob

I think it needs to be clear, the "cloud" side of this is NOT mandatory. You install the applications just as you would if you had the disc, or if you bought it off amazon and downloaded it. The application is INSTALLED on YOUR computer. You do NOT have to be connected to the internet to use your applications. The cloud part of it is simply the "option" (you DON'T HAVE TO install that option) to create a "shared drive", and that shared drive is available from anywhere. If you wanted to use that, you could. If you didn't want to, you don't have to.

If I showed you my install of Photoshop or Illustrator right now, you'd have no way of knowing whether it was the cloud version or the box version, because it's essentially the same (except mine has had had a number of updates that the box version wouldn't have).

I wouldn't fear the cloud part of this at all. You can opt out of that. It's the subscription model that rubs most people the wrong way. Cell phones work the same way. I'd gladly pay $50 a month for the software packages I get, as opposed to the $80-100 a month I pay for my work phone.

[Kevin Nathanson]

I may be able to shed some light on a couple of the questions that have been asked in this thread. I am a former group product manager at Adobe and Apple/Filemaker, and have been in the consumer software business for around 15 years now.

1. The simple stuff first - You don't have to store any of your stuff in the cloud. Scott's explanation above is correct.

2. The reasons that software companies can't issue updates more frequently are matters of economics and government accounting regulations. I'll cover them in that order:

• It is VERY expensive to do what is referred to in the software business as monolithic updates. The testing, training, documentation and localization (translating into all the languages the software is available in) tasks are monumentally large, especially for programs as mature and complex as Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. These updates are large and have to have a market-acceptable number of new features and improvements in them, because...

• People won't pay for them otherwise. This thread is certainly testimony to that phenomenon; look at how many have posted about not upgrading under the monolithic release model. If all a company does is a release that contains bug fixes and a couple new features, the economics don't make sense, because not enough people pay for it to justify all the costs I listed above that are incurred with each release. And, should you ask the company to just do it for free, there is another problem that those of you who are not accountants may not be aware of, called...

• Revenue recognition regulations. These were adopted as part of the Sarbanes Oxley accounting regulations back in the late 90s. Prior to then, software companies that did custom or small market software had a bad habit. They would "recognize" revenues that thy had booked but not completed the work for. This practice can be used to paint a rosier revenue performance picture for investors and the markets than is technically accurate. The new regulations curtailed this practice by declaring that, in order to recognize on the books revenue that had been collected, the entire product/project etc. had to be complete. In other words, no features could be missing, or released later at no charge to the customer. If you WANTED to do that, then you had to "defer" revenue that you had already collected, and not declare it as part of your financial results. So you , had the money in your bank account, but you could not declare it or use it until you had fulfilled the entirety of the product release.

Subscription models dispose of all of this. Because you are paying monthly, you are always getting 100% of the functioning product, and no accounting magic has to take place, except for the case in which you pay a year in advance, but that's easy, as the revenue is just recognized quarterly by dividing the total by four.

There is reduced cost to testing, localizing and deploying updates, because they can be done at a feature or unit level, and there is no "critical mass" that has to be attained in order to achieve what consumers will perceive as an "acceptable" upgrade. Likewise, bug fixes that include feature improvements can be deployed more rapidly, reducing the cumulative amount of frustration in the user base with in-market unfixed bugs. Likewise for compatibility updates, for new OS releases, etc.

Finally, the companies that go to an online subscription model eliminate the cost of packaging, disc production, returns, logistics and fulfillment of product, etc.

Thanks for reading,
K

[Martin Boekers]

I have never been a fan of online storage for numerous reasons, I don't see why companies wouldn't have their own on their servers
(FTP) then at least it can be monitered and the company can have it's own protocals...... An NAS drive is cheap now a days...

[Chuck Stone]

If all a company does is a release that contains bug fixes and a couple new features, the economics don't make sense,

I wonder why these two ideas seem to get lumped together so often.
As far as I'm concerned, a bug fix shouldn't have anything to do with
economics on a per case basis. Buggy software should be fixed at
their expense and that cost built into their business model. The customer
should never have to pay to fix problems that slipped by QC and beta.

New features are a different story. Those would be paid for by the people
who want them.

Now if you're Microsoft, you just find the bugs, create a bug fix and
then you CALL it a feature.

[Chuck Stone]

They can already take anything off the internet that I've posted anywhere, I don't need to give them more.

You'd be amazed at what they take off of your computer!
(without your knowledge)
It's in all the fine print nobody reads when they join a website or
install software. Suffice it to say that if you didn't agree to give
up information when you get online, you would find it VERY
difficult to find any websites to go to.

Check out programs like DoNotTrackMe, Script Blocker, ghostery, NoScript
and the like. Try them for a few days and you'll be amazed at how many
companies are pulling your info when you browse. Why does Twitter or
Facebook need to know that I'm on Sawmill? I don't even have a Twitter
account. But they know where you are, and they know where you've been.
Scarier than Santa Clause..

[Lee DeRaud]

Buggy software should be fixed at
their expense and that cost built into their business model. The customer
should never have to pay to fix problems that slipped by QC and beta.
...
Now if you're Microsoft, you just find the bugs, create a bug fix and
then you CALL it a feature.

I know people like to slag MS, but they seem to be able to roll out updates in a timely, efficient manner without charging their customers a "subscription fee". Ditto for Corel and Intuit, to name two others. Explain to me again why Adobe can't?