The Creative Cloud management team has updated their blog:
[W]e have heard some concerns around our move to Creative Cloud. Three main themes are coming through:
- File access. Customers want to be sure that, if their membership to Creative Cloud lapses, they will still have access to their files.
- Photographers, particularly photo enthusiasts, are looking for a more tailored offering that focuses on their particular workflows.
- Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them and would rather continue to purchase desktop applications as before.
[…]
For photographers, we are looking at potential offerings that recognize the photography community – because it is so broad – has some unique needs.
With regards to file access, Adobe completely agrees that customers should have access to their files if they choose to stop their Creative Cloud membership. Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.
They ask that if you have comments or questions, “please post them in our forums, where we are continuing the conversation.”
Update: CNET has posted an interview with Creative Cloud SVP David Wadhwani.
I will share this – if someone can’t afford 50 bucks a month, they are in the wrong business. Hobbist ? Suck it up cupcake. Now that I am done saying that and putting my marketing hat on, I will say this.
I am not interested in wearing my marketing hat.
Get over it everyone. It is a change event. 10 years forward, you will all realize how much better it is.
Flame me if you like, but the entire print industry told me i had my head up my rear end when i explained that the industry would use PDF format to exchange print files.
Price is only one of many things that have been debated over the past three weeks. This is also reflected in John’s posting. Price is only a minor detail in that posting.
Just read the quoted part above. The major points are all there?
The issue is choice. I actually like the CC idea; you get all the apps for a low monthly fee. For now at least, but what happens when Adobe, since they exclusively own and control access to their apps unilaterally decides to raise their prices? And they will. It’s all fun and games now until it bites you in the butt. Again the problem is choice. I would rather OWN than RENT. Currently I own CS6 in perpetuity. All my files, techniques, and skill are exclusive and I own them. Why not allow those of us who don’t want to be at the teet of Adobe every month to purchase a license in perpetuity? I already have a monthly cell phone bill, cable, mortgage, etc. Can I have ONE thing that’s predictable? What about people who have never worked on Adobe products? You mean to tell me they still have to purchase a year’s subscription even after a few weeks in they don’t like it? You see the problem here? Too many variables for a sweeping and somewhat short-sighted solution. I suspect piracy will be way down and that is a major motivation for Adobe to have made this move. There has to be a way to deal with that aspect. Not a good Adobe this will come back to bite you.
Sorry but you still don’t own CS6. You still have to activate it, and when Adobe decide to switch off the activation servers then it’s game over.
There is a false believe that if you own a physical or digital download, that’s your property that you are entitled to keep and use it forever. That’s no longer true – you might own the plastic but you don’t own the code, just a licence to use the code. So its the same as the CC model in some respects, only you are paying less upfront with CC.
Yes, we license it. But splitting hairs won’t bring us forward. Adobe has demonstrated, that they probably won’t leave their customers stranded (CS2 activation server shutdown and accompanying download of activation-free software just a few months ago).
So, while you’re technically correct, i think the distinction buy-to-own vs. subscription captures it pretty well.
“So its the same as the CC model in some respects, only you are paying less upfront with CC.”
If you think paying less up front is a positive aspect of CC … come back and discuss the matter in about 20 years and tell us how much “less” you spent …
Yes, we have always been buying a license of use for software … until now there were never any limitations on how long we could use that license, how long we must continue to pay for that use … and there was a certain amount of equity in owning that license … CC wipes the slate clean on all those aspects … now you and others claim it is no “different” … You (and the Adobe Executives) must be seeing something that escapes many other users … because no matter how you add up the initial savings … CC licensing isn’t cutting it on many fronts … It stacks the deck in a very one-sided fashion … gambling isn’t a trait I want to call into play when it comes to my livelihood …
OMG. You people are stupid. You don’t own it, you have to activate it. SHUT UP. I still have my copy of cs3, cs4 and cs5. Guess what. I OWN THEM. I can install them, uninstall them, reinstall them whenever I want. Period. I have purchased a right to use this product so Adobe just cannot go in and say that I can’t no longer use it. I own the right to use it. I paid for that right. All you CC morons, give it a break. You just don’t see the bigger picture here. It is not about having the fee, it is about them making you pay the fee and not giving the option to just buy outright. I personally do not want to be a part of the CC. I like all my stuff on my computer just where it is. I don’t want a monthly bill to be able to edit. And the moron that said if you can’t afford 50 bucks then you are in the wrong business. What an idiot. What if you have 6 computers. Now is it 300 per month and in this economy you need every dollor you can get to make ends meet. What Adobe is doing is wrong. Period. What if your car payment never ended. Would you like that?
Calling people names will not resolve anything.
Plus: since CS2, you actually can’t just install the software any longer. You are at the mercy of some activation-server.
Again: this is a case where adobe deserves credit for doing the right thing and giving us CS2 sans-activation when they were shutting down said servers for the CS2.
(But is still believe that activation in and of itself is a bad idea to start with. But this is not going away, either)
I will consider CC when Adobe stops being one of the artful corporate tax dodgers.
Really, “cupcake?” Let’s look at the whole situation, $50/month?–not much, really. So, Microsoft feels $50 is also a deal for their OS, Apple feels $75 is a deal (Apple people have a proven track record of paying more), Office apps–wth, $50–each ($50 isn’t much, right?). Now, let’s throw in Quicken at $30 month, Google decides it wants $100/month (you get so much, right?), and then there’s iTunes (another $50–ain’t much), then there’s Quicktime, Flash, etc. etc. etc.
So, pony up, cupcake. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I’m not at all concerned with file compatibility. It’s surprising that would be listed first.
As it was explained to me, for my small business, we go from spending $200 every 18-24 months for workstations spread over a few weeks to spending $70 per workstation PER MONTH! The cost increase is significant to really move the needle on a business like mine. And *not* in a good way.
michaelejahn , I see your head is still in the same place. Nice to know that some things never change, ass hat.
[Totally uncalled for, Tom. –J.]
So it’s OK for michaeljahn to tell me to “Suck It Up, Cupcake?” but not OK for Tom to provide an equally rude response. Why? Because michaeljahn toes the party line?
Looks like double standards, John
[Sorry, I can’t get to every one of the hundreds of comments that have flowed in, and I didn’t see Michael’s remark. I don’t condone name-calling by anyone here. –J.]
I have never worked for Adobe. I have nothing to gain. When I worked for a printer, I saw an urgent need for a file format for reliable file exchange. Trust me when I say this, I was a loud mouthed pain in the butt to Adobe – at AGFA, we were a somewhat unhappy customer – but Adobe did the right thing, and now we have an ISO standard for PDF and PDF/X.
I walk no ‘company line’ – I just call ’em as I see ‘um. There are massive advantages to distribution / bug fixes / updates as it relates to a subscription approach. People can say what they like about me, really, i could care less, as I know I am right – the subscription will be less expensive, and it will offer more. Plug-in developers will be supported.
BTW – I say “suck it up cupcake” to my kids, my co-workers – change is scary, confusing, sometimes hard – but to me, this is a not that type of change. I think Adobe may offer a choice, but to me, that is a short lived stop-gap appeasement to existing old guard customers. Faster bandwidth will eventually enable us do all this stuff in a browser, and on any device you touch, using your username and password – just like watching NetFlix.
Michael: Constant and incremental updates and bug fixes have been done for years by most professional-grade software companies with a “maintenance” model, under which after your initial purchase, you pay an annual fee that gives you access to technical support and all the updates (as often as the vendor wants), and when you stop paying all that happens is that you give up those two benefits. The “subscription” model is not a necessary model to get the constant updates you say you like, except to create a a constant, mandatory, and unending income stream for the vendor.
But John, you have NOW seen michaeljahn’s comment, but have not slammed him for his condescending, rude, and very insulting “Suck it up cupcake” remark.
[Sorry, Mel: I’m actually trying to build apps all day here & honestly don’t have time to comment on every post. –J.]
Also, I find Tom Daigon’s retort to the point and very much called for in the face of michaeljahn’s brashness. Note also that Tom did not call any names, either. To me, he was simply doing what michaeljahn did in HIS phrase, “I just call ‘em as I see ‘um.”
Just trying to hold you up to your formerly higher professional standard, John. Not calling anybody names, though… ;-}
John: apps, schnapps! You created this blog, you created this topic that has gotten a predictably heavy anti-Adobe response. I think it is your journalistic duty to tend to it fairly. Your comments here have so far been heavily pro-Adobe. Some weeks ago, you mused about how you should publicly interact with this hot topic. In a private email, I suggested that you lie low and let the bullets fly. You chose instead to join the fray. That’s fine, but your input has been very partisan in the pro-Adobe direction.
I can understand that the response count may have overwhelmed you, but that comes with the territory, and you need to deal with it. You lashed out at Tom Daigon for his opinion. I then pointed out michaeljahn’s post to you. If you don’t cut him, too, you come across as unwilling to offer balanced feedback. You may have to stop writing apps long enough to read what’s going on here. Or not — it’s your blog, but its judges will be its readers!
Not sure how ‘suck it up cupcake’ compares to ‘asshat’ on the world wide rudeness / brashness scale, but I was trying to somewhat funny ( which clearly was lost ) – if any of you were offended, sorrys all around. I am a just sharing my feeling as a realist. I think software subscription business model is here to stay, like it or not.
having said that – this is something else that is very real.
Since the Creative Cloud announcement, Adobe’s stock valuation has fallen 10% relative to the NASDAQ index. On paper, this reduces the value of the company by about $2 billion.
So, we have that. Something has gotta change / give.
I have to agree with Tom’s basic sentiment and I find michaelejahn’s attitude rather shortsighted, to put it nicely. The issue for me is that by going to the CC concept, Adobe has nearly doubled my annual cost once the introductory period is over. On top of that I have to pay this cost each year for what has essentially become “trial ware” — if I don’t pay I lose it altogether. Staying with CS6 is fine for now but how long will that be supported by Adobe and by one’s OS? The other concern is how long will Adobe’s subscription price remain at $50/month once they have us?
The drastic price increase for many of us with CC does make me wonder how well Adobe is being managed and whether there is going to be another grab for money in the future. From what I’ve heard from Adobe so far, I think michaelejahn’s comment perfectly reflects Adobe’s attitude.
I just had a very “interesting” exchange with an official Adobe tweeter yesterday. I tweeted about a very specific InDesign bug, then the tweeter asked me about details, which I replied to by referring to a complete blog post. Then they kept insisting that I did certain things wrong, even though if they actually read what I wrote they would know not only were their “suggestions” completely irrelevant, I didn’t even make the mistakes they claimed I made.
So it’s really hard to believe Adobe really is listening. They might be pretending to listen, but I suspect they won’t actually “read” what we say and keep insisting we’ve done certain things wrong…
Simple summary (in part):
1. That’s a lot of wordage (at the Creative Cloud blog) which doesn’t actually say much at all.
2. The in-substance and in-application evidence for “the constant stream of innovation that we’re able to deliver … our job is to delight our customers with innovation” has not been compelling to date – certainly not so for Photoshop and Illustrator in my own experience. Slow start?
3. Using data points such as “with over 80% of people purchasing on Adobe.com selecting Creative Cloud” isn’t convincing, at all. If that is 80% of all first-time purchasers then that would be very a different outcome compared with 80% of all existing license holders. Anyways, the 80% number applied only before the announcements made at Adobe MAX and very likely doesn’t apply to purchases made in the past month …
4. … “build a meaningful worldwide community to share work and find inspiration” – but, there are all sorts of communities in place for this; many of which long pre-date the Creative Cloud. There is a large community of people who have authored books, created and published tutorials, distributed Actions and Scripts, developed plug-ins and Extensions, given away resources (in numerous formats), etc. – does the Creative Cloud make all of them stronger, more motivated, better rewarded …?
and 5. Re: “For example, a tablet version of Photoshop can tap into the computing power of Adobe servers to compensate for feeble mobile processors, and Adobe’s online services will become a place where creative professionals can sell their work with Adobe’s active help” – but from the CNET article – well, that ain’t gonna cut it. Neither example makes any marketing sense. Particularly for the professional/commercial user.
Zero new informastion, and obviously Adobe is not listening.
Just repeating their message is not going to help, perpetual licences ARE a central issue, and I will never rent software. For my case I have already changed strategy in the last weeks.
Photoshop has to stay, but it will be CS6 for the longer forseeable future. Everything concerning video will not contain any piece of Adobe software.
Please stop publishing such marketing rubbish unless you really have something to say!
From the CNET interview: “For example, a tablet version of Photoshop can tap into the computing power of Adobe servers to compensate for feeble mobile processors” … just how many generations of tablet processors will retain the “feeble” classification? I’d wager, not many. I think most tablets will have hardware capabilities to run desktop equivalent OS and software sooner than Adobe hopes they will (How long before Apple offers an OS X capable tablet to rival the Surface Pro?) … basing their future on such “innovations” … just does’t seem sound or very forward thinking …. one more example of how Adobe doesn’t seem to get it … I’m all for innovation … but the innovation offered has to be compelling, useful and can stand the test of time … much like CC, I don’t have any faith that Adobe has my best interests in mind. These latest comments provide no additional clarity or assurance that they are indeed listening to their customers who have raised concerns.
John quoted Jeffery Zeldman about his positive creative cloud thoughts… Adobe needs more of that. Of course Adobe Employees share the vision for cloud based innovation, synergy (all the marketing terms). If it fed my kids I’d be into it too!
Is there an easy way to see where Adobe’s business department came from? Are any or all of them ex-creatives? I think John was recruited from creative 1999 or 2000-ish. Does that mean he hasn’t paid for Adobe software in 12 years, or does he still have to?
Adobe employees need to find more real people to talk for them. For me the price isn’t that bad. It’s the weird posturing.
All marketing nonsense.
I can guarantee you that “80%” (see how I used that random percentage amount?!?!) of the “themes” that are bothering users would go away if the following were done:
– Cut the rental price in half (of whatever messy packaging system is being proposed), making it comparable to purchasing the desktop perpetual licenses. This not only removes the main price complaint, but reduces the perception that this is a blatant money-grab by Adobe.
– Make the rental system more like purchasing/bundling insurance. The more individual software applications that are rented, the more affordable each rental becomes. In addition, make the whole server/cloud-backed tablet thing optional, make the cloud storage optional, etc. This would make things more appealing to users like myself who are a photographer, but need more than just Photoshop and Lightroom (I also heavily use InDesign, Acrobat, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver), but don’t need the other “80%” of the software that I’ve never heard of (see how that percentage keeps popping up?!?!?).
– Recognize some basic humility, and apologize for wrong doing. Adobe is NOT listening. As an example, a previous post by John suggested that perpetual license users feel like second-class citizens because they don’t get the new features that are part of CC. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Adobe has made me feel like a second-class citizen by derogatory remarks in blogs (like this one) and terminology in Adobe tweets (by Adobe or Adobe reps), suggesting that non-CC users are not “cool” and that CC updates are “exclusive” (is this a ‘C’ountry ‘C’lub, or software?). Berating people into using the new software is not going to win users—remember that whole catching flies with honey v. vinegar?!?!
Is Adobe “really” listening, or just “hearing” (aka, therapist speak for “ignoring”). The CC team blog post reads like a college PR class in creating a spin. The post might as well had said that the CC team “didn’t inhale.”
The general public that this issues affects does pay attention, just like people have paid attention to the Microsoft PR “spin” that Windows 8 has sold “millions” of copies, but fails to say how many copies are actively installed and being used. Pundits are quick to point out that Microsoft is heavily padding their numbers with the copies sold to OEMs and distributors—not what is actually being used. Is Adobe doing the same? Lets have some transparency please.
In closing, as I’ve mentioned before (and John was quick to berate), the digital rental system has failed miserably in areas where the ONLY choice was to rent. Any other software developers that are using the rental system are also selling perpetual licenses—they’d lose their shorts if they did otherwise.
[I haven’t “berated” anyone. I’ve sought to calmly & usefully engage in conversations with people despite being called a rapist, asshole, and worse. There are legitimate questions & criticisms to point at Adobe. You’d do well not to undercut those & yourself. –J.]
t’s nice to say that ‘there are legitimate questions and criticism,’ but Adobe continually (since day one) responds with the “Top XX Myths Regarding Adobe CC,” but never addresses what we (the users) feel are “legitimate questions and concerns” And let’s be real—the users’ perception of the issue should ALWAYS be seen as legitimate. Instead, they are danced around, or completely ignored—which only fuels/spreads the legitimacy of users’ concerns, not make them go away.
One other item that will help reduce the “themes” that are bothering users.
– In regards to pricing, it is not just the immediate—and real—fear of the initial price gouging, but that the rental system will most definitely create the ability for Adobe to raise prices at its whim—today is $50/mo., next month it is $100/mo. What guarantee will there be that this won’t happen? Other than the possibility of an investigation by the FTC as an anti-trust issue, what will stop Adobe from doing so, as there is little legitimate competition?
When Adobe first announced the CC (May 2012), my personal fear was that Adobe would abandon the perpetual licensing system. That fear has come true. Now I wait for the other shoe to drop…
“what will stop Adobe from doing so, as there is little legitimate competition?” – well, I guess they could claim that they’ve now actually created a whole new greenfield for competitors. For example, I’d expect that many of the progressive companies who’ve built and refined plug-ins over the years will be looking at running their code outside of the CS apps they once plugged into (under the SDK and API rules). Topaz Labs is a decent, though currently limited, example for Photoshop – with their photoFXlab standalone (which, it seems to me, suddenly got quite a bit cheaper …?).
““what will stop Adobe from doing so, as there is little legitimate competition?” – well, I guess they could claim that they’ve now actually created a whole new greenfield for competitors.”
True. As I mentioned at Photography Bay look to Google to create a “Lightroom” lite, then a “Photoshop”, then start adding bits to its own creative suite. They’ll either offer it free or at lower price than Adobe. If anyone has the resources and incentive, it’s Google.
***
“Zero new information, and obviously Adobe is not listening.”
Although I’m not crazy about CC, I think we have to cut Adobe some slack. Maybe they are listening but just haven’t responded yet. They’re thinking this through carefully. I don’t always immediately respond to simple emails at work. Sometimes I sit on them for hours or days as I think of the proper response. With such a big product as CC, and as big a company as Adobe, it’s silly to think that they would respond to every posting on the Internet. Or do an immediate about face just because I said so.
“look to Google to create a “Lightroom” lite, then a “Photoshop” …. if anyone has the resources and incentive, it’s Google”
Well they already have Nik in their pocket – I still cannot get used to seeing the Google logo sitting in the middle of my Photoshop workspace from time-to-time. Plus, there are other companies around who could provide the RAW file processing capabilities which Nik and Topaz do not have or incorporate.
That 80% figure just says “more CC has been sold than CS”. It’s not like that means anything. CS6 is almost a year old. It could easily mean: 1 person bought the suite, 4 signed up for CC.
The two _actually_ interesting parts will be:
a) how many (in number of subscriptions, not percent) did actually sign up for CC before May 6th
b) how many (in number of subscriptions, not percent) did sign up after May 6th.
The CS/CC Ratio is not really saying anything.
John; I think that a “tailored offering” for the photo enthusiasts with Lightroom and Photoshop CC could be turned into a home run, if the price is right.
It have to be lower than $20 though. The price has to match what you pay now over 18 month for an upgrade from Photoshop CS5 til CS6 (vanilla versions). I think you made a small mistake by calculating the upgrade cost for the Extended versions – but photo enthusiasts doesn’t care about those extra 3D-features.
I’m aware that you will end up offering Lightroom and Photoshop CC for a lower cost of a normal CC single App this way, but you could argue that Photoshop CC is the only App to cater to the enthusiasts. It is a very different thing with InDesign, Dreamweaver and After Effects for example.
Looking forward to what you cook up for us.
Peace.
John:
I’m glad to read your post that Adobe is listening. I, for one, believe there are many like me who have read these recent posts with intense interest, but have chosen to stay on the sidelines, until now. For every one who has posted concern/anxiety about these changes, there certainly must be many, many more who feel the same but have chosen to remain silent. Like me.
So, I remain optimistic that Adobe’s actions match their (new) words that they’re listening to a substantial minority of their customers. Talk is cheap, and though I have never had any reason to doubt your sincerity, your commitment to your audience, or your belief that you are on the right side of this debate (nor do I now), my jury is out until I see these final details. I WANT to be a believer in this new model, but I see Adobe as having one last chance to sell me on it. Or I’m lost forever.
Thank you for your efforts in communicating with us, I hope it’s not for naught.
Well said, Lajaca. Same here, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines since the announcement. I’ve followed John’s blog since he took the position years ago and have really enjoyed his insight.
Consider, Adobe… this move is so tough on my small business I can’t help but feel a little betrayed.
All I really need is Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. This jump in pricing is significant and I hope John and team reconsider. I understand changing your prices. But this much is really, really drastic.
The CC team’s posting is a start. But they’re not listening if they believe those were the three top themes. In all that I’ve read on this topic, which is quite a bit, there’s no question that one of the top three issues is the big jump in cost once you get into the upgrade cycle (which applies to nearly everyone posting). That issue somehow got left out. Depending on how often you typically upgrade, the new cost is 1.5x-2x the old cost, sometimes more. To be honest, the blog should mention *that* very significant theme.
Exactly!
This (the now and future pricing, plus its comparison with licensing upgrades) is clearly something that they don’t wish to open up for any further discussion. Nor is the “return to standard licensing issue” – which is explicitly rejected in the blog piece. This – for me – underscores Adobe’s primary rationale. That is: you wait, we will be able to justify this all when the innovative new features come rolling down the pike. Clearly this is a remake the company or bust bet – but it’s their decision.
Like many, I’m an “every other upgrade” upgrader. This is being challenged by the new upgrade rules which are an insult within themselves.
This whole move to the CC is another classic Adobe blunder. How many times can Adobe surprise their core creative customers with a major shift in the workflow and leave no options? Pretty one sided and not the best of moves I would have to say. This new direction just was not thought out fully and is too one sided skewed towards Adobe’s wants and needs. Well Adobe for now the last 25 years have been a good ride together, but you make me step back and wonder what our futures might be, as CC is not looking all that great to me.
An interesting follow-up/update: “Adobe just announced that it has acqui-hired Ideacodes, … Ideacodes’ co-founders Emily Chang and Max Kielser will join Adobe as creative directors of Creative Cloud.” – see: http://tinyurl.com/odnjhxw (dated yesterday).
Regarding the bullet points John reposts above, what continues to gall is that Adobe’s business model for CC subscriptions clearly was not intended to include ongoing “access” to your files once you stopped paying. Why else wouldn’t it have been mentioned, and why is it only vaguely being proposed now? It’s too central an issue to have somehow just been overlooked. The plan was to make you pay forever, and only the apparently unexpected(!)backlash has moved the company to reconsider.
Good point. It’s difficult to imagine how poorly thought out this whole issue has been on Adobe’s side. Not thinking about loss of access to file is a huge red light saying, “we really DIDN’T think this through very well.”
Ahh, I wondered why my friends and family started calling me “Cupcake” a few weeks ago. I guess the historical reference is to “Let them eat cake.”
Perhaps, probably, I am in the wrong business, as Mr Cupcakes said above. It sure often feels wrong these days, as a business. It’s pretty ridiculous how little money I manage to make using these tools these days, though once it was quite lucrative. A friend, a long term designer of skill and reputation, recently became a message therapist instead of trying to do this thing. And that was before the C.C. announcement.
Just to say, as my first point, that some of us are not pulling in vast sums. Expenses do matter. Jeffery Zeldman and some elite designers are doing very well, and they deserve to be. Those of us working for small businesses and individual clients are perhaps doing less well than we might be these days, less well than we used to. Now we need to pay much more for our core tools, and we have less control over our future payment for and use of those tools.
My second point is that Adobe is seriously losing goodwill here from a vast group of formerly loyal users. I’m glad you are listening. If you are really listening you know that it’s not just that “Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them and would rather continue to purchase desktop applications as before” as stated in the post. MOST, by a good margin, in every poll I’ve seen, most recently one on Cnet, are very averse to this model. It seems clear to me from online polls and forums that something like 90% of us abhor this, a few percent tolerate it, and a few percent are happy about it. This is a big deal, not a few disgruntled losers.
It’s not just in forums like this. Yesterday’s Macintouch had a page of user comments, the vast majority anti-creative cloud. People are looking for alternatives to Adobe in these forums. Macintouch is a community with no particular axe to grind, just Mac users, some digital creatives — basically just software users. Their opinion: negative. Their question: “What alternatives can I use?”
It’s so sad. You have lost so much goodwill so fast. You need to respond quickly and honestly, with substance — not with marketing. I don’t think people are buying the marketing. Just read these forums everywhere. I know some Adobe people are doing some of that. The point is to read and note the comments and respond with real actions, not by posting marketing on those forums or with press releases. I think it is too late to turn around the psychology with marketing.
The main thing is many of your customers view of Adobe has shifted dramatically toward cynicism and distrust. To those users, most of us, marketing is less effective. You can see what people think clearly yourself by reading any forum where this comes up. It’s not just that a few grumps are ranting. I’m not making this up, as just my opinion. It’s everywhere; you can easily see this shift. I’m sure you have MBA’s onboard who can try to put a dollar value on the loss of loyalty and goodwill of 80% of your user base. What you have lost and continue to lose is something that is hard to build with years of good marketing, customer relations, product, and pricing. Gone in a heartbeat. You can’t get it back as quickly as you have just lost it. Can you get it back at all? Can you thrive without it? Probably the MBAs have done those calculations, the value to the company of that loss? I suppose it might come out better for you by increasing the financial gain from the users who remain on the hook. But I think it is hard for a company to do well when its remaining customers have ill will toward it.
It makes me sad because I have enjoyed and benefitted from Adobe software so much in the past, and now I think you are in a death spiral. I hope you can recover from this and continue to provide us with tools we love using.
Excellent post, John. Spot on.
And what about that whole thing we were told about upgrading to CS6? That it was necessary to do so, as only CS6 users would be able to upgrade to CS7?
More importantly, though, are the Terms of Service for CC. If you read through them, they’re an absolute nightmare. For example:
From 6. Use of Service and Materials
6.4 Adobe may modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Services or Materials, or any portion thereof, with or without notice. You agree that Adobe shall not be liable to you or anyone else if we do so.
Fantastic.
Good News!! “If” your are going to make a Licensing Option.
According to Cnet Adobe has no intention in changing its new Business model.
Creative Cloud will never work where there are security issues on there network.
Especially when you have to do security testing when every you update.
The bottom line is no one wants another monthly bill. People are already Bailing on Photoshop, and looking seriously for an alternative. Have you seen the Petition on Change.org?
I am sure Adobe doesn’t want to become another Microsoft with pie in it’s face?
The wording is very, very interesting: “Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them”, “customers who are not yet ready to move”.
So, like before, Adobe’s stance is that anyone who is not willing to move to CC just needs convincing and eventually will be ready.
That blog post is just a re-iteration of the Adobe sales pitch we have heard in the last three weeks. And a re-iteration of avoiding the core topics. Singling out these three issues as the “main themes” is a slap in the face for anyone who has serious concerns about long-term software investment.
Adobe is not listening, they are just waiting for the question to end so they can push the same “stream of innovation” sales pitch over and over.
Agreed. They aren’t going to give on the rental model, so don’t expect that. Everything I’m seeing here and in the news articles is simply that Adobe is just trying to make it all better with a PR push “outreach”.
They could have made an “outreach” to us before they decided to switch to rental-only. What kind of a conversation is this other than “tell us how you’re going to accept this is a done deal?” What other response is there but to say “no” now that they’ve laid down an ultimatum of rent-it-or-leave?
This model means they hold all the controls for price, update schedule, compatibility, purchase schedule, and our workflow–and the ability to shut off our livelihood if we don’t like it. How can you negotiate when one side has all the power? Honestly, all you can do is decide not to play the game–and the only time to do that is now when you don’t have a library of CC files.
It looks like Adobe is prepping itself to be Google’s (Eric, I vant to control your life, Schmidt) next acquisition. Then we won’t have to do anything creative, Google will do it for us since they will have determined what everyone should think.
I was just thinking… For years people thought Apple was holding back features from iPhoto / Aperture to not step on Adobe’s PS territory for political reasons.
Apple could also be one of the companies in a position to step in and take marketshare should they want to. If Apple released a DTP suite, I would be all over it in a heartbeat.
At this point, just about anything is better than Adobe’s CC scam, I mean scheme.
You need look no further than to compare the capabilities of Aperture 3 and Lightroom 5 … yes. Lr5 does have the edge over Aperture in the Develop module … but if you look beyond that … it is not Apple that stifles their users “creative” intent … it is Adobe … just try comparing output for books and slideshows and you see quite quickly which developer is placing strict, needless limitations on their users …
The other BIG benefit with buying Aperture through Apple’s Mac App Store is unlimited installs within your household/account.
I don’t feel I should have to be “forced” in to paying a company a monthly fee. I say forced because if and when I have to upgrade I will not have an option of paying up front…. I will have to forced in to paying a monthly fee.
If you were listening then you would still offer perpetual licenses. You better make a decision if you want to listen to your customers or watch all your loyal customers jump ship. Give us both options… you can’t force me to go cloud.
So I am wary of the CC and the Cloud, I bought a subscription and uploaded some files to the Cloud, today I tried to access these files only to find that the Cloud was unavailable due to updates! I received no notice that this was to occur, lucky for me it was only a test, but in real life it could have seriously impacted my work.
I have used Adobe products since Photoshop 2.0 was released. Since then, as an educator, I’ve used Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and others constantly. Right now, I think Adobe is going to cut off a large number of consumers because Creative Cloud is simply too expensive. My school cannot afford a monthly subscription; I cannot afford it either because my wages have stagnated over the last decade. I know retirees who will give up on Adobe products because of the exorbitant costs. Why can they not offer disc or download versions of their products in addition to CC? I don’t need the newest and latest updates every month. Rather than respect loyal customers and build a greater following, it seems to me that Adobe is succumbing to greed.
I’ve used Adobe products from the beginning, mostly through not for profits or small businesses. Buying full version over not-for-profit non updatable software was enough to debate when upgrading software. Now Adobe expects a monthly fee for software that will be constantly updated. I personally don’t want anything to do with the Cloud. When you keep your head in the clouds, you can’t see where you’re going. It’s better if you can map your own course, determine your own fate and let those who want to have their heads in the clouds that option as well.
Well said!
Adobe blew it bit time here. They are acting like Quark now. Quark Express used to own a ton of the publishing business. Where I work the IT staff went nuts when Quark insisted on their crazy activation server scheme. Guess what, our company promptly quit using Quark because of fears if a storm hit where the server is stored, no one could get their daily workflow out.
@ Gary – sorry, if a storm hit, you can ‘get your work out’ if your power goes out. You can’t run your printers. You connect to world ship to make shipping labels. But gMail and the cloud will still be up becuase they are mirrored and they have generators in the data centers, 100 times more up time than you local servers.
But that is really no related. All that is happening here is you download the software ‘fro the cloud’ and install it locally. You “check in” to the licence server. There is a grace period, it just does not ‘turn off’ mid keystroke. You can set up up so that only happens every 99 days.
People are freaking out for no reason here. Many of us have been using CC this way for over a year.
Michael, It’s when you stop paying that’s the real problem. After months or years of paying for CC, at the end what do you have? Useless proprietary files of your work you can’t open. I think what others have posted here will be true, CS6 is going to play out like Windows XP. People will be using it long after its “lifetime” simply because it does 90% of what we ever need it to do without upgrading.
Or, when you’re retired and simply want to use Photoshop for a project or two–and can’t because you had to cutback expenses and you can no longer justify $XX/month. Hopefully, all those CC folks will have a copy of CS6 stashed away somewhere. If not, I’ll be happy to let them rent my computer for a little while… 😉
John,
I’ve always enjoyed reading your blog (and rarely post). Adobe has to realize what they are planning is wrong, simply wrong. I have always told people Photoshop is THE most amazing piece of software I’ve seen. I still believe that. However, Adobe is attempting to milk the cash cow to death. While CC is a business decision, you can’t put a value on goodwill. This decision will put Adobe on the same footing as Netflix, New Coke, and Apple (when it fired Steve Jobs). The only way these companies survived was to walk back dumb decisions and fire those responsible.
Good luck, John.
A lot of tech companies want to push business to the cloud, and reap the benefits of subscription-based services, and regular revenue streams. However, Adobe’s latest move will back-fire. Evangelists and the like keep trying to assure the public that it’s a reasonable model, but the reality is, people resent being coerced by companies. I don’t rent furniture. I don’t rent my car. I won’t rent software.
Pirating would not have been an issue, had Adobe kept their prices modest. They’d have created an even greater and more loyal following. They had a loyal following, but I daresay many people will look for alternatives, and Adobe will have lost whatever loyalty they now have.
Maybe Adobe became too big for its own good. No empire lasts forever.
Here in the UK, Adobe’s name has been mud for a number of years, primarily due to their constant ripping-off of their customers. Every release of the Creative Suite has been met with howls of criticism because the GBP price was substantially in excess of the USD price, even when accounting for VAT. They have never come up with a sensible justification for this.
Now, with the release of CC, they’re at it again. The full price of CC in the US is $50/mo – in the UK it’s £46.88 (inc VAT). By my calculations that should be £38.40. How can they possibly justify the hike of £8.48/mo (26.5% of the US price)since they can no longer fall back on the old (and dubious) chestnut about distribution costs and currency exchange differences, as it’s ALL now delivered online?
Leaving aside this pricing difference, I’m having a real internal struggle to come up with a justification for signing up to CC. I have CS6 Web Premium – I’m a professional web applications developer, a keen amateur photographer, and I primarily use Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Fireworks (a fine Macromedia product effectively killed off by Adobe). As I don’t use these tools day in, day out, the cost implications of CC are no trifling matter. I’ve previously upgraded every two releases or so.
What really sticks in my throat though is that once they’ve hooked you in, that’s it – pay up every month/year/decade or else your work is inaccessible in its most up-to-date form.
I know we “only” have a licence to run CS6, but I have bought that licence and if I choose never to get another upgrade (!) I can still use it in 20 years.
Adobe needs to do two things:
1. Cut the monthly cost by at least 60% – and charge everyone in dollars to eliminate the price differentials. By reducing the monthly outgoings, they may even attract new customers who have previously been unable to justify the high price of Adobe products.
2. Allow users to end their subscription (after the year’s contract) but retain the use of the software – no further upgrades, and no use of the cloud – just local file storage. This would give users control over their spending, allowing them to re-subscribe for a year at some future point, perhaps paying an additional one-off premium if they’ve skipped more than “version cycles”.
If Adobe don’t listen, they may be doomed to going the way of Lotus and Quark – companies who tried to use their ubiquity to fleece their user base.
Frankly, the two things you’re demanding combined will be very bad for Adobe.
Your suggestion would also enable people to
– Pay for a year of CC (~600$ / £540)
– Cancel Subscription
– End up with an ultra-cheap master collection.
While i would totally love to have a Master Collection for 600$, i don’t think this is going to happen. I also don’t believe that this would be any more fair than locking us in for life-long payment. It’s almost the same thing just the other way round.
You make a fair point, but my suggestions were just a starting point for what could be an alternative scheme. I don’t want to be unfair to Adobe (perish the thought, despite them being grossly unfair to their loyal customers over this and their pricing policies over many years), but if they had a serious rethink following the massive backlash from disgruntled users they would surely concede that reducing the cost of this subscription model would likely increase their user base substantially, and be mutually beneficial to all.
As regards the ultra-cheap master collection, it was Adobe’s choice to make CC a master collection only – some of the contents of which most users will neither want nor use. Couldn’t they have come up with a tiered pricing model giving access to collections akin to those in CS6? There might not have been such a furore if they had.
If we’re concerned with fairness, they need to either have a scheme which allows users to continue using their software in some way after they cease subscribing, or allow for the purchase of perpetual licences. It’s not that they can’t do it, just that at the moment, for some unfathomable reason, they won’t.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter that Adobe may be willing to reconsider some options, the damage is done. I’ll use PS and Indesign CS6 until they no longer fulfill my needs, and then I’ll look elsewhere.
I would hope that other software suppliers are falling over themselves to fill the hole, and there will be real, valid choices by the time I move.
I’m a small fish in the large Adobe pond. For people who are non-professionals the cost, at $49.00 per month, is a bit intimidating, especially for folks who may be on limited incomes. I may consider a single app subscription but would prefer that PS was combined with LR.
I think it is an interesting marketing concept that may appeal to some. For other like myself, however, I really preferred the option to OWN the software and up-grade as money was available. I’ve kept PSCS and LR up-to-date for years. Yes, I’m curious about Muse, Illustrator etc, but do I have the time to learn to use them all? Quite possible not and not at that monthly cost. I appreciate the option to have a lower cost for a year as a current PSCS customer, but that will only extend the inevitable higher cost f $49.00 a month.
As for some of the snarky Cupcake-like remarks; it sounds to me as though some of you may need to mature a bit and garner a larger world view before you begin to cast stones and aspersions about people who question this new concept or who do not have an extra $49.00 to fork out every month.
Not everyone has deep pockets for what is, for some, a beloved, though non-professional, pursuit. If someone has so much money that they can afford to just sniff at the cost $49.00 a month perhaps they would like to sponsor my CC membership for a year!
Personnal user experience :
Today my CS6 cloud gave my a warning “you have 00 days left to connect to internet”… no previous warning…
To bad I was on my laptop out of my office … had to find an internet connection … was allrady late with my client !! Hate you !
I was using it last thursday at my office with online connection… where are the 30 days grace adobe is speaking??? where ????
Please Adobe don’t screw the ones that follows you in your cloud thing I assure you it’s the last time i want to live something like this !!! Will you pay if I loose the client ?? I assume you don’t care screwing up yours so you won’t care about mine !
I ask loud and LOUD , please make the thing totally transparent EACH time I open one of the cloud app I want to know EXACTLY how long do I have left on my no internet “grace period”. after what appened now EVERY DAY I NEED TO KNOW IF MY LICENSE IS UP TO DATE AND FOR HOW LONG !!
And if I need to connect in the next weeks (not days )
You owe that to your client it’s minimum…
I have a 1 year Creative cloud payment every month on my credit carde… I really need to use my CC offline safely from time to time…
Totally agreed. I felt betrayed when I found out CS2 required activation. And doubly betrayed when I lost an activation, waited an hour to get to support, and was not given a new activation.
Activation doesn’t shut out pirates; all it does is to shut out legitimate, paying customers who for some reason have either lost a hard drive or fried a motherboard.
As the owner of a small design firm, a move to Adobe’s subscription model would be disastrous, and we cannot participate.
Hardware is a capital expense for any design business, and we must plan for such major purchases based on our flow of business, not based on whether Adobe’s corporate office decides to push an update that hobbles our work because our computers are a few years old. Also, the predictability of our regular expenses is an important consideration, and there is no way to know what Adobe will charge for access to our files in three, five, or ten years. Ownership of our intellectual property is another problem, although no one has to use Behance, its contract is a nightmare for professionals – if any other pros are out there, never never never post your content on Behance! Our ability to access and re-edit components of our work at later dates is also extremely relevant, and without an installed previous version that corresponds with the version on which we produced client content, there is no guarantee of backward compatibility with Adobe’s subscription product.
Even aside from the insane price increase and my strongly negative personal feelings about the concept of “renting” vital business software, these other issues have made Adobe’s offering a bad value proposition for any creative business that needs to own its work and control its budget. The new unpredictable pricing structure is only reasonable for the most massive creative firms with a limitless pot of funds for future price increases and the most casual hobbyists who are willing to pay $50+ per month to play with content they don’t care about owning. For small and medium sized professional firms, whether or not they feel the impact yet of the problematic legacy file access issue or the unknowable cost of future updates that render their expensive and otherwise-functional hardware obsolete, the subscription model is terrible.
Also, on a more personal level, we are deeply angry with Adobe’s callous and purposefully obtuse roll-out of this unacceptable business model. Their determination to stick fingers in their ears and keep singing the same tune as loudly as possible to drown out their customers’ dissenting voices is a huge disappointment. No company can treat loyal customers’ honest concerns so disrespectfully and expect continued success. Stock prices up? I’ve read the analyst’s reports, and they are predictably short-sighted and clueless about the long-term implications of this massive decision. How quickly will that predictable revenue stream hold up after the first round of updates that kills subscribers’ ability to run the software on their five-year-old $3,000 mac pros? How many will keep subscribing as the price creeps upward and more advanced and technologically useful competitors produce reliable software that makes the best use of upcoming 128 bit architecture and 3D rendering possibilities that Adobe has failed to pursue? ZBrush, I’m looking at you.
The worst part is that we loved Adobe, and they have betrayed us. We are extremely angry, and won’t be the only firm looking for serious alternatives. This entire short-sighted decision is forcing a schism in the creative industry, but it won’t last forever. New software is coming out all the time, and even many who currently feel coerced into the subscription model because it is an industry standard (aggravatingly, Corel is just too buggy and crashy to take the field, even after all these years – they’ve missed a golden opportunity because they refused to address the serious quality issues that have held them back for so long) will jump at the opportunity to move back to their preferred mode and cost of purchasing as soon as a viable alternative with a sufficient range of professional features appears.
In the meantime, Adobe is incrementally increasing its stock price on the backs of some happy advocates who like the cloud concept and don’t care about price or are trying Adobe out for the first time and unconcerned with long-term costs, and many angry and bitter long-term customers who feel forced into something they don’t want, and are actively searching for an opportunity to jump ship. It will take a few years for this unsustainable business model to come back around and bite Adobe, at which point I expect its current management team will have retired, richly rewarded, and left their replacements to ride out the company’s inevitable slide.
Ultimately, I will never give another dime to Adobe. They have irreparably damaged our business relationship and we will not encourage that sort of decision-making by rewarding it with our dollars. I don’t have enough obscenities to accurately express my feelings about the entire issue. Adobe has given us a choice – move to the cloud or find another software provider. We’ve heard you loud and clear, Adobe. After many years as extremely loyal Adobe customers, we choose, unhappily, to find another software provider.
” Their determination to stick fingers in their ears and keep singing the same tune as loudly as possible…” Do mean like this -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yigV0GYGQ
My goodness the sheer stupidity of that guy is breathtaking. He clearly follows the politicians strategy of answering awkward questions — answer a question that wasn’t asked. And if you repeat the same drivel time and time again, people will eventually believe you.
In this case it’s not working.
We, as resellers won’t get anything.
Our customers, will be limited, and will pay a huge amount if they have many workstations.
Adobe, will be making a lot of money, surely not used for making a better software.
Me… personally I prefer to get free stuff.
> Adobe, will be making a lot of money […]
That remains to be seen 😉
One little thing: If Adobe truly is listening (or at least want us to believe it’s listening), at least fix their web site.
Their web site is broken and when I tried to file a bug report on their web site, I found to my dismay that there isn’t even a product category for adobe.com itself. Neither can I submit the bug report as an idea or suggestion.
Just try to press Contact us on adobe.com. Adobe is not projecting an image of “We’re listening” at all.
I’ve been watching the numerous discussions about the CC initiative for a month since it was first announced and my first reaction was to adopt a “wait-and-see” approach.
While all of the points made above are all valid, It finally occurs to me what it is that makes me concerned, not just with the model of CC itself but also how Adobe have handled the backlash. It’s all about Trust.
I felt this when Google announced the shut down of the Reader app and it’s one of the reasons why I’m now a bit more wary of using a Google product. For example I’m a massive Evernote user and when Google announced Google Keep which some might think of as a competitor to Evernote, I stayed right away because I don’t trust Google enough now to be sure that they won’t arbitrarily kill the app when they revise their strategy (which they will, one day).
And that’s they key here. I acknowledge the point of view that Software as a service is the future, but irrespective of that, I can’t now be certain that I wont be left stranded by future decisions that Adobe might make. Eg: Making Lightroom subscription only, or perhaps suggesting I use Photoshop Elements if I let my CC membership lapse and then turning around and making that subscription only one day. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but if Adobe are capable of making this move that effects thousands of their customers I have now changed how I think of Adobe as a company and I’m now wary of their future actions. That’s not a place I want to be with someone that I’m doing business with over the longer term.
I must praise John and other Adobe folk (as well as Scott Kelby..that guy is a champion) for weathering the storm and continuing the dialogue though. I can’t imagine its been easy.
But Adobe, I’m not sure I trust you as much any more. And I’m a bit wary of you now. And to win that trust back, I’m really going to be watching your next moves..closely.
Just my two cents…
I was frustrated by Quark and their cavalier attitude to their loyal customer base. They had the entire world market in their hand and they marched triumphantly over a cliff.
I cheered Adobe as they boldly marched in to take Quarks place. Quark was deaf and arrogant. They felt their market dominance allowed them special privileges.
Besides, Adobe had already been my buddy. When people showed me Microsoft, I showed the Adobe, a huge player that still created quality products and gave good service to their customers.
But I’ve watched things erode away since those days. Adobe has grown faster than the national debt. Their colossal growth made them inefficient and unresponsive. Their president had to take out a full page ad apologizing to their customers for their dismal customer service. (and has anything substantively improved since then? Calls to customer service are still a crap shoot as to whether or not you will get actual help and by an English fluent tech).
I can’t remember how many years ago that I got a questioner from Adobe about subscription based licensing and how much I would be willing to spend. I told them I was totally against the idea.
So Adobe annihilated Freehand, made me update all of my products or loose update privileges, while at the same time adopting the, ready or not, new version by calendar date, not by marked improvements, policy, and fixed it so students could only get the high-end PS with the high end update cost.
Obviously none of this brought in enough revenue to feed the beast. Now they, like Quark before them, have their customer base by the nose.
Perhaps this is for the best. This finally opens up the market for some real competition, and no doubt it will come.
I for one will gladly cheer the new champion when their day comes.
Death to tyrants!
[it’s sad to say farewell to a company that I have had such a close relationship to these past twenty some odd years, but they forgot how they got here and who brought them.]
Nicely said, David. Any other company geared for success would take notice of your comment and all the others posted on this thread, as well as how long comments continue to be posted on it. I see similar threads across the internet.
I do think this speaks well for John, in that he allows this continue but unfortunately Adobe’s leadership doesn’t show the same class. “We’re listening…” ??? I see no evidence of that.
Very well stated and unfortunately, very true…
Never posted here before but many comments reflect my experience, and there are hoards of adobe users who are quietly simmering. I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who had an impossible customer service experience. There was a two hour wait for phone service at 9 AM. One time I decided to wait, put the phone on speaker, and worked. Three hours later, no one had come on the line. Ichat people had the wrong information. I’ve used adobe products for 25 years. This will be the end.
I tried Adobe cloud for a year and I cancelled due to the fact I do not believe this is a fair trade off
Adobe locks you out of access to their software no matter how long you been paying and here is the different that matters Autodesk have had subscriptions for a long time but if for some reason I cannot pay or do not what to continue everything Ive paid for is still mine to use I just lose access to the new versions until I resubscribe which gets more over time but its still better for me as a customer and Autodesk needs to keep making better versions to make the subscription have value. This Cloud service only benefits Adobe and gives them no motivation to make improvements as you lose access to everything if you stop paying and for that reason alone I say no no no
All we can do is what all customers can do – vote with our wallets. Either Adobe changes their terms or they will continue to loose customers like yourself and me as well…
What we need is a really valid alternative.
We need to get behind OnOne software and help the replace photoshop.
I won’t be using the cloud. It’s that simple. I won’t be held hostage by another greedy corporation. Too bad, because I’ve enjoyed using their products. But for me, Adobe has crossed a significant line.
Great product, but I think the new we control how you use it is stupid. I prefer to own a product. The marketing behind oh you get access to all of these products (which I will never use) storage with us (which I will never send my files to)the most recent update (which really isnt that big of a deal or a life altering/workflow altering event) is corporate hogwash which was cooked up in a finance meeting of CEOs who have never opened the product on a daily basis. I don’t go to a car dealer and lease a car because I loose money, I wont rent a house for the rest of my life because I will loose money. Leasing software forever will cost the users money in the long run which will then be passed down to our clients and increase their fees which will cause our clientelle to either decrease or our margin to decrease. I know many products out there can achieve the same final product as Adobe products. I will now begin looking into them. Boom.
“I wont rent a house for the rest of my life because I will loose money.”
1. I am pretty sure you do not read the papers, as many folks here in California lost money because they bought their home. Folks who lease cars do that because they do not want some run down 5 year old car. We lease cars because we can turn them in and have the latest.
2. I think it is spelled “lose” not “loose”.
3. you wrote “I know many products out there can achieve the same final product as Adobe products.”
please, do tell me what they are.
Michael,
I put in my two cents for the reason of ‘I can’ not to get in a dialogue about it. Not to come on here and boost my ego by degrading others by making assumptions that they don’t read the paper, have misspellings due to lack of concern over such petty things, or challenege someone b/c they aren’t please with service and are starting to look at competition.
I will simply say this. It is ‘my’ opinion that if you and your crew at Datatech Smartsoft. Inc can’t accuratly incorporate constructive feedback from the people who are your customers than you and the company that you work for are…
…see it’s easy to do this, but a waste of time. So good day to you. I am only looking to help ‘Adobe’ have one more voice in the dialogue of this topic, not you in your spare time.
cheers.
@ Cameron
I was not doing anything more than commenting on your analogies, which, to me, made no sense whatsoever. You suggest that the cloud does not make sense, i am here to suggest that it does. This was no personal attack, this was commentary that you analogy do not work.
So, this is a place to voice opinions. Mine just happens to be different than yours ( and others )
Most of the commentary in here is not about the sense or non-sense of cloud. Cameron’s comment certainly isn’t. He’s explicitly stating, that *to him* the cloud-features offers no value.
The reasons for this are simple: We’re not up in arms against the “cloud” part of creative cloud. We’re up against the “it’s now all cloud, so you lose ability to run software if you stop paying” Which is – from a technological point of view – ridiculous. The software still is largely the same as CS6, there’s really no need to go down this road that adobe has chosen.
If it would have been “if you stop paying, you’ll lose access to our members area and cloud storage, but the rest of the software keeps working” there would be absolutely nothing to see here.
@michaelejahn
> this was commentary that you analogy do not work.
1. I think you meant “your analogies do not work.”
2. Aside from say the housing bubble, perhaps they do. Life is complex and multifaceted, full of different use cases, and not all about the housing bubble or Adobe’s perspective on the cloud.
@michaelejahn
2a. And arguably, it’s your analogy to the housing bubble that doesn’t work. Over the last many decades, home ownership has worked out for many millions of Americans who have been lucky enough to own their own homes. I myself have owned houses, sometimes actually with no mortgage, and over the long run the ownership has worked out very well. Often it has only been “ownership,” with the bank holding the mortgage. Of course there is the obvious financial consideration of the market generally (though not always) rising — my houses mostly became more valuable.
Then there is the sense of ownership. In the case of a mortgaged house is somewhat illusory (as Adobe points out we never “owned” Photoshop). Still, this sense of ownership provides many benefits in how we relate to the property. For example, this old place we bought was largely uninsulated, in Vermont. We invested in serious insulating, and there is a huge benefit to that, in many ways — comfort, using less fuel, and the investment payback. We are doing landscaping and other improvements we would never do to a rental property. In contrast, I have rented properties, and I usually didn’t even bother to apply fresh paint to the interior, let alone the exterior. I did not invest, materially or psychologically, in those rental properties.
Similarly, a sense of “ownership” of the tools we use provides a different psychology, which in my case is beneficial. For example, at this point, I have become quite afraid of using smart objects in layered Photoshop files because I feel my “ownership” of Photoshop is rather in question. Though I have CS6, I don’t know how long this will be compatible. If I rent CC, I don’t know that I will always be able to afford it. Indeed, my sense of Adobe as a reliable provider of tools, an ally, a company “on my side,” has been completely ripped to shreds by the sense the company has turned from that kind of ally into an evil, perhaps fly-by-night, landlord. I now seriously wonder if this company even has a future. Or maybe that future will become only marketing and tracking and data mining, and imaging software will be left behind.
Back to housing: it’s true that in recent years some of the big banks have become very evil, fueling the collapsed housing bubble for instance, but all in all there is a contract between homeowners and banks that works out very well. It is a solid contract, the way it used to feel as an software user with Adobe sort of in that role. Now Adobe has left that solid role, that “contract” with us (we never had an actual contract, but there was the sense that we had a certain relationship that would hold up: we keep buying upgrades, you keep making good software, we’re all happy). In fact we built careers based on that sense and that particular relationship.
Rental does have its place in this complex world. I want to rent a floor sander for a day: I don’t want to own the thing. I want to rent an SUV when I go to Iceland. It would be a horrible pain to buy one and then sell it again. If I go to Nepal or India I want to take a cab or hire a car, not even get as serious as renting a car. These are different situations from the house I live in, the land I plant stuff in, or my career (or in the case of many a passionate hobby).
I know that all is ephemeral, nothing is really as solid as it seems. Still to proceed in this life we need to work with assumptions of solidity. I don’t want to build a house on a foundation of sawdust and sand. Let me pour some concrete into my own ground.
Your point that renting has its place is true enough for the examples you cite, but in the case of Creative Cloud, the analogy would be more complete if you wanted to rent the floor sander but then you couldn’t walk on or look at the sanded floor unless you continued to rent the sander.
Guys, please stop comparing the two.
The two are so far apart that comparing them won’t bring us any closer to a solution. One is a one-time-effort that can be sold numerous times at once. The other is something that can only ever be owned by one person (or family or company). One is (commercially speaking) obsolete after 10 years. The other one is usually built to last several decades. One is a investment that can usually be taken lightly, the other is an investment many people scrutinize over for many days or even years.
It doesn’t get much more different than that. Comparing the two in this context adds really no value to the discussion.
It’s not a comparison, it’s an analogy.
My bad.
In that case, stop analogueing them. Reasons: See above.
I was thinking more about the floor sander. Yes, preferable to rent it just for the day, as a homeowner. But if I were going to start a business, I would want to own one or more. I wouldn’t want to be subject to rent increases, or activations, or sudden changes. I suppose there are businesses based on renting and leasing their main tools, but not very many spring to mind.
Microsoft’s XBox announced that it was going to put all of its games in a cloud environment with limits. Then once everyone started complaining and switching to PS4 they made a change. Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive entertainment business, made a 180 and decided to reduce the limits put on the cloud games, and continue to offer games on physical discs.
Thanks to this cloud idea I suspect that many of Adobe’s loyal customers are looking for the next best thing. To bad Adobe bought up all of it’s top competitors like Macromedia and Frame Technology Corp.
I’m looking to buy stock in Corel. Also, instead of updating my CS4 master collection suite, I downloaded a few free trials of different Corel programs. So far, not as good as adobe for what I do… but far cheaper.
In the end, I just bought Photomatix Pro, and I’m still testing out Corel. I use CS6 at work and it’s great, but I think CS4 is where I myself jump off the adobe Bandwagon.
I am a student and decided to jump into the fray. I don’t make a living off Adobe products, but I find the switch to Adobe Cloud confusing, pushy, and monopolistic in nature. I’ve taken a few application development classes, and have been learning Dreamweaver extensively along with other Adobe products and found the CS update to change the user interface drastically in some areas. Some changes good, some bad.
My primary concern will be the inevitable price hikes we will most likely see. If you search “Adobe CS alternatives”, there is almost nothing on the market that can compete. The ones that can, sell for nearly 899.00, and that’s just for desktop publishing. The others have either been bought out by Adobe or haven’t gained enough traction to really make their product stand out.
CS frees Adobe from having to constantly market and release appealing updates for their customers every year. I can only imagine this saves 100’s of millions in development and advertising, and gives them the leisure of producing slower, more sustained releases. This can either mean less content over time, or more, but it’s up to them because with a subscription based business the money comes in regardless.
If Microsoft is paying attention, they will seize this opportunity to offer competitive products tied into their slick Office365 network, allowing direct license or subscription.
This move gives Adobe too much control, and the customer will either profit or lose but it isn’t in our control anymore with the new “like it or leave it” subscription plan. Having the option to not buy an update allowed us to speak with our wallets by not supporting bad moves. It forced Adobe to strive for perfection or risk losing a cash injection. That’s all gone now.
signed-
Undergraduate
We can still speak with our wallets and many have by not going along. I know there are some people at Adobe with good intentions, but they don’t call the shots. Two things will happen – CC will be successful in luring enough followers and Adobe will continue down the same path, or it will be “below expectations” and they will have to adjust.
Bottom line – if you don’t like the CC scheme, don’t buy it.