Peter Figen wrote:
The new subscription model is more like leasing a car with no option to purchase at the end of the lease because there is no end in sight.
......and we can increase the cost of the car payments anytime we like to whatever amount we want to.
Eyeball wrote:
The problem is that there is a segment of Adobe's customer base that is ecstatic with the new model. The break-even seems to be when a little over two applications are in use. If you're a heavy Adobe user of three or more products then it's probably a positive thing, at least for now - particularly if you're a business that is less concerned about the lack of a perpetual license. It will be interesting to see if even businesses regret giving up their ability to easily vote with their wallets in the future though.
There is no break-even point.
You will always pay more. Especially if you already own the software.
If you already own the creative suite, upgrading to CS7 if it was coming out would have been about 600$, 18 months after CS6 comes out.
If you subscribe, you are paying 900$ for that same time period, for that same software. 300$ difference.
So no matter how you look at it, you will always pay more. And you can't choose if you fork those 900$ or 600$ if you don't need the new features.
And of course there is the "you can't keep your software" thingy, just to drive the nail in.
"... and there are no other car companies you can switch to if you don't like the service or they jack up the price too much."
Exactly!
I called Adobe Direct Sales yesterday to try and get some clarification regarding this whole thing. The VERY nice woman in Salt Lake City laughed out loud when I asked her if she knew the definition of shitstorm. She said she now fully understood what that meant. The above quote is one of the main reasons people are so damned pissed off, and rightly so. Adobe is showing a complete disregard for their clients and the long term loyalty that got them to where they are today. They have given us no real choice.
All this and no one has really discussed the CC user agreement from Adobe. Read through some of these from Lloyd but pay close attention to the chapter regarding them wanting your birthday. If the whole idea of renting your software for eternity wasn't enough, then these terms and conditions will seal the deal.
philip_pj wrote:
I always felt this was the impetus behind the DNG 'forced format' idea and the database nonsense - dependence on Adobe, placing themselves at the centre of the imaging business as the indispensable patriarch.
I agree with everything else that you wrote, but not this. The DNG and related TIFF formats are both owned by Adobe, but are both fully open, and thus other than perhaps as early adopter, Adobe cannot forcibly gain anything with it.
The idea was to give an alternative to the endless stream of proprietary raw formats from the manufacturers, so that by converting to DNG we may be able to read our files in the future (DNG is fully documented, unlike the proprietary formats) when the software landscape has changed dramatically.
I fully bought into this, and unfortunately got myself into trouble with it, inadvertently. I had bought a Canon 5D which shipped with a scratch on the sensor, and when Canon asked me to prove it, I could provide raw files from the third day of ownership, way before I cleaned the sensor the first time, but I had converted them to DNG, and Canon refused to cover the repair. I lost 500 Euro on that little mistake, as well as my respect for Canon.
Eyeball wrote:
The problem is that there is a segment of Adobe's customer base that is ecstatic with the new model. The break-even seems to be when a little over two applications are in use. If you're a heavy Adobe user of three or more products then it's probably a positive thing, at least for now - particularly if you're a business that is less concerned about the lack of a perpetual license. It will be interesting to see if even businesses regret giving up their ability to easily vote with their wallets in the future though.
I consider it blind in the extreme to support the new scheme based on a momentary drop in price. Adobe is presumably not doing this to lose money, and might even partly be doing it to earn more, although I guess the primary motivational factors are control and a smoother income stream.
If enough smaller shops and individuals get disenchanted and get off the upgrade cycle, then income goes down. It is easy to see what Adobe has to do to get it back: charge professionals more. And by the time you are in the CC cycle, you cannot easily get out again, without starting your projects from scratch.
This plan is ultimately a dead-end street for everyone, IMO.
Peter Figen wrote:
As much as I don't like what Adobe is doing, I like it even less when people don't understand that they never ever "owned" the software in the first place. You do own the disc you bought it on, if you even got one, but you're only licensing the use of the product. Read the End User License Agreement, with the key word License.
While you are technically right, it is not hard to see what Luka means. Before, if you bought a piece of software, it came with a license to use it which cannot be taken away from you, and the medium on which it shipped. With the new model, you need to connect to the internet for it to work (at whatever intervals), and the license to use it is remote, so they can remove your license for whatever reason they want.
Peter Figen wrote:
It's exactly the same as someone licensing a photograph to use for an advertisement or CD cover or whatever. They don't own the photo, just the license to use it for that intended purpose. Adobe is changing the way they license their software - the software that they own the copyright to. They have every right to do that and you have every right to vote with your pocketbook and use a competing product. If you can find one.
There are strong similarities to a bait-and-switch scheme here. Get people on board and dependent with one licensing model and then switch to another. It would be extremely difficult for many people to move away from Adobe software, but if the licensing model had been like this from the beginning, Adobe would likely not exist any more. People want that feeling of ownership that the old licensing model gave, not this dependency on the mothership.
I would postulate that the pleased as punch crowd consists of short-sighted users who see only the currently lower prices, and perhaps the early rollout of features (constant beta cycle?), and are completely blind to the loss of control and the inability to opt out of price increases down the road.
At this point I am more or less done with Adobe. I cannot imagine what would change my mind again. I will keep CS6 and use it until Adobe sabotages it, and then use something else. I will likely switch back to Aperture as soon as Apple makes a sign of life, like releasing version 4. Flash is coming off my main browser, and I will keep it only for emergencies in the backup browser. And that was that. It is truly disgusting what they have tried to pull here, just revolting.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
"17. Advertising and Your Content.
You agree that Adobe may display advertisements adjacent to Your Content, and you agree that you are not entitled to any compensation.
The manner, mode, and extent of advertising or other revenue generating models pursued by Adobe on or in conjunction with the Services and/or Your Content are subject to change without specific notice to you."
The sad thing is that Adobe, like so many companies, is a core of really cool developers wrapped in a shitpie of lawyers and management, driven forwards by investors with short-term interests.
The problem that Adobe faces is that their products are hitting the plateau of maturity. Microsoft is in a similar position with regards to their Office suite. The products are stable, have mature interfaces and are highly functional. From the point of view of the average user they have hardly changed in 3 or 4 product cycles: Ask yourself why you bought your last version of Office. Was it because it had cool features you wanted? Or was it because you just upgraded operating system and the previous version no longer works? I for one would still be running Office 2003 if it weren't for upgrading to Win 7 (and getting it for free via educational institution volume licensing). Same for Photoshop - did you buy CS5/CS6 for the cool new features, because ACR in CS4 doesn't support your new 5D3/D800, or because CS2 doesn't work on your new Win7 PC?
When products reach such levels of maturity it becomes very difficult to sell newer versions. So in an effort to keep monetising such products we get heavily marketed features we will never use and poorly thought out ideas like Creative Cloud.
