Adobe moves to Creative Cloud, Cancels Creative Suite

[Matt Gottshalk]

Just got pinged for my subscription.

$50, or in other words, 20 minutes of my billable time.

BFD.

and I can open up all of the Adobe apps on my PC workstation and my MacBook Pro.

Works for me.

 

[mtan]

if the cloud pricing strategy works for you then great, but it doesn't work for a lot of people, I won't do it.

 

[hscully]

Cool if you need all those apps for the low perpetually recurring price of $n/ month. 99.9% of anything I'll ever do with the humongous Master Collection is done by PP, AE, ME, and AU. That's it.

 

[Mike Harvey]

One side note I hear no one talking about... the Creative Cloud comes with free webhosting. For an extra $12/month you get five email addresses. I have a fairly basic website with two email addresses, and two other domain names I think I might use in the future. I pay $27/month for that. The $30/month first year intro rate + $12/month for the email - $27 I am currently paying for my website is $15/month. In a year that goes to $35/month. That seems reasonable to me.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[hscully]

Hey! How about a bank account feature to the cloud too so you don't have to worry about automating those monthly payments... or maybe a wage garnishing app! I kid.. I kid the cloud.

 

[Andrew Stone]

Nice (maybe) to have all your services under one roof but there are a few very popular shared hosting services that offer unlimiited bandwidth, unlimiited storage and unlimiited domains and email under one account. Price is around $9 a month. Some of them are quite good. I recall Lifehacker had a piece on this.

 

[keylight]

Just got pinged for my subscription.

$50, or in other words, 20 minutes of my billable time.

BFD.

and I can open up all of the Adobe apps on my PC workstation and my MacBook Pro.

Works for me.

Fantastic! Great! And of course, everyone is just like you and bills $150/hour:

• The person working hard to build up their small business but may not have predictable income each month.
• The wedding videographer who makes $20/hour (LOTS of those out there).
• The student who gets a discounted rate today but will pay full price after graduating?
• The artist who can buy once but has to use for a very long time.
• The thousands of small non-profits that don't have extra cash each month.
• The myriad of other people/organizations that don't earn $2.5/minute.

And of course, you know (or should know) that price isn't even one of the biggest issue people have. Just read this and other threads.

 

[keylight]

Nice (maybe) to have all your services under one roof but there are a few very popular shared hosting services that offer unlimiited bandwidth, unlimiited storage and unlimiited domains and email under one account. Price is around $9 a month. Some of them are quite good. I recall Lifehacker had a piece on this.

Yup. $9 for a really good host that lets you do all of that. And more, like rolling your own DropBox like service too, which will let you sync everything on multiple computers. Or, uh, use Dropbox. Or Google Drive. OR __________ OR ____________. Lots of free services out there.

What a shame Adobe didn't just keep perpetual licensing as an option with a low cost subscription to the cloud bits, like $5/month. Bet they would sell millions of those subscriptions with the blink of an eye.

 

[maarek]

• The myriad of other people/organizations that don't earn $2.5/minute.

Those people tend to pirate. A lot of people you guys claim "can't pay for it", couldn't pay for the collection prices either. There is A LOT of piracy around, especially concerning the Adobe software. Most of the "new guys" getting into business start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6. Can't beat those prices.

The reason Adobe will get a lot more cash this way is because this cuts out a lot of that piracy. That's why they did it so fast.

 

[keylight]

Those people tend to pirate. A lot of people you guys claim "can't pay for it", couldn't pay for the collection prices either. There is A LOT of piracy around, especially concerning the Adobe software. Most of the "new guys" getting into business start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6. Can't beat those prices.

The reason Adobe will get a lot more cash this way is because this cuts out a lot of that piracy. That's why they did it so fast.

Nope. This won't cut piracy, but I bet it will increase it. Not even Adobe talks about this move in terms of cutting piracy.

 

[Tzedekh]

Those people tend to pirate. A lot of people you guys claim "can't pay for it", couldn't pay for the collection prices either. There is A LOT of piracy around, especially concerning the Adobe software. Most of the "new guys" getting into business start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6. Can't beat those prices.

The reason Adobe will get a lot more cash this way is because this cuts out a lot of that piracy. That's why they did it so fast.

Adobe is being disingenuous about piracy. In a very real way they benefit from it. As you said, people who acquire pirated software wouldn't pay for the perpetual license, so Adobe can't really counted those copies as lost sales. Many of them -- like students and the "'new guys' getting into business" who "start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6" -- are looking for best-of-breed, industry-standard apps. When they become established, they continue using them, but use legitimate copies in a professional setting. In each of those cases Adobe doesn't really lose a sale but it does gain a trained and possibly lifelong user.

 

[hscully]

Adobe is being disingenuous about piracy. In a very real way they benefit from it. As you said, people who acquire pirated software wouldn't pay for the perpetual license, so Adobe can't really counted those copies as lost sales. Many of them -- like students and the "'new guys' getting into business" who "start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6" -- are looking for best-of-breed, industry-standard apps. When they become established, they continue using them, but use legitimate copies in a professional setting. In each of those cases Adobe doesn't really lose a sale but it does gain a trained and possibly lifelong user.

This is a good story but I find it hard to believe. The idea that thieves educate themselves into cherished paying customers just doesn't sound reasonable to me. If it were fiction I would change the channel. I know guys who pirate software. They also steal music, have a bloated sense of entitlement and make ironic arguments about how the "software companies are giving us the shaft." It's true that they will never buy the software but that somehow, sometime, they will would take some sort of ethical epiphany your supposition leaves for the reader.

I have made most of my bones writing software so I have a bias about this. I don't steal software. I bought a license to CS6 PP and I wish they would have kept our arrangement which was that if I were to pay up front for the Suite that suited me, that I could keep the license. As I learned the software and integrated it into my business, that I'd be welcome to upgrade that software which I did once already. That was the deal, no?

Adobe bagged on our deal and eventually will have bricked my software investment with them as no future upgrades make it unusable. The notion that I should just "get over it" or that it's no BFD is dismissive and missing the point which is that Adobe has acted in bad faith. Had I transcended this egregious behavior on their part I would still not subscribe to software indefinitely as it creates an unacceptable dependency that I think people who do subscribe will begin to feel in time.

 

[simonpwood]

Adobe is being disingenuous about piracy. In a very real way they benefit from it. As you said, people who acquire pirated software wouldn't pay for the perpetual license, so Adobe can't really counted those copies as lost sales. Many of them -- like students and the "'new guys' getting into business" who "start with a DSLR and a pirated copy of CS6" -- are looking for best-of-breed, industry-standard apps. When they become established, they continue using them, but use legitimate copies in a professional setting. In each of those cases Adobe doesn't really lose a sale but it does gain a trained and possibly lifelong user.

Theft is theft no matter how you try to justify it. If you want to use it you pay for it; otherwise its theft.

 

[hscully]

A subscription by definition maintains value as it's being used regularly. Specialists (editors only) that work each day with it realize that value but if it sits for a couple of months, for what could be great reasons - shooting a feature , or off on a documentary is $100 down the drain. If it were a perpetual license, it's a sunk cost - a wash. This could discourage people from editing altogether with Adobe, jobbing that work to specialists whose model matches theirs. How many of those "wasted" months will users absorb? I think it's a bad bet on their part.

 

[Tzedekh]

This is a good story but I find it hard to believe. The idea that thieves educate themselves into cherished paying customers just doesn't sound reasonable to me.

Some vendors obviously feel it's plausible and have even released free or very inexpensive "personal learning editions," which are functional yet hobbled in some way (e.g., digital watermark). Sadly, these seem to have languished in recent years.

Theft is theft no matter how you try to justify it. If you want to use it you pay for it; otherwise its theft.

I'm not trying to justify it, and I agree it's theft, but that doesn't invalidate the argument that piracy in some ways benefits software companies. And I'm not the only person who has suggested it. Martin Vilcans, a software and Web developer and filmmaker, had a blog post about it, as did Tim Harford at Slate.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

A subscription by definition maintains value as it's being used regularly. Specialists (editors only) that work each day with it realize that value but if it sits for a couple of months, for what could be great reasons - shooting a feature , or off on a documentary is $100 down the drain. If it were a perpetual license, it's a sunk cost - a wash. This could discourage people from editing altogether with Adobe, jobbing that work to specialists whose model matches theirs. How many of those "wasted" months will users absorb? I think it's a bad bet on their part.

You can go month to month, thereby only paying for the time you use it.

 

[hscully]

You can go month to month, thereby only paying for the time you use it.

True but at a much higher rate, I think it goes up to $75/ month on a per month basis. I thought about that. The suite is huge and the tools are complex. It takes a considerable investment in time and effort to learn to use them, keep up with enhancements, etc. I don't think that it would be very practical to rent it on a need only basis unless you can figure that learning curve into it.

 

[f64manray]

This is a good story but I find it hard to believe. The idea that thieves educate themselves into cherished paying customers just doesn't sound reasonable to me. If it were fiction I would change the channel.

I don't know. I didn't steal photoshop, but I've basically had a essentially free (very low cost) edition of PS Elements for 10 or more years. It was quite capable and never needed upgrading. I educated myself with it, and when I bought my new Imac, I spent $1,900 on the CS6 production Suite as I had already aquired much of the skill set needed to continue to work in CS6 PS. People tend to stick with what they know. So, I can see a poor thief using PS for free because he is poor, aquiring skills, making some money with those skills and wanting to go legit when he is no longer poor. I did that with my basically free version, and now my reltionship with them as a future customer has ended. I just hope I can ride CS6 for the next 10 years.

 

[stefancolson]

This is a good story but I find it hard to believe. The idea that thieves educate themselves into cherished paying customers just doesn't sound reasonable to me. If it were fiction I would change the channel.

I used pirated copies of Adobe software when I was first learning. Photoshop and Illustrator when I was getting into design years ago, and then Premiere and After Effects as I was getting into video. The minute I hung up a shingle and started making money I purchased full versions of all the software I use, and have been an up-to-date paying customer ever since. I didn't go to school for any of this, and wasn't a student as I began to change career paths. The only way I was going to learn that software and develop my skills to a point of being hireable was through pirated software. Whether you consider software piracy to be theft or not (I do), it IS true that many serious hobbyists and budding young professionals make the transition from pirate to paying customer. Most of the people I work with professionally who are younger than 35 have a similar story.

FWIW, if it would have been possible to get my hands on this software for $50/mo when I was first starting then I would have been a legal, paying customer from day one.

 

[paulears]

I can't speak for Adobe, but I was one of a small team who introduced Music Technology as an exam subject in the UK, and my own college installed Steinberg Software - Cubase, and that's what we trained our students on. A few years later it was obvious many students each year were running pirate software at home, because they brought work in from home regularly. Many drifted away from music production as a career, but out of all those I still keep in touch with who are working professionally, they're spending money on legitimate software now. The college had 20 odd licensed products, continually upgraded, and each year Steinberg gained new users. The ones who just ran a pirate version forgot about it when their interests changed. Often, I suspect people will not invest in expensive add ons if the core is dodgy. If people buy expensive software synths that have not been cracked, often because they need updating regularly with new features or have downloadable content from the manufacturer - they won't run them on pirate software, because there's always that chance that the next upgrade will wreck it.

I bought an expensive software sampler on ebay for about 25% of the shop price, and when I installed it, the unlock code didn't work, but then I noticed there was a keygen on the DVD. Clearly I'd bought a copy - a good one, printing wise, but def a copy. After spending a fair bit on it, I used the crack and it worked. Within a month I was using it on all projects, eventually forgetting it was a hooky one! Then I bought a new faster PC, and upgraded Cubase to version 7. Guess what - the sampler doesn't work on the new machine - and a week later I had to buy a new one, but sadly, not the one I had, but a latest version one that is happy with windows 7. So I got a year out of the dodgy one and then spent the full amount on a working and upgradable one. In a way, it was like a one year trial. The product was good, and worth buying. This I am sure is what happens with adobe. All the kids and toe dipping pros running the cracked copy will eventually have to make a decision when they have to decide if they are in or out.