Adobe commits suicide

[ckh]

I don't use the cloud storage, I always save locally.

I'm not sure exactly what your point is if Adobe goes broke or cuts me off, or whatever. When I purchased one of the creative suites, I would be in exactly the same situation as the cloud. Both do license checks, so if something like you are describing happens, the problem would surface not only with the "cloud" but all the previous version of adobe software out there also that were purchased and people have cds of. So, whether you have the cloud software or a cd, you'd be in the same boat if adobe goes out of business.

I believe you are thinking of "cloud software" as you need an internet connection to run the applications. You only need an internet connection to install the software. Not sure how often the license checks are done, so I imagine once in a while you need to connect to the internet, but that would be the same with either the cloud software or whether you installed from a cd.

So, I'm not sure why you are all worried all of a sudden with something called "cloud software" from adobe. It's just a name, you download the software, install it on your computer rather than a cd or dvd. Cloud is really an inaccurate description.

[pauland]

I am currently working with a client who has a customer requiring re-worked digital interactive versions of their print products. For the most part it's about re-purposing those assets and making them work digitally and making them interact and animate. The assets are available in various forms - Illustrator files, PDF, InDesign or Photoshop format.

In the past I have used Xara for creating new artwork, and as we all know it works well. I found that when I tried to work with clients and use Xara to read assets from Adobe products, the result is far from perfect - either it doesn't support the latest version, or it rasterises content that I want to be vector, or it just doesn't read the format at all. Worse still is the reverse trip - Xara back to client.

For anyone collaborating with anyone in the commercial design world Xara is far from ideal. I realised that to work with these clients I had to be using the same software they use.

This means I have to shell out quite a lot of money to be able to work with those clients, and with a subscription model, I am a hamster on the Adobe wheel.

Virtually all of the commercial design world is sailing together in the Adobe boat. It's not a perfect boat, but we're all together, networking and doing business together. Xara users are in a much more finely tuned boat alongside. It's faster, smaller and cheaper, but not so many on-board, and certainly not so many with the same budgets as those sailing on the Adobe ship.

Being on the ship costs money. In my case, something like $50 or so a month. Ouch you say, and I agree, but then it's an enabler to allow me to work with clients who have budgets that are higher - currently hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars for a job, so the subscription fee for Adobe cloud is just the cost of doing business with these clients - an overhead. The benefit of working with these clients far outweighs the cost of the Adobe subscription.

If Adobe sinks the boat, we're all in it together and we'll either sink or swim to another boat. It would be the same for Microsoft, or Apple.

I'd like the choice of buying product permanently, as opposed to licensing, but there are definite benefits to a subscription model as well as downsides.

Back to these Adobe clients. They won't be bothered too much about the subscription model. They have thousands of dollars being generated off the back of Adobe software so they won't care how they pay for it provided it helps them make money. The subscription model can actually help them - variable numbers of Adobe seats for temporary staff - that kind of thing. These clients won't be dumping Adobe anytime soon.

Xara could certainly try and pickup the people at the fringes - those not involved in a collaborative pipeline. At a commercial level, they too would have to wonder if getting people to retrain in Xara and give up the benefits of the Adobe suite is worthwhile for the savings involved.

The Xara/Magix customer base is predominately hobbyists, lone professionals, or very small organisations with a couple of seats, using Xara because of the low price-point and bang for the buck. It's a great product, but not in the same league as the Adobe suite, so consequently Adobe users won't be flocking to buy Xara because of a change in the way they get their Adobe fix.

[pauland]

Chris, I agree that you can use the Creative Cloud software, just like any other desktop software, and that's what I do and probably most people do. That said the cloud moniker also applies to the notion of distributed working, because you get some cloud storage and installation of software on multiple platforms, so the cloud idea also embodies the notion of being able to access your assets while away from your desktop.

As you say though, the cloud can just be on your desktop, if that's all you need.

[mwenz]

...now I'm paying $50, so $600 per year. Still beats the price of upgrading for me and to boot, I have all their software I can try out.

And do you actually use all those applications you are paying $600 a year for? I mean really using them?

For myself, all I use and will ever use is InDesign and Illustrator. The 18 to 22 month update cycle to a major revision cost me $120 for ID, $175 for AI. That equals $295 every 18 months, or roughly $196 a year. Until this past upgrade cycle, if client work did not require it, I could skip the upgrades and not be out any money.

In other words, if Adobe did not have sufficient advances in the software and if client work didn't require a new version, Adobe got no money from me. My choice whether to spend the money. If the past Cloud year is any indication of how quickly Adobe will roll out updates and changes or new functionality, the Cloud is looking like a means of marketing cutting back on expenses, increasing revenue, for little effort into programming and investor hype. They have near zero reason to innovate, fix bugs that have been in PS, ID, and AI for countless years.

Unfortunately, it may work.

Mike

[pauland]

The bottom line is quite simple. If the value of Adobe software isn't worthwhile, then don't buy/upgrade/subscribe.

That's all any of us can do. Adobe decides what they wish to charge.

[jon404]

Thanks guys for your comments. From what you're saying, it seems that graphics software is being used far more collaboratively than ever before, and that Adobe has a lock on that, as Microsoft does for Word and PowerPoint collaborative work.

At 69, am glad I came up in the '60s ad agency world, where allowing a client to have any input whatsoever in the design process -- let alone handle the art boards -- would have been absolutely unthinkable. And, at my age, whenever I hear the word 'collaborate' I think of traitors helping the Nazis.

However, still being somewhat rational, I can comprehend that there may be some benefits to collaboration -- there sure are for other disciplines, like Autocad Revit for architects. Although, if graphics collaboration goes the same way as MS Word, you are just opening the door to endless meetings with innumerable design-illiterate people, who will all have to put in their 2 cents worth so as to justify their meaningless jobs in marketing, communications, mid-level management, whatever.

I'll bet that graphics collaboration opens a Pandora's box of wasted time, and ultimately, profits... except for Adobe!

[jonazen]

Great discussion... This topic has surfaced in various contexts over the past few years with regard to a variety of products. No doubt companies like Adobe would love to lock their customer base into generating a predictable annuity income for them -- far easier and more dependable than having to rely on releasing new and exciting features every 12 to 18 months to stimulate new purchases (gee -- that came out even more cynical sounding than I intended!). Companies have been dabbling with this for years. Microsoft ventured into this with corporate clients -- in large part due to the decreasing demand for new versions of Windows and their Office products. Companies that used to routinely re-up for 100,000 licenses for Windows largely stopped this practice with Win XP/SP3. It took years for many of them to move to Win7, and many of them still refuse to. Many of these same companies are still using Office 2007 or 2010. MS had been reaping huge revenue from the previous predictable upgrade cycle. Similar story for Adobe: as nice as the new features might be, for an enormous portion of the work being done, new features are simply not necessary.

Example: folks who need to create and manage PDF's using the features in Acrobat Pro, as opposed to the 3rd party publishers like Foxit, can -- to a very large extent -- do fine with their existing copies of Acrobat Pro 2009 -- and have NO need to upgrade to any of the subsequent versions. While publishers like Adobe would love to motivate users to keep shelling out several hundred dollars a year per seat, for many end users there are diminishing returns to keeping up with the annual upgrade practice. I can still happily run a multi million dollar consulting practice with Win XP, Office 2010 and Acrobat 2009. In fact, for 99% of the work a group like this might do, there is NO downside to doing this. If and when the group decides to get current with new versions in 2 or 3 years, the software will, no doubt, be backward compatible -- and all of today's documents will still load properly.

There's an enormous challenge for software publishers. At some point, once the software is really mature and feature reach, it becomes increasingly challenging to identify new features and add-ons that add enough value to make it worth upgrading. If they can't figure this out -- their only avenue to maintain a revenue stream is to shift users to a subscription model.

I personally believe that product companies must understand this aspect of their product lifecycle early on, and anticipate the product maturity part of the equation before they get there, panic, and look for ways to continue milking their customers to make up for a lack of planning.

[Albacore]

I go back to what I said earlier, no businesses are not going to quibble when they hear $50/month. Single users are going to say, well hell no! that means at least I will have to charge at least $20 extra for each piece of work more, just to be standing still. Don't think they have shot themselves in the foot, it's a goldmine in some areas. I just feel sorry for the single user who will put up with what ever the CS version that they are on. If they get a file which was produced by a newer version of software they might use they're Adobe account for that but I would ask for a PDF version from a client/company and work from that.

I worked with a national Scottish newspaper who were working with Illy version 8, for all their work, when I started, from ads. to cartoons and the like, then taking it into Quark, for layout and publishing, this was only 6 years ago so they are not a great example to use but are they? Everyone who worked there were really comfortable using the software over many years and had never heard about transparency so paid no attention to the problems or the extra scope that that gave them in the design process. With a few others I demonstrated what an upgraded version of AI could do and they bought 3, CS 4 licences. over 12 computers for the ads dept. which included the work that they did on weekend supplements. The reason for mentioning this is to show that when you learn skills and get compliment using the programme you don't really want to further these skills or should I say get the chance in company time to forward skills to the next version. I went to a few Adobe road-show days where they were selling the next version and all it was to us was a free lunch out. How many years since Adobe brought to both AI & PS 3D capability, for AI CS 1, for PS I think CS3. How many tutorials have you seen showing these capabilities, very few I think. This statement is to show that using many of upgraded tools in PS and AI are not that important.

Sorry about being off topic most of the time here but what I was trying to communicate is that the larger firms will think the cloud system rocks while the smaller dept's. will just keep plodding along using the same old versions. Only time will tell which wins but I think very slowly Adobe will die as times are changing in both web and print. Many people said this when Freehand & Flash rule but what happened there, Adobe gave them the push and bought them out. They have too much clout to disappear so I would imagine over the next few years when desktops are out and only touch screens are allowed ,Adobe will be there in some form, maybe not quite as big.

[Albacore]

Jon your mind is as bad as mine. Plus your explanation is better than mine.

[pauland]

Times do change. Quark ruled the publishing roost and was pretty expensive. Adobe came along with a cheaper pretender to the throne - inDesign. I think Quark is struggling these days.

Adobe was struggling a bit with Macromedia giving it a kicking with Flash and Dreamweaver. Adobe had the cash and swallowed up their rival.

Things change. Just think how Blackberry and Nokia ruled the phone roost. Sony?

Adobe has no clear rival that I can see.