Adobe commits suicide

[jon404]

A day ago, Adobe announced that their new CC products will all be cloud-based and sold on a monthly-fee subscription basis.

This is a HUGE opportunity for alternatives like XDP. Huge.

If anyone at Xara reads this, please encourage your management to go right after Adobe -- RIGHT NOW -- so that XDP stakes out a position as the leading alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator, and... to some extent, to Dreamweaver.

Go for it! After all, a highly aggressive PR campaign costs you next to nothing!

[handrawn]

its not suicide.. it's going with the flow..

BTW: MS are currently working on a cloud based version of windows OS

[gwpriester]

When you consider what the full suite in all it various iterations was selling for, as I recall the range was something like $1,500 to $2,500, the option to rent or pay as you go, with full support and free product upgrades as they happen is a cost effective way to always be working with the latest versions.

If you are in the design business full time, this is very cost effective. And you only use what you need. If you own a previous version of Creative Suite the price is something like $29 a month, or $50 a month for non owners.

Time will tell, but my gut tells me Adobe is doing the right thing.

[Cloud]

AS Gary rightly says they are going with the flow, pretty much everything is moving to subscription, ms office included. Yes for someone using the software as a hobby it is a lot, those people tend to upgrade once in a while, whereas people such as myself, well we tend to upgrade every year as we take work from designers and marketing/pr companies so have to have the latest versions, and to be honest £20 or so is not a bid deal at all to us as it is our business and the software makes us a lot of money.

This rings so much of a client who I spoke to about having an ecommerce site and he said the £30 per month (hosting, ecwid subscription) was too much, I reminded him that he is paying that per day for his small shop and he gets just a small number of people walking in, if he had a well marketed website he could get thousands of visitors.

For us it is a saving, for others it may not be. And to be honest just because adobe are doing this does not mean designers/marketers/universities/colleges will shift over to xara.

[Artyboots]

It's an interesting one.

I hate subscription services, and don't buy them. Fortunately, Xara has already weaned me off Illustrator and Photoshop, and almost from Fireworks.

My friend has a graphics effect program that he wanted to take to subscription, but when he polled his entire customer base, overwhelmingly they said no. So I'm not alone. People like to own their stuff.

I think the craziness was not to offer proper choice. I think they may be at their own New Coke/Windows 8 moment. As Gary says, time will tell.

Everybody buy Xara! It makes much more sense, anyway.

A

[AndFarr]

I would also never do it. Never.
It only becomes the norm if everyone fall in line and subscribes.
With this kind of subscription you own nothing and pay endlessly.
If you can't afford it otherwise, and there are no alternatives then you would have no choice I suppose.
But there are choices, and good ones too !
So does it make any sense to sign up for this kind of financial bloodletting?
-AF

[MEB]

It can be good for Xara but not exactly the way the OP described. Professionals will not exchange Adobe Creative Suite for Xara anytime soon. They are not comparable for professional use.
And this is in fact beneficial for professionals for the reasons Gary stated.
What this new Adobe deal left out is those non-professional users that were using the software as a hobby and power-users (not professionals) that can´t justify the price of a subscription and may be now searching for alternatives assuming that no one will crack the new Adobe CC versions. Otherwise everything will stay exactly the same.
Unfortunately Adobe announced it will be killing Fireworks. A real pity. It's a really useful and intuitive program.

[PeteS]

People like to own their stuff.

But you never own any software, even when you pay a one-off price you're still only purchasing the right to use (license) that software within the limits of the license agreement. You may 'own' the CD it came on, but not the software on the CD.

Expensive tea coasters.

[Artyboots]

But you never own any software, even when you pay a one-off price you're still only purchasing the right to use (license) that software within the limits of the license agreement. You may 'own' the CD it came on, but not the software on the CD.

Expensive tea coasters.

Semantics

[pauland]

I used to buy Adobe software. I started with Flash and Dreamweaver. Quickly it became cheaper to upgrade to a suite rather than individual programs. Even so, I had access to a limted number of programs. Last year my option was to buy CS6 or go with Adobe Cloud. I went with the cloud, had access to all of the Adobe software and there is little cost differrence between upgrading my old software and the subscription. Of course, if you don't upgrade regularly, it's more expensive.

Adobe started with the cloud a year ago, so they have already tested the market and now they've gone a stage further. For most people it won't make much differrence to them whether they"buy" software or rent it.

If you decide to stop subscribing though, it will be game over.

I don't see it as suicide or a big opportunity for XDP. XDP is not an equivalent to the Creative Cloud.