Au Revoir, Adobe

You know, I have been with Adobe since long before they bought up Macromedia. I loved the software and still do. It may be a bit bloated, but I suspect there are users who actually use those bloated bits. I enjoy the software that I use and have spent a long, long time learning it.

However, I really don’t like CC and more than that, I don’t like Adobe’s growing arrogance about their customers over the years. The recent change in Device Licenses caused educational and non-profit users a whole lot of misery. Did Adobe ever acknowledge those complaints? Well, no, they didn’t. They didn’t offer an apology, let alone anything meaningful, like an extension on the user’s licensing. No, their response was to raise the cost of the licenses.

Subscriptions are killing me. I don’t need or want subscriptions on everything. It is nice for marketers because they have steady revenue, but for me it is unnecessary. Perhaps it is nice of large businesses who simply pass their costs on to unsuspecting customers, but I am subscriptioned to death.

So, here I am retired and only do free work for small non-profits. Those same small non-profits cannot afford even the discounted prices Adobe charges and those discounted prices are patently absurd ... the software may or may not be bloated, but the pricing is.

So, although my leaving Adobe will have no impact on their bottom line and Adobe won‘t care one whit, I am am having the pleasure of exploring some amazing alternatives to Adobe, an exercise both interesting and guaranteed to keep the little grey cells functioning happily. You know, come to think about it, perhaps Adobe should care (but they really won’t) because for the few of us who actually take the time to write au revoir messages, there are a bunch of others who simply leave.

The funniest bit of this story to me rotates around the question of Adobe’s licensing to public schools. Schools pay fortunes to Adobe and yet they form the best advertising possible of the company. It is the same with AutoCAD in industrial arts training. When you think about it for a second or two, schools should demand that Adobe (and AutoCAD) supply them with the software and pay them to use their product. Nobody benefits more than Adobe from its use in the school system. Just a thought, schools.

So, so long, I’m off on a new adventure.