Lightroom "Classic"

pushing the absurd idea that a phone or tablet would somehow be the default or most prioritized way of editing photos. Total nonsense. There is Lightroom, and then the Lightroom mobile app.

By @brettc94048907

That’s not quite accurate, because there is also a Lightroom desktop app for Mac and Windows. Also, it isn’t desktop and mobile, you can run Lightroom on a desktop app, mobile app, and as a web browser app. What Adobe did was recognize that the entire industry was moving to cloud-centric, mobile-friendly solutions where any platform — desktop, mobile, and web — has equal footing. But that doesn’t slight the desktop, you can use Lightroom only on a Windows machine if you want, while ignoring the mobile and web clients.

This is not out of the blue or odd. It is the same approach Apple and Google realized they had do to with their photo applications: Originals in the cloud, all platforms as equal clients to the cloud server. Microsoft made the same move with the Office 365 suite, to match the Google office suite. Apple overhauled their office suite to be equally capable on mobile through the cloud.  Any major company that did not offer this platform-agnostic type of solution was going to be left behind.

The funny thing is, I am more on your side. I have only a minor interest in Lightroom desktop/mobile/web. Lightroom Classic is the hub of my photography because it works the way I need it to, and I have been using it since the betas of version 1.0. However, I can’t dismiss the real world reasons why Adobe had to come up with the Lightroom multi-platform system, because it is something that was becoming necessary industry-wide. Even if people like you and me don’t do a lot of phone photography, a lot more people do.

In a sense, we Lightroom Classic users are lucky. As desktop applications were being overhauled across the industry to account for mobile platforms becoming dominant, the main competition to the original Lightroom — Apple Aperture — didn’t make it. Apple chose to stop development of Aperture instead of investing to adapt it for the cloud and mobile. Similarly, Adobe found it impractical to fully adapt Lightroom Classic for the cloud; even today it can sync only Smart Previews and limited metadata. But instead of discontinuing Lightroom Classic, Adobe chose to keep it alive. Maybe we don’t like the name, but we should be aware that we’re fortunate they chose to keep upgrading Lightroom Classic with new features to this day. Because Lightroom Classic could easily have been abandoned long ago, like other apps from the desktop-only days.

Adobe never said anything like that, but even if they did, why would that offend you? Adobe is a for profit company. They write software to earn money. If they would conclude that writing for tablets and phones is more profitable than writing for computers (they clearly don't conclude that, but just suppose), then it would make sense that their priority would be with mobile products. There is no reason to feel offended if you prefer to use a computer, and Adobe is also not stopping you. Lightroom may have gotten a new name, it is still alive and kicking and still further developed.

P.S. That name change happened 7 years ago...

Adobe has said no such thing.