Adobe's New Upgrade Policy (for CS6)

Sorry Snake. I couldn't see your link as I peruse these forums primarily via email. So this was stated by an Adobe executuve. With a name like "Wadhwani" how can you not take him seriously? If they feel they have a captive market, then they will likely do what they feel they can get away with. This is not your uncle's type of company we're talking about. Integrity already flew up into the cloud a long time ago. Dreamweaver is a declining application - though it could be a phenomenal application again if someone at Adobe cared. I guess we'll see what happens. Dreamweaver is along for the ride and certainly not the star. We have nearly 60,000 customers and a large percentage of our customer support queries involve Dreamweaver CS4 or earlier. It would seem that only the diehards have actually upgraded the past few years.

John to your point #4, that may be true, but Microsoft didn't introduce a per-use charge like Adobe is trying to push everyone to.  Even the Mac App Store is the same, companies are providing free upgrades to existing products and the products can be installed on an unlimited amount of computers.  I don't see Adobe lifting the computer limit as of right now.  And if it keeps going this way where does it stop?  Will we pay for software like a parking meter in a city and keep having to insert coins every hour?

Al, to your statement:

This is not your uncle's type of company we're talking about. Integrity already flew up into the cloud a long time ago. Dreamweaver is a declining application - though it could be a phenomenal application again if someone at Adobe cared. I guess we'll see what happens.

It's a sad truth.  And for those customers who would want to go to CS6 who would want to buy CS5.5 first, just to upgrade immediately like they suggest?

If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

Looking back the whole Macromedia purchase to eliminate the competition, has not been a good thing.  Flash is being dropped from Mobile support and I wouldn't be surprised to see the desktop player follow in its footsteps, then there's Fireworks maybe it is just a POW, and Freehand is six feet under.  If nothing else things like this should only foster more competition in the industry to drive prices back down.

Then you go look at the news with Adobe laying off 750 workers and this is just 2 years after the Lambert Walsh open letter apology for the horrible customer service that was plaguing Adobe ( http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/08/open_letter_to_our_customers_o.html ) that was posted all over this site.  I know there are plenty of great minds still at Adobe who care about the products they are making and could turn these into phenomal products again, as you mention Al.  But with all this PR surrounding them, it's going to take some effort to win back consumer confidence.