Boycott Creative Cloud?

[Mike Wickham]

If you haven't heard, CS6 is the last CS version. From now on, you have to rent your applications via the Creative Cloud. I don't like the new subscription model. I have bought every CS upgrade since version 1, but it looks like CS6 is the end for me, even if it means keeping an old computer around just to run CS6 applications.

Perhaps Adobe would change its mind in a few months if most everyone avoided signing up for the subscription. In any case, they've created a real opportunity for competitors.

[station_two]

You can stil buy an upgrade to a perpectual license of CS6 right now.

That's where many of us are planning to remain at.

[mrbreeeeze]

Yes, I know. I can purchase CS6 Extended, Teacher/Student edition, which I may do, but I'm a stubborn man of principle and am having a hard time thinking about giving Adobe my money right now. It'll probaly get me by until Phase One or someone else comes up with something. I think there will definitely be a race among developers now to take PS's place and I will support them 100%.

[uhanepono]

Think of an upgrade this way and you will see the value in doing so: If you purchae the upgrade you will be casting a vote for full licencing. You will be telling adobe that they are rewarded for providing it as an alternative. If, from that time on, you no longer give them any money you will be sending the further message that they have lost you. Developers are out there, testing their wings and soon they will fly. I have CS6 extended and am watching the likes of photoline to see where they go. By the time CS6 feels a bit dated I am sure there will be other apps taht surpass it. If big corps like adobe with public options are going into M&A mode (merge and acquire) and leaving the R&D phase it's time to bail anyway. I believe this is the phase adobe is moving into along with microsoft etal. Let's turn some fresh soil and leave these fallow fields before wasting more seed on them. 

mrbreeeeze wrote:

Yes, I know. I can purchase CS6 Extended, Teacher/Student edition, which I may do, but I'm a stubborn man of principle and am having a hard time thinking about giving Adobe my money right now. It'll probaly get me by until Phase One or someone else comes up with something. I think there will definitely be a race among developers now to take PS's place and I will support them 100%.

[mrbreeeeze]

Yes. I think I will do that. I'll run that for decades before I subscribe to software like I did Cable TV, which I dropped over 2 years ago and never looked back.

[Brad_Trent]

Well...I appreciate the sentiment, but the reality is more likely to be that assuming hardware technology continues along at the rate it has, at best, the PS6 you buy today will probably only function for maybe a decade before the computers available won't even allow it to be installed. Of course, you could always buy a computer now...baby it so it never breaks down...only use it for photoshop and never hook it up to the interwebs for fear of catching a nasty virus....and just maybe that might still be functioning after a decade, but I kinda doubt it.

No....the only answer to this quagmire we find ourselves stuck in is to continue to harangue Adobe and get them to come up with an 'exit strategy' so that users who decide to stop paying into 'The Cloud' can have a snapshot taken their software's current upgrade level and frozen at that point, thereby allowing the user continued access to the application even after they have stopped upgrading. While I still fail to see any added value in paying a monthly 'rental fee' to Adobe, at least I would know that at some point in the future when I might not be doing this as an ongoing business concern, I can still look at my work.

[mrbreeeeze]

Thanks for the reply Brad. I appreciate you insight. As for my system I think I'll be ok and be able to hold out for some time.

[Noel Carboni]

Brad_Trent wrote:

Well...I appreciate the sentiment, but the reality is more likely to be that assuming hardware technology continues along at the rate it has, at best, the PS6 you buy today will probably only function for maybe a decade before the computers available won't even allow it to be installed.

Judging by the fact that the major software companies are turning have turned decidedly away from designing desktop systems, I think 10 years is an overestimate.

You could get the most powerful screaming killer of a desktop system today and try to make it last as long as possible.  In my experience individual computers - even high-end expensive workstations - don't run 10 years without failure.  Expect more like 5 to 8 years.

-Noel

[Greg_Bohn]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Brad_Trent wrote:

Well...I appreciate the sentiment, but the reality is more likely to be that assuming hardware technology continues along at the rate it has, at best, the PS6 you buy today will probably only function for maybe a decade before the computers available won't even allow it to be installed.

Judging by the fact that the major software companies are turning have turned decidedly away from designing desktop systems, I think 10 years is an overestimate.

You could get the most powerful screaming killer of a desktop system today and try to make it last as long as possible.  In my experience individual computers - even high-end expensive workstations - don't run 10 years without failure.  Expect more like 5 to 8 years.

-Noel

I think it's yet to be seen if the Desktop is as dead as some companies proclaim it to be. Personally, I find it hard to imagine trying to photoedit on my hypothetical 24 inch iPhone (or whatever) of the future .

  At any rate, some additional breathing space could probably be obtained using a "Virtual Machine" environment (like Vmware Workstation) if worst comes to worst and the OS of the day won't run CS6.

[mzocoh]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Brad_Trent wrote:

Well...I appreciate the sentiment, but the reality is more likely to be that assuming hardware technology continues along at the rate it has, at best, the PS6 you buy today will probably only function for maybe a decade before the computers available won't even allow it to be installed.

Judging by the fact that the major software companies are turning have turned decidedly away from designing desktop systems, I think 10 years is an overestimate.

You could get the most powerful screaming killer of a desktop system today and try to make it last as long as possible.  In my experience individual computers - even high-end expensive workstations - don't run 10 years without failure.  Expect more like 5 to 8 years.

-Noel

It's a good argument (if you were to do this) for building your own computer (or having one built) and buying an extra, identical motherboard, since that's the one component that would be most disastrous and hard to come by if it were to fail . . . also, keeping an image of your system on a separate hard drive at every OS upgrade would help a great deal (in addition to regular file backups), in the event of a HD failure. RAM would be easy (though probably expensive) to replace after 6 or 7 years, so would a power supply - CPUs aren't terribly prone to failure, at least it's highly unlikely. I own a computer repair company in NH - I've been at it for 18 years now & I can easily say that motherboard failure is the most likely reason for PC "death" - simply because they are hard to find used. One of my customers depends on systems that were current circa 1995 - they do scientific measurements with them and need ISA slots, etc. - they keep a stockpile of old, compatible motherboards and other age-old parts!

[Brad_Trent]

Guys...let's try to focus, OK?!! This isn't about an incredibly small number of techie geeks who are willing to say "EFF YOU!" to Adobe because they have the smarts to build a Univac 5000 that will last until the next Ice Age so that they can continue to run Photoshop CS6! The issue is to try by whatever means necessary to get Adobe to understand that their decision to move to a Cloud-based-only software system is shortsighted and gives its users ZERO choice.

[mrbreeeeze]

The best way for any company to get a message is through their pocket book. If everyone holds off and doesn't give in, sales will fall and shareholders will get very upset. Most of the time when software is upgraded, people move to it for the excitement of the newest and latest but if users bear down and skip a generation or two, then that's lots of money lost on R&D etc. As the thread says, boycott Adobe. Boycotts have been around a long time and are very effective, as long as people don't ignore them and give in. Me, like I said, am a man of principle. Sometimes too much my friends would say, but this is borderline extortion switching from perpetual license (where we own the software we pay for) to perpetual subscription (where we don't). It's a no ticky, no laundry proposal that I refuse to buy into. If we fall for it, and we get all comfy cozy with it, they'll have us by the balls and most likely up that subscription rate.

Also, don't tell me that this doesn't have the potential to stir up developement from other developers, despite how big and mighty Adobe is. If there is an outcry for alternatives and people ready to open their wallets for it, they will come. That's Capitalism at it's best.

[Lundberg02]

Those people in here who say they would gladly give 20 to 100 bucks to an alternate developer should just go ahead and buy CameraBag2 for 15.00 or Capture One Express 7 for 49.00 or Photoline for 59.00, among several others. Vote with your lunch money and see what happens. Give the little guys a chance while you're defying Adobe. How many non corporate PS users are there? A million? If only a hundred thousand of them bought a cheap photo editor it would pay for a bunch of upgrades. Even free organizers like Picasa might think about it.

I've been buying these cheapies for two years just to keep hope alive. I think I have about 40 image apps of one kind or another.As an example the 15.00 CameraBag will open RAW.

[Mopsi Leet]

mrbreeeeze wrote:

I think there will definitely be a race among developers now to take PS's place.

Dream on.

For years there hasn't been a competitive software for Photoshop on the professional market, the market where the money is.

Adobe swallows serious attempts. I loved Freehand and I loved GoLive, excellent software from other firms, overtaken by Adobe and then later buried and forgotten.

Every software lacks something major and as more for the hobby consumer market developed as simpler its features and as more limited its possibilities. Reasons why people who want detailed tuning and flexibility don't want to use them.

And developers won't now suddenly put a lot of resources and time into their low-budget software to push it to a semi-professional-Photoshop-CS-competitive level so that some private users coming from Photoshop CS, whom the half probably used it illegally anyway, will find a new home.

Considering the costs of Photoshop CS, the path of a PsCS competitive product for the hobby market could have been walked the entire time already. Sold for half the money. Which is surely still acceptable for a consumer software with serious features.

Actually, there is already software that can be used as a replace in certain aspects for the hobby market.

Gimp.

Gimp has been there for over 10 years.

It is even for free (open source) and one of the most advanced image editors out there but still far away from Photoshop CS.

Unfortunately Gimp works destructive, like Photoshop 13 years ago and hasn't changed in that aspect in the past years. Despite it being 15 years old already.

What other alternatives? Photoshop Elements? It has a lot of the non-destructive features of Photoshop CS but lacks a lot of the more professional tools like curves, pathtool, smart filters, lots and lots of the layer effects...

Corel PaintShop Pro? It is competitive to Photoshop Elements (better features, worse image management so I heard)  but not to Photoshop CS.

But I'm sad too that my Photoshop era will die out. Or... I'm sure ppl will find a way. But that saddens me even more.

I hope Gimp will make a major progress in non-destructive editing.

[Guest]

A hypothetical question...say the main servers of Adobe fail....just when they are doing a upgrade. Now some...maybe 1000's are without viable software....then what?

[mrbreeeeze]

What?! The mighty Adobe having server problems? Surely you jest?

[station_two]

mrbreeeeze wrote:

What?! The mighty Adobe having server problems? Surely you jest?

These forums need a sarcasm emoticon…

[mrbreeeeze]

I thought the word 'mighty' was a good enough clue. Sorry to confuse.

[station_two]

Oh, I was not confused myself.  With any luck the majority won't be either. 

[gener7]

57Patty57 wrote:

A hypothetical question...say the main servers of Adobe fail....just when they are doing a upgrade. Now some...maybe 1000's are without viable software....then what?

Not likely. "Redundancy" or not having all your servers in one basket is pretty common practice.

Gene

[Greg_Bohn]

> Not likely. "Redundancy" or not having all your servers in one basket is pretty common practice.

   Except when they fall over like dominoes, as has sometimes happened in the past (with some other companies).

  Bad updates and/or "user error" have taken down entire Cloud systems...

  Don't know how applicable that would be here, but having multiple servers doesn't always guarantee availability.

[mzocoh]

Although Adobe has adopted the term "Cloud" for it's newest product - oh, I'm sorry - service -
it's not entirely like most things that claim to be "Cloud" based . . . . interesting article nonetheless
about the dangers of this so called "Cloud" . . . don't want to get too far off topic, but it somewhat applies,
have a look:

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

[god_is_love]

This reflects the same tenor at to WHY it's a bad idea to rent software.  It's a cartoon showing a dad trying getting ready to show his son one of the greatest days of his life and finding that it was no more...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/05/17/what-the-duck-May17th2013

[zippity do da]

Well it looks like it really doesnt matter. There are 30,000 people signed the petition to keep perpetual licensing in about month and half https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-s....

There on track to piss off 300,000 people by the years end.

Adobe doesnt care whats 300,000 when you already have 500,000 on the cloud.. Everyone loves it happy happy joy joy.

Wankers

[FastFeet]

444333222111 wrote:

Well it looks like it really doesnt matter. There are 30,000 people signed the petition to keep perpetual licensing in about month and half https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate- the-mandatory-creative-cloud-....

There on track to piss off 300,000 people by the years end.

Adobe doesnt care whats 300,000 when you already have 500,000 on the cloud.. Everyone loves it happy happy joy joy.

Wankers

I don't think so. Adobe sold 4 million CS6 in one year and has 4 million users on older versions. Compare this to 0.5 milion cloud subscribers. If you dig into the numbers Adobe published and put them in context you can actually see that the happy acceptance of cloud is just a myth and it is fabricated. Actually cloud sales is not good. This is the main reason Adobe went for that stupid path to force it's user base into the cloud. If customers boycott the cloud Adobe is screwed big.

[mzocoh]

. . . and it's not as if ALL the dissatisfaction is accounted for in the now 31,380 signatures on the change.org petition, in fact, I'd say it's a small representation of the backlash that's coming over the next year or two. Lots of folks aren't going to figure out about Adobe's greedy and controlling scheme until they go to upgrade. Unfortunately, I found out about all this after "upgrading" one of my client companies to CC . . . I didn't know at the time that it was slated to be the only option (else I would have told them to stick with a CS6 upgrade) . . . so, even those who have signed up for CC in the past year may not yet know that there's no other option & no exit plan in place. As I see it, the 31,380 signatures represent only a tiny portion of what's to come - as the flaws in this system become evident, people are going to complain and eventually the lawsuits will come pouring in and Adobe's reputation will be destroyed. I will not relent in my opposition so long as rental only software exists & will pass the word of it's dangers along in any way possible, long after it becomes a hateful reality / if it does.