Do Adobe Devs consider customers when deploying updates? [PS 2019]

[Jason Burnett]

This may sound snarky, but I am shocked and appalled by the latest peculiar updates in Photoshop 2019.

And before this thread goes too far, I'm not looking for a specific answer to a problem so I am marking this as a discussion and not a question. You won't get your precious points or get recognized for being the biggest fanboy if you reply to this. Don't feel obliged to answer this if you are one of the industrious folks who have lots of questions to answer and feel pressed for time. Focus your energy where it does the most good.

I am hoping to open a discussion about the way that Adobe Devs make decisions regarding updates that change workflow. I realize this is a customer forum, but I was hoping to hear from other customers to see if I am completely off my rocker.

It appears to me that Adobe does not consider the way that people use their products and have become accustomed to using their products. It appears that the devs have decided that they know what is best for the customer whether the custom likes it or not. Like the sudden and completely ridiculous change in the transform tool in Photoshop. For those of us who are familiar with the keyboard modifications using the transform tool, everything has changed.

Why don't the Devs at least provide a "legacy" setting for changes in tool settings? It seems like a setting that let you choose "Proportional Scaling by Default" would be a simple way to accommodate the thousands (millions?) of users that are used to having to hold down keyboard modifiers to use Proportional Scaling using the transform tool.

Is this just an example of what happens when a company has become a monopoly? Once you either buy off all the competition or just muscle them out of business, you can do whatever you want to your customers and so long as you have the fanboys to ridicule and insult your majority of users, you'll get away with it?

Adobe has never been very good at considering their customers when implementing upgrades, but now that they have the service in the cloud, you don't have the option of using your legacy software because it works better for you. If this were like any other business where there was competition, Adobe would lose so many customers that they would be forced to consider the needs and desires of existing customers.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Thanks in advance for your input. (Let the fanboy hate replies come rolling in).

[Jason Burnett]

Anybody remember OpenDoc? Such a shame that OpenDoc died. Was really hoping that Create Suite was Adobe's OpenDoc, but it wasn't.

[Ussnorway]

yes but its a numbers game at this level guys i.e, if 10,000 people stop using Photoshop today because of bugs (or whatever else) then Adobe would not notice it

p.s, the days of microsoft fixing bugs are long gone... just ask the unemployment lines

[JJMack]

Agree Adobe only cares about their bottom line If they feel they can get new uses with some poor change they will make the change for they feel most current users are locked in. Disrupting  their workflow is good for business.

[Jason Burnett]

And the only way you could get 10k users to stop using Photoshop is if a serious alternative were to suddenly appear and somehow avoid getting put out of business by Adobe or purchased by Adobe. If you actually had amazing new technology, Adobe had the lawyers to force you to give it up or go out of business.

Adobe has no fear of losing users and that's precisely why they are able to release software with so many buggy new features without concern.

If you are a true fan of Photoshop then you remember when Photoshop was a powerhouse graphics app that did image editing better than anyone else. and that's it. You didn't launch photoshop to drop a graphic in your email. You edited photos or images in Photoshop.

Now that you can get a $2 blowjob from Photoshop it doesn't make it a better program. Just because anyone can now use it to scribble their boyfriend's name over a photo for Instagram doesn't increase its value regardless of whether it's the go-to program for 10k kids that like to make pretty pictures.

While people are turning their nose up at features like the Variations tool "because there are better ways to adjust color", they are also celebrating the fact that Photoshop "does a little bit of everything"? Really?

I much prefer the days when Photoshop did it's one thing and did it great. If you wanted to stretch its limits, you EXTENDED it with a robust 3rd party plugin architecture. I wish they would go back to the basics and focus on what Photoshop is or was at its core: an amazing image editing app.

Oh, yeah. Since some of you missed the announcement, they decided not to change the name to InDelluShop, but rather keep it "Creative Suite". They figured, same difference, right?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

And the only way you could get 10k users to stop using Photoshop is if a serious alternative were to suddenly appear and somehow avoid getting put out of business by Adobe or purchased by Adobe.

I hope you are not trying to make the counter-factual monopoly-claim again.

Affinity Photo has been getting some buzz recently and as far as I can tell it still exists.

[Lumigraphics]

You're new here, aren't you?

Computing is still a relatively new industry and change is a constant. If you drove a 1980 model year car, it would lack some of the bells and whistles found on new cars but would be pretty similar in operation and capability. You could use it on today's roads to travel just fine. Try to use a computer from 1980 and get back to me about what's changed in 40 years.

As for Adobe, they are a for-profit business and making money hand over fist. I suspect that in the eyes of Adobe's board and executives, they are doing everything right. Just saying.

[JJMack]

IMO I would not call a 1980 computer relatively new it technology is from the previous century technology including programming ages rapidly.  I would not call commuting a relatively new industry either, Programming has been aground longer than digital computing programming mechanical machines use different programming methods like programmer use different languages for different projects types.  Programs still need to have a good design and be well programmed throughout the centuries.  Computing seems to be build into human brain.

[Lumigraphics]

Did you even read what I said? The computer industry is new and changing, compared to other industries. That means technology gets outdated quickly, unlike the automotive industry where a 40-year-old car that has been maintained will get you around just fine. You can live in a 40-year-old house, eat food grown with 40-year-old farming methods, treat illness with drugs developed 40years ago, fly in an airplane designed 40 years ago, drive on a 40-year-old road, read this with skills learned in school 40 years ago, etc etc.

[JJMack]

I do not agree with what you have written yes change rate is accelulating compared to the past it not a new industry though.

The abacus (plural abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in Europe, China and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Hindu–Arabic numeral system.[1] The exact origin of the abacus is still unknown.

The period 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system.[11]

A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator.

Surviving notes from Wilhelm Schickard in 1623 reveal that he designed and had built the earliest of the modern attempts at mechanizing calculation.

Thomas' arithmometer, the first commercially successful machine, was manufactured two hundred years later in 1851; it was the first mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. For forty years the arithmometer was the only type of mechanical calculator available for sale.[6]

Charles Babbage designed two new kinds of mechanical calculators, which were so big that they required the power of a steam engine to operate, and that were too sophisticated to be built in his lifetime. The first one was an automatic mechanical calculator, his difference engine, which could automatically compute and print mathematical tables.

The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error, is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.

In 1843, during the translation of a French article on the analytical engine, Ada Lovelace wrote, in one of the many notes she included, an algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers. This is considered the first computer program.

[joanH]

Hi, Could someone here summarize what this is about and what purpose it serves? This is a long thread/string and one can not read all of it to find the reason to continue. Lots of opinions and diverse information going everywhere? Thanks for helping me clear my head cloud. JH

[JJMack]

Someone wanted user opinions of Adobe and its Software. IMO Photoshop Is a great Image Editor with many ffeatures and it also has some Bugs.  Adobe support of Photoshop should be better than it is.   I have been using Photoshop for 20+ years during the period Photoshop has matured and been made a better application. Many feature have been improved,  others added and a few have been removed.  Adobe  fixes all major problem. However bugs the effect many advances users are not fixed and  the number of unfixed bugs is growing.  Adobe support should do better by their users.

[DaveJCummings]

I do agree about that.  I shouldn't have to make a lot of tweaks to the preferences to make things work more like what I was used to with the prior release.  The best thing for us to do is report the bugs and share things here.

[Lumigraphics]

Computing uses math but is not math. COMPUTING with electronic computers is a new industry that is rapidly innovating and changing and developing new products and technologies.

[JJMack]

What deffinition do you use for new?

First Generation Electronic Computers (1937-1953)

Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first electronic computers. These machines used electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes, instead of electromechanical relays. In principle the electronic switches would be more reliable, since they would have no moving parts that would wear out, but the technology was still new at that time and the tubes were comparable to relays in reliability. Electronic components had one major benefit, however: they could ``open'' and ``close'' about 1,000 times faster than mechanical switches.

The earliest attempt to build an electronic computer was by J. V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State, in 1937. Atanasoff set out to build a machine that would help his graduate students solve systems of partial differential equations. By 1941 he and graduate student Clifford Berry had succeeded in building a machine that could solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns. However, the machine was not programmable, and was more of an electronic calculator.

The world's first commercially electronic digital computer was produced in the United States in June 14, 1951. It was UNIVAC I — The Universal Automatic Computer and was developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who were also makers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.

[DaveJCummings]

As someone who had taken part in several Betas for them,  I can safely say that yes, they do take this into account. The developers take the feedback to heart.  As with any company,  there will be moves made that make the customer feel like they aren't being considered,  but if you see what happens behind the scenes,  you'd see that's far from the case.

[JJMack]

Considering my dealings with Adobe support I do not share your opinion. Adobe I'm sure to take user feedback and sometimes take ideas into consideration.  Taken to heart also happens when there are many complaints like in the case of transform an after effect more a bug fix.

[joanH]

Shall we start another thread and get a fresh start. Can someone close this and open another if there is new information? Will Moderator send this on to the development staff to see this states the core of our problems?

I do know that if the upper management will use our information we must present it unemotionally and be brief and succinct. I suspect the sales department would read all of this. JH