You say it's paying for services - Adobe provides tools. I don't rent tools. I don't subscribe to software. There is only one case in which I would pay for renting tools. This is for a short running project that has BIG requirements that I don't expect to have to use all year. A shovel you buy, a digging cat that you need to build a new retaining wall you rent. In case it wasn't obvious, the lawnmower is Photoshop and some of the other creative suite tools. Something like premiere might be the digger since I don't do video very often. The rental model is crazy for tools that you need every day and quite unprecedented and tellingly nobody else in creative software is doing this. Adobe is really far out on a limb here and you can tell from all the reactions. The Dave Girard, ars technica article linked above is a clear example of this. Stepping back, it is fairly obvious what is going on here. Adobe wants to be leading in a social revolution for creative design. This is the why for the cloud storage and collaboration tools that are part of CC. They know very well that they are very very late to the social game overall and they think that in the future they risk becoming irrelevant if they don't move into it full force now. So, since by themselves CC didn't really suck in many people, they are trying to tie it in with their established entrenched tools and make it so that in order to get the tool that everyone needs you have to get the cloud stuff too. They hope by default we will all get sucked into that social "revolution" and that they become the next social provider but for creatives. This is a long game. None of the other arguments about simpler finances or easier software maintenance for Adobe make much sense. On the other hand however, it is surprising to me that (as simple arithmetic will tell you) they chose to make the cost more expensive than the design suites upgrades that probably most people were buying. They must really believe the social/collaboration tools are a great value and that they just need to expose people to them for them to get the gospel. Quite surprising and not the strategy I would follow as I would think you would need to price it the same or slightly below the previous cost especially since the social tools are quite unfinished. For now I don't see anything but a more expensive dropbox which is not worth it. All quite unfortunate.
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