And the Skies are Cloudy All Day
May 17, 2014 2:32 PM Subscribe
Adobe's controversial Creative Cloud service stumbles and fails, leaving many who have paid for the service unable to use it for 24 hours. Adobe says the cause was an unexpected failure during database maintenance. Compensation may be possible.
CS3: working fine
Inkscape: working fine
GIMP: working fine
Painter X: working fine
Paint Shop Pro X: working fine
Blender: working fine
Windsor & Newton watercolors on Arches paper: working fine. (Spent the morning that way.)
Tell me again who "the cloud" benefits? I may not have drunk enough Kool-Ade yet.
posted by jfuller at 2:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [31 favorites]
Inkscape: working fine
GIMP: working fine
Painter X: working fine
Paint Shop Pro X: working fine
Blender: working fine
Windsor & Newton watercolors on Arches paper: working fine. (Spent the morning that way.)
Tell me again who "the cloud" benefits? I may not have drunk enough Kool-Ade yet.
posted by jfuller at 2:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [31 favorites]
Tell me again who "the cloud" benefits? I may not have drunk enough Kool-Ade yet.
Adobe, who gets to charge you every month for software you never own and take it away as soon as you stop paying.
posted by zachlipton at 2:58 PM on May 17, 2014 [29 favorites]
Adobe, who gets to charge you every month for software you never own and take it away as soon as you stop paying.
posted by zachlipton at 2:58 PM on May 17, 2014 [29 favorites]
We want to assure you that this was not security related
Well, not this time at least. I mean, it's been over seven months since the last disastrous Adobe site security failure. You know, the one where someone lifted 2.9M customer records out of Adobe including names, passwords, and encrypted credit card records? Let's not even begin to look at the litany of Adobe client-side security failures in Flash and Acrobat.
posted by Nelson at 3:02 PM on May 17, 2014 [8 favorites]
Well, not this time at least. I mean, it's been over seven months since the last disastrous Adobe site security failure. You know, the one where someone lifted 2.9M customer records out of Adobe including names, passwords, and encrypted credit card records? Let's not even begin to look at the litany of Adobe client-side security failures in Flash and Acrobat.
posted by Nelson at 3:02 PM on May 17, 2014 [8 favorites]
This has always been my problem with this cloud stuff. I spend a few hours every day not connected to the internet. Crazy, I know, but it's useful time for getting things done in CS6.
posted by freakazoid at 3:10 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by freakazoid at 3:10 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
Look, I can't believe you're making me defend Adobe, but I don't see anybody complaining about Netflix. Go buy all your DVD's and keep them in a ratty Case Logic at home. These two companies find themselves in almost the exact same situation.
People say the reason Adobe came up with Creative Cloud is because of sagging profits, but I don't believe that. The applications landscape has changed quite a bit, and the cold truth is all it will take is one technology titan to jump in and offer vertically integrated, high-end online photo editing software (hint hint: Google) and Adobe, at the time selling $2,000+ Suites with no community services, would be behind the ball and out of business overnight.
Look how easily their purchase of Macromedia got crushed. Not really due to internal failures, mind you, Flash limped along seemingly forever despite being a piece of shit. Nope, what it took was one short email from Steve Jobs.
If you don't believe me, take a look at Google's acquisition of Nik Software, which is to me hands-down the best plugin suite for Photoshop. I paid $600 for that shit. Now that Google snapped it up, it sells for $149. If those plugins are incorporated into an online photo storage/presentation/delivery application, it's game over for Adobe.
So the writing is on the wall. With a 5000px fat black marker. This is a necessary leap into the future for them. That's all I'm saying.
posted by phaedon at 3:18 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
People say the reason Adobe came up with Creative Cloud is because of sagging profits, but I don't believe that. The applications landscape has changed quite a bit, and the cold truth is all it will take is one technology titan to jump in and offer vertically integrated, high-end online photo editing software (hint hint: Google) and Adobe, at the time selling $2,000+ Suites with no community services, would be behind the ball and out of business overnight.
Look how easily their purchase of Macromedia got crushed. Not really due to internal failures, mind you, Flash limped along seemingly forever despite being a piece of shit. Nope, what it took was one short email from Steve Jobs.
If you don't believe me, take a look at Google's acquisition of Nik Software, which is to me hands-down the best plugin suite for Photoshop. I paid $600 for that shit. Now that Google snapped it up, it sells for $149. If those plugins are incorporated into an online photo storage/presentation/delivery application, it's game over for Adobe.
So the writing is on the wall. With a 5000px fat black marker. This is a necessary leap into the future for them. That's all I'm saying.
posted by phaedon at 3:18 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
It's a shame they're so bad at it.
posted by Nelson at 3:19 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 3:19 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
"compensation will be considered on a case-by-case basis." not entirely reassuring. wouldn't the labor cost involved be more than if they just did an automatic 1/30 pro rata on all accounts?
posted by bruce at 3:25 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by bruce at 3:25 PM on May 17, 2014
If Adobe's "necessary leap into the future" involves alienating customers with software that is shittier than before, why would anyone follow them there?
posted by oulipian at 3:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by oulipian at 3:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
> "compensation will be considered on a case-by-case basis." not entirely reassuring. wouldn't the labor cost involved be more than if they just did an automatic 1/30 pro rata on all accounts?
I take it to mean that Adobe is expecting most of their customer base to not request compensation, and a meaningful percentage of the remainder to not follow through if the compensation process is at all unwieldy.
In other words, cake and eating it too.
posted by at by at 3:29 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
I take it to mean that Adobe is expecting most of their customer base to not request compensation, and a meaningful percentage of the remainder to not follow through if the compensation process is at all unwieldy.
In other words, cake and eating it too.
posted by at by at 3:29 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Look, I can't believe you're making me defend Adobe, but I don't see anybody complaining about Netflix. Go buy all your DVD's and keep them in a ratty Case Logic at home. These two companies find themselves in almost the exact same situation.
I'm sorry, I can't create that PDF for you today and possibly tomorrow because Netflix is down.
posted by juiceCake at 3:30 PM on May 17, 2014 [37 favorites]
I'm sorry, I can't create that PDF for you today and possibly tomorrow because Netflix is down.
posted by juiceCake at 3:30 PM on May 17, 2014 [37 favorites]
I don't see anybody complaining about Netflix
Netflix is a bad comparison for several reasons:
First, no one's business depends on Netflix playing smoothly.
Second, Netflix is access to thousands of media titles which would, in fact take up a lot of storage space at home. Not a handful of executables that could all fit on one DVD, and be easily installed on a system SSD drive for lightning response. They're very different problems to solve.
Finally, Netflix is what is because of legal restrictions which both demand and enable it. A movie doesn't require a disc -- people with .mp4 or .mkv versions of the films don't keep rack and racks of shiny discs. A far superior offering to what Netflix has now would be "download it to local storage if you please, keep as much there for as long as you like, never endure buffering." It's just (a) illegal and (b) not the way for them to extract maximum profit. Netflix as it stands is not the best they could do technically if, like Adobe, it was all in their hands.
posted by tyllwin at 3:33 PM on May 17, 2014 [21 favorites]
Netflix is a bad comparison for several reasons:
First, no one's business depends on Netflix playing smoothly.
Second, Netflix is access to thousands of media titles which would, in fact take up a lot of storage space at home. Not a handful of executables that could all fit on one DVD, and be easily installed on a system SSD drive for lightning response. They're very different problems to solve.
Finally, Netflix is what is because of legal restrictions which both demand and enable it. A movie doesn't require a disc -- people with .mp4 or .mkv versions of the films don't keep rack and racks of shiny discs. A far superior offering to what Netflix has now would be "download it to local storage if you please, keep as much there for as long as you like, never endure buffering." It's just (a) illegal and (b) not the way for them to extract maximum profit. Netflix as it stands is not the best they could do technically if, like Adobe, it was all in their hands.
posted by tyllwin at 3:33 PM on May 17, 2014 [21 favorites]
If Adobe's "necessary leap into the future" involves alienating customers with software that is shittier than before, why would anyone follow them there?
Funny, you just described my relationship to Apple.
posted by phaedon at 3:33 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
Funny, you just described my relationship to Apple.
posted by phaedon at 3:33 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
The only thing nice I can say about Photoshop CC is that $10/mo sure beats the hell out of a one-time $700 for Photoshop CS6.
I feel like there must be a sizable market out there for a solid $50 Photoshop CS2 clone. Yes, I've tried the latest Gimp, and no, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Or even their dog.
Something else I still can't believe doesn't exist: a $250 cleaned-up clone of 3D Studio MAX 2010's core mesh-editing tools. Yes, I've tried Blender: it is not merely inadequate but actively harmful in the sense that it takes people months to un-learn before they can slot into a professional workflow.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's a lack of mid-price-range tools that deliver solid implementations of the core functionality that covers 95% of all projects in their respective areas.
posted by Ryvar at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
I feel like there must be a sizable market out there for a solid $50 Photoshop CS2 clone. Yes, I've tried the latest Gimp, and no, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Or even their dog.
Something else I still can't believe doesn't exist: a $250 cleaned-up clone of 3D Studio MAX 2010's core mesh-editing tools. Yes, I've tried Blender: it is not merely inadequate but actively harmful in the sense that it takes people months to un-learn before they can slot into a professional workflow.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's a lack of mid-price-range tools that deliver solid implementations of the core functionality that covers 95% of all projects in their respective areas.
posted by Ryvar at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
Tell me again who "the cloud" benefits? I may not have drunk enough Kool-Ade yet.
Your smug attitude really warms my heart.
As an editor, I'm not working in Premiere lately, but I kinda like the fact that when I get a job that's in Premiere, I can get it for <$50/mo rather than $800 for software I may not use again for a long time. Avid recently went the same route with their software ($75/mo vs $1000 and up), and FCPX is really cheap as it is. The software will always be kept up to date, you get online support and bug fixes. To me, that's fantastic. I'm living in the future. (I can remember when pro editing at home meant $80,000!)
So the cloud went down for one day (and only if you logged the software out and back in). I've had non-cloud Avids go down for longer. Whoop de do.
posted by fungible at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2014 [11 favorites]
Your smug attitude really warms my heart.
As an editor, I'm not working in Premiere lately, but I kinda like the fact that when I get a job that's in Premiere, I can get it for <$50/mo rather than $800 for software I may not use again for a long time. Avid recently went the same route with their software ($75/mo vs $1000 and up), and FCPX is really cheap as it is. The software will always be kept up to date, you get online support and bug fixes. To me, that's fantastic. I'm living in the future. (I can remember when pro editing at home meant $80,000!)
So the cloud went down for one day (and only if you logged the software out and back in). I've had non-cloud Avids go down for longer. Whoop de do.
posted by fungible at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2014 [11 favorites]
> The applications landscape has changed quite a bit, and the cold truth is all it will take is one technology titan
> to jump in and offer vertically integrated, high-end online photo editing software (hint hint: Google) and Adobe
> would be behind the ball and out of business.
Everytime the topic of alternatives to Adobe comes up the chorus is "graphics shops can't switch away from Adobe, it's the Industry Standard." If that gospel is passing away so that pros would be willing to switch to something from, oh, Google, then Adobe is cooked cloud or no cloud.
posted by jfuller at 3:37 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
> to jump in and offer vertically integrated, high-end online photo editing software (hint hint: Google) and Adobe
> would be behind the ball and out of business.
Everytime the topic of alternatives to Adobe comes up the chorus is "graphics shops can't switch away from Adobe, it's the Industry Standard." If that gospel is passing away so that pros would be willing to switch to something from, oh, Google, then Adobe is cooked cloud or no cloud.
posted by jfuller at 3:37 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Netflix is also a bad comparison because the "ownership" model (really, licensing, but physical pieces of plastic anyway) is still alive and well. Same with Spotify vs iTunes/Amazon. Adobe has aggressively forced its customer base to Creative Cloud through a carrot and stick approach. If your licensing model really benefits consumers, you let them choose it over the old one for themselves instead of forcing them into it.
posted by zachlipton at 3:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by zachlipton at 3:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Second, Netflix is access to thousands of media titles which would, in fact take up a lot of storage space at home.
Netflix did not move to streaming (an extremely rough transition, if you remember, this almost pales in comparison to Reed Hastings) because "owning thousands of DVD's" represented a logistical problem to customers. Their previous rental model already solved that problem. They moved to streaming because they were about to get leap-frogged by the big-boy competition. Up until recently Adobe's only peripheral services competition was from niche companies with mom-and-pop names like "SmugMug" and "Alien Skin."
If that gospel is passing away so that pros would be willing to switch to something from, oh, Google, then Adobe is cooked cloud or no cloud.
Totally true. Hence, the scramble. Is it worth these security fuck-ups? Yes. There are no other options for Adobe.
posted by phaedon at 3:49 PM on May 17, 2014
Netflix did not move to streaming (an extremely rough transition, if you remember, this almost pales in comparison to Reed Hastings) because "owning thousands of DVD's" represented a logistical problem to customers. Their previous rental model already solved that problem. They moved to streaming because they were about to get leap-frogged by the big-boy competition. Up until recently Adobe's only peripheral services competition was from niche companies with mom-and-pop names like "SmugMug" and "Alien Skin."
If that gospel is passing away so that pros would be willing to switch to something from, oh, Google, then Adobe is cooked cloud or no cloud.
Totally true. Hence, the scramble. Is it worth these security fuck-ups? Yes. There are no other options for Adobe.
posted by phaedon at 3:49 PM on May 17, 2014
> Look how easily their purchase of Macromedia got crushed.
I have no idea what this means. The acquisition of Macromedia gave Adobe a functional monopoly in the 2D graphics space. There is no way to avoid using Adobe products in the print and imaging world. Adobe now owns that space unchallenged.
Flash suffered because Adobe tried to turn it into an alternative to HTML in an attempt to own the web environment. They failed out of hubris as much as incompetence (it did not ever work properly in mobile, and they would never figure out how to make it work), but frankly at that point it wouldn't have mattered if they'd rebranded it as, "Fuck You Got Mine" and given it a startup screen of John Warnock flipping you the bird.
Adobe had a four solid years of milking Flash and enlarging its domain (At one time Adobe's online store was entirely in Flash) before iOS and Android became web clients too significant to ignore. It doesn't matter if Adobe lost the long bet on Flash; they still profited handsomely off it and it is painless for them to sideline it.
posted by at by at 3:51 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
I have no idea what this means. The acquisition of Macromedia gave Adobe a functional monopoly in the 2D graphics space. There is no way to avoid using Adobe products in the print and imaging world. Adobe now owns that space unchallenged.
Flash suffered because Adobe tried to turn it into an alternative to HTML in an attempt to own the web environment. They failed out of hubris as much as incompetence (it did not ever work properly in mobile, and they would never figure out how to make it work), but frankly at that point it wouldn't have mattered if they'd rebranded it as, "Fuck You Got Mine" and given it a startup screen of John Warnock flipping you the bird.
Adobe had a four solid years of milking Flash and enlarging its domain (At one time Adobe's online store was entirely in Flash) before iOS and Android became web clients too significant to ignore. It doesn't matter if Adobe lost the long bet on Flash; they still profited handsomely off it and it is painless for them to sideline it.
posted by at by at 3:51 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
[slight derail]
Flash limped along seemingly forever despite being a piece of shit. Nope, what it took was one short email from Steve Jobs.
I think I've told this story before, but I firmly believe that the only reason Steve Jobs sent that email was because Flash was such a massive turd.
I worked at Apple in the early 2000s. When an app crashed on a Mac, the system phoned home and uploaded a crash log (user gets a yes/no popup so not every log is sent). I worked with these crash logs and the aggregate statistics. Flash was responsible for the majority of crashes on the Mac platform. That is, over 50% of crashes. Literally more than every other app combined. That is why they were banned from iOS.
(Massive cpu usage probably didn't help either.)
posted by ryanrs at 3:53 PM on May 17, 2014 [25 favorites]
Flash limped along seemingly forever despite being a piece of shit. Nope, what it took was one short email from Steve Jobs.
I think I've told this story before, but I firmly believe that the only reason Steve Jobs sent that email was because Flash was such a massive turd.
I worked at Apple in the early 2000s. When an app crashed on a Mac, the system phoned home and uploaded a crash log (user gets a yes/no popup so not every log is sent). I worked with these crash logs and the aggregate statistics. Flash was responsible for the majority of crashes on the Mac platform. That is, over 50% of crashes. Literally more than every other app combined. That is why they were banned from iOS.
(Massive cpu usage probably didn't help either.)
posted by ryanrs at 3:53 PM on May 17, 2014 [25 favorites]
Everytime the topic of alternatives to Adobe comes up the chorus is "graphics shops can't switch away from Adobe, it's the Industry Standard." If that gospel is passing away so that pros would be willing to switch to something from, oh, Google, then Adobe is cooked cloud or no cloud.
Twenty years ago we said that about Quark.
posted by Talez at 3:54 PM on May 17, 2014 [10 favorites]
Twenty years ago we said that about Quark.
posted by Talez at 3:54 PM on May 17, 2014 [10 favorites]
BTW this situation went on for many years. Adobe either didn't give a shit or were completely incompetent (perhaps both). In any case, Apple yelled at them for years and years before finally putting a bullet in Flash. Adobe really didn't give them any other choice.
posted by ryanrs at 3:54 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 3:54 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
If you think Steve Jobs was ever going to allow Adobe anything resembling integration in an Apple product, you are ignoring history. Apple has a fairly rich history of Not Invented Here hubris, but particularly when Adobe and Microsoft are concerned it is entirely justified.
posted by at by at 3:57 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by at by at 3:57 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
> Twenty years ago we said that about Quark.
Quark was superseded by InDesign which is a property of... oh hey, look at that.
Challenging Adobe is going to have to involve a method of not only successfully challenging the dominance of any single product (pick from Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) but also find an alternative route around Adobe's end-to-end workflow from the creative's desk to the press.
posted by at by at 4:02 PM on May 17, 2014
Quark was superseded by InDesign which is a property of... oh hey, look at that.
Challenging Adobe is going to have to involve a method of not only successfully challenging the dominance of any single product (pick from Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) but also find an alternative route around Adobe's end-to-end workflow from the creative's desk to the press.
posted by at by at 4:02 PM on May 17, 2014
I was actually going to AskMeFi this, but if anyone will pardon a slight derail, does anyone regularly use a single account for more than two machines? I have three machines I work on pretty regularly (Work, Home, Laptop). I have a second CC license for the laptop because I was under the impression that you had to do a complete uninstall any time you deregistered/deactivated.
Now I'm seeing comments around the web that as long as you log out of CC, it's fine (note I don't do any syncing with files, though I do some font sync) - that is, you can keep your apps/plugins, etc. on all machines, as long as you aren't logged in to more than two at once. I bill enough time off the third machine that I don't have to kill the sub, but I sort of resent the principal that limiting to two activations is sort of antithetical to what the cloud represents (in my ideal world, I could sit down at any machine, login and go -- after a nine hour download and install)
re: the cloud stuff. Everyone hates on Adobe, blah blah blah. It's an extraordinary amount of software for $50 a month. I find these comments break down into professionals to whom the cost is pretty trivial against revenue, and recent students or casual & prosumer users who either never paid before or just use on occasion. I would agree that the current scheme is onerous for those people, but I also don't know those people have selected the correct product (or if they have, aren't thinking about the value it brings).
posted by 99_ at 4:05 PM on May 17, 2014
Now I'm seeing comments around the web that as long as you log out of CC, it's fine (note I don't do any syncing with files, though I do some font sync) - that is, you can keep your apps/plugins, etc. on all machines, as long as you aren't logged in to more than two at once. I bill enough time off the third machine that I don't have to kill the sub, but I sort of resent the principal that limiting to two activations is sort of antithetical to what the cloud represents (in my ideal world, I could sit down at any machine, login and go -- after a nine hour download and install)
re: the cloud stuff. Everyone hates on Adobe, blah blah blah. It's an extraordinary amount of software for $50 a month. I find these comments break down into professionals to whom the cost is pretty trivial against revenue, and recent students or casual & prosumer users who either never paid before or just use on occasion. I would agree that the current scheme is onerous for those people, but I also don't know those people have selected the correct product (or if they have, aren't thinking about the value it brings).
posted by 99_ at 4:05 PM on May 17, 2014
It doesn't matter if Adobe lost the long bet on Flash; they still profited handsomely off it and it is painless for them to sideline it.
I mean, personally, I object to your comment almost in its entirety. In 2011, when Apple sells more iGadgets in one year than it has sold computers in its entire existence as a company, it does matter that Adobe lost its bet on mobile platforms. They got zeroed the fuck out.
Also, Adobe didn't "try to turn Flash into an alternative to HTML." That's what it was when they bought it. You could in fact argue it flatlined the minute they put their hands on it. Their entire site was in Flash? Congratulations we made it! Second place is a set of steak knives.
My underlying point is Adobe has to get Creative Cloud to work, so stop complaining about it or treating it as a delusion of grandeur. But as jfuller pointed out, they're probably fucked regardless.
posted by phaedon at 4:05 PM on May 17, 2014
I mean, personally, I object to your comment almost in its entirety. In 2011, when Apple sells more iGadgets in one year than it has sold computers in its entire existence as a company, it does matter that Adobe lost its bet on mobile platforms. They got zeroed the fuck out.
Also, Adobe didn't "try to turn Flash into an alternative to HTML." That's what it was when they bought it. You could in fact argue it flatlined the minute they put their hands on it. Their entire site was in Flash? Congratulations we made it! Second place is a set of steak knives.
My underlying point is Adobe has to get Creative Cloud to work, so stop complaining about it or treating it as a delusion of grandeur. But as jfuller pointed out, they're probably fucked regardless.
posted by phaedon at 4:05 PM on May 17, 2014
InDesign CC was one of the things that went down, right? Things are looking up for Quark's next 20 years.
posted by jfuller at 4:06 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by jfuller at 4:06 PM on May 17, 2014
Giving the Luddites another step closer to an "I told you so..."
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:06 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:06 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's also worthwhile to consider the role of the craptastic PSD file format in keeping everyone on the platform.
// At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format.posted by jenkinsEar at 4:10 PM on May 17, 2014 [15 favorites]
// PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an
// insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having
// worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire
// that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.
// If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different
// places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those
// too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide
// that *these* particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement
// should *not* be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned,
// or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included.
// Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD,
// of course, uses all three, and more.
// Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of
// your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th
// birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but
// at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people
// responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.
// Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this,
// I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending
// me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or
// other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so
// difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I
// was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done
// so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire.
// Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
// them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
//
// PSD is not my favourite file format.
Creative Cloud is a price reduction from Adobe for sporadic users, and for regular users that were upgrading regularly. They switched their model to make purchasing Adobe products more attractive to pirates. You can still buy older versions second-hand if you want to stick with one version for a long time, and you can still pirate Creative Cloud.
posted by michaelh at 4:12 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by michaelh at 4:12 PM on May 17, 2014
> In 2011, when Apple sells more iGadgets in one year than it has sold computers in its entire existence as a company, it does matter that Adobe lost its bet on mobile platforms. They got zeroed the fuck out.
Why should Adobe care? They see themselves losing Flash presence on the Web, and they move to the infrastructure side of the Web. Corporate's emotional stake in an investment will only last as long as they see it being profitable. I honestly don't think the executives have ever given it even as much consideration as we are right now. Like I said: they have their cake and they're eating it too.
posted by at by at 4:13 PM on May 17, 2014
Why should Adobe care? They see themselves losing Flash presence on the Web, and they move to the infrastructure side of the Web. Corporate's emotional stake in an investment will only last as long as they see it being profitable. I honestly don't think the executives have ever given it even as much consideration as we are right now. Like I said: they have their cake and they're eating it too.
posted by at by at 4:13 PM on May 17, 2014
I feel like there must be a sizable market out there for a solid $50 Photoshop CS2 clone.
On the Apple ball & chain side, I think that's about what I paid for Acorn. I don't know how much of the really complicated stuff it does, but I know there's a ton of stuff that I haven't even touched yet in terms of what it can do. (Not that I ever used a tenth of the power of any version of Photoshop, but most people don't.)
posted by immlass at 4:15 PM on May 17, 2014
On the Apple ball & chain side, I think that's about what I paid for Acorn. I don't know how much of the really complicated stuff it does, but I know there's a ton of stuff that I haven't even touched yet in terms of what it can do. (Not that I ever used a tenth of the power of any version of Photoshop, but most people don't.)
posted by immlass at 4:15 PM on May 17, 2014
Look, I can't believe you're making me defend Adobe, but I don't see anybody complaining about Netflix. Go buy all your DVD's and keep them in a ratty Case Logic at home. These two companies find themselves in almost the exact same situation.
Netflix's streaming is a service that's pretty much completely cloud-based. Adobe Creative Cloud installs gigabytes upon gigabytes of applications on your hard drive. All of the software, and your data, remain on your computer. Only the licensing is done "in the cloud."
In other words, they're almost completely different.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 4:20 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
Netflix's streaming is a service that's pretty much completely cloud-based. Adobe Creative Cloud installs gigabytes upon gigabytes of applications on your hard drive. All of the software, and your data, remain on your computer. Only the licensing is done "in the cloud."
In other words, they're almost completely different.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 4:20 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
Hey guys, "In almost the exact same situation" ≠ "almost exactly the same product."
posted by phaedon at 4:24 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by phaedon at 4:24 PM on May 17, 2014
Something else I still can't believe doesn't exist: a $250 cleaned-up clone of 3D Studio MAX 2010's core mesh-editing tools.
I am thinking about getting a Maya LT license, it is still a little pricey at $800, or $400 yearly, but it will handle texture mapping and animation, as well as modeling.
posted by St. Sorryass at 4:26 PM on May 17, 2014
I am thinking about getting a Maya LT license, it is still a little pricey at $800, or $400 yearly, but it will handle texture mapping and animation, as well as modeling.
posted by St. Sorryass at 4:26 PM on May 17, 2014
Flash limped along seemingly forever despite being a piece of shit. Nope, what it took was one short email from Steve Jobs.
For us it had very little to do with Steve Jobs and almost everything to do with the emergence of Google and the fact that Google couldn't index the content of Flash sites (without doing some rather hacky shit) and therefore your site ranking would go down.
Second is you couldn't easily use a CMS to easily update your site so the cost of developing a site was a lot higher if it was to be Flash based.
Very few, if any, of our clients anyway, gave a shit if Steve Jobs hated or loved Flash. Your mileage may vary.
We've seen a big upswing in our clients wanting mobile (they mean responsive) sites only within the last year, no doubt due to more mature frameworks driving development costs down and the fact that iOS and Android have been able to render non-responsive sites pretty well anyway.
posted by juiceCake at 4:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
For us it had very little to do with Steve Jobs and almost everything to do with the emergence of Google and the fact that Google couldn't index the content of Flash sites (without doing some rather hacky shit) and therefore your site ranking would go down.
Second is you couldn't easily use a CMS to easily update your site so the cost of developing a site was a lot higher if it was to be Flash based.
Very few, if any, of our clients anyway, gave a shit if Steve Jobs hated or loved Flash. Your mileage may vary.
We've seen a big upswing in our clients wanting mobile (they mean responsive) sites only within the last year, no doubt due to more mature frameworks driving development costs down and the fact that iOS and Android have been able to render non-responsive sites pretty well anyway.
posted by juiceCake at 4:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Only the licensing is done "in the cloud."
You can also store and share work on the cloud. But, erm, it's not like you'd think…
I was working in Premiere CC. I had a deadline. I could have posted a HDD to the client but instead I decided to gain some extra hours and upload the file overnight instead. (I have a slow connection.)
Only one problem. In the morning, I discovered I couldn't share the file with the client. Why? Because Adobe doesn't want people to share video files on the Creative Cloud. (Despite originating in Adobe's own product!)
'A seamless ways to share and collaborate'. My arse.
posted by popcassady at 4:32 PM on May 17, 2014 [7 favorites]
You can also store and share work on the cloud. But, erm, it's not like you'd think…
I was working in Premiere CC. I had a deadline. I could have posted a HDD to the client but instead I decided to gain some extra hours and upload the file overnight instead. (I have a slow connection.)
Only one problem. In the morning, I discovered I couldn't share the file with the client. Why? Because Adobe doesn't want people to share video files on the Creative Cloud. (Despite originating in Adobe's own product!)
'A seamless ways to share and collaborate'. My arse.
posted by popcassady at 4:32 PM on May 17, 2014 [7 favorites]
Hey guys, "In almost the exact same situation" ≠ "almost exactly the same product."
How are Netflix and Adobe CC in the same situation, other than the fact that they charge you monthly and require active credentials to work properly? Netflix's model (lending you other people's work) pretty much dictates a monthly subscription fee, in the same way that I am not entitled to use the public libraries of places where I used to live and pay taxes. Adobe has decided to stop offering its major product for sale, and started renting it out exclusively instead, only.because it can squeeze more money out of people that way.
It's like saying my electric company is in the same situation as the hardware store. There's no reason to make me rent a power drill instead of buying it other than to pad your bottom line.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 4:35 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
How are Netflix and Adobe CC in the same situation, other than the fact that they charge you monthly and require active credentials to work properly? Netflix's model (lending you other people's work) pretty much dictates a monthly subscription fee, in the same way that I am not entitled to use the public libraries of places where I used to live and pay taxes. Adobe has decided to stop offering its major product for sale, and started renting it out exclusively instead, only.because it can squeeze more money out of people that way.
It's like saying my electric company is in the same situation as the hardware store. There's no reason to make me rent a power drill instead of buying it other than to pad your bottom line.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 4:35 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
The cloud is terrible. I demand that Adobe go back to Flash's original name, "Future Splash Animator", and only sell boxed copies in the original crab-themed packaging.
My basis for this demand is that I like crabs.
posted by compartment at 4:37 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
My basis for this demand is that I like crabs.
posted by compartment at 4:37 PM on May 17, 2014 [9 favorites]
Look, I can't believe you're making me defend Adobe, but I don't see anybody complaining about Netflix. Go buy all your DVD's and keep them in a ratty Case Logic at home. These two companies find themselves in almost the exact same situation.
They're very little alike, apart from the 'uses the internet' sense.
If netflix goes down, it's unlikely many people are going to have trouble doing their job as a result. Losing access to Adobe CC, on the other hand, is quite a big deal if you're in that kind of work. Netflix does not revolve around storing their entire content catalog on your hardware and selectively denying access based upon internet-based DRM.
We have an education site licence for CS6, and it's by far our hardest app to bulk deploy - which for educational software, is saying something. Both installation and patching are a pain, but the biggest bugbear is the licence authentication add-on - we basically have to run it by hand with an admin account to authorise a machine against the 'net, as we've not been able to get it run successfully via scripting. When you have 400+ desktops, that's a bit of a pain.
There wasn't an option on CC to start with for site deployments to shared PC labs, rather than giving users their own personal CC account and local admin rights to the PCs; the latter definitely being a non starter, though I believe they've changed that requirement now. Of course, our existing licence only covers us for updates (so we won't be renewing, given there won't be any) and we'd need to layout another big chunk of money to 'upgrade', so it's not top of my to-do list right now.
Still. The point is, there's absolutely no reason that adobe couldn't put in an iron-clad authentication scheme that saved your licence to the local install, and if you couldn't authenticate online because the servers were down or your network is down etc etc, you just fall back to that saved offline authentication. Even steam and origin work that way now, and that's just for gaming, hardly a critical job-dependency! Doing it the way they did is shoddy, and a giant middle finger to professional users.
Switching to the cloud-based scheme is about
a) making sure you stay on the upgrade treadmill, and don't stop paying for minimal new features
b) using intrusive online-auth DRM to tackle piracy.
It's the next step forward from the CS series, which has had increasingly hardline authentication systems. Not that that stops the pirates of course; a quick glance at the pirate bay shows creative cloud apps on there.
So in an ineffectual attempt to stop pirates, they're making life ever harder and more annoying for paying customers, while also nickle-and-diming them to death by end of lifeing the standalone offline versions where you could avoid upgrading for a number of years.
Sure, for light users I'm sure only paying for the few weeks in a year they need one app is a big improvement. I have no problem with the idea of cheap, temporary net-auth licences for them.
I do have a problem with making it incredibly annoying to use, totally reliant upon the 'net for regular DRM checks, and making it mandatory for everyone - and using the 2-machine limit to make sure you have to log in regularly if you actually use it a lot, given reliable internet is not exactly universal, especially when mobile. Ultimately, pissing off your regular customers is a great way to drive them racing to a competitor when one does show up. But then, pissing off the customer seems to be an Adobe speciality.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [12 favorites]
They're very little alike, apart from the 'uses the internet' sense.
If netflix goes down, it's unlikely many people are going to have trouble doing their job as a result. Losing access to Adobe CC, on the other hand, is quite a big deal if you're in that kind of work. Netflix does not revolve around storing their entire content catalog on your hardware and selectively denying access based upon internet-based DRM.
We have an education site licence for CS6, and it's by far our hardest app to bulk deploy - which for educational software, is saying something. Both installation and patching are a pain, but the biggest bugbear is the licence authentication add-on - we basically have to run it by hand with an admin account to authorise a machine against the 'net, as we've not been able to get it run successfully via scripting. When you have 400+ desktops, that's a bit of a pain.
There wasn't an option on CC to start with for site deployments to shared PC labs, rather than giving users their own personal CC account and local admin rights to the PCs; the latter definitely being a non starter, though I believe they've changed that requirement now. Of course, our existing licence only covers us for updates (so we won't be renewing, given there won't be any) and we'd need to layout another big chunk of money to 'upgrade', so it's not top of my to-do list right now.
Still. The point is, there's absolutely no reason that adobe couldn't put in an iron-clad authentication scheme that saved your licence to the local install, and if you couldn't authenticate online because the servers were down or your network is down etc etc, you just fall back to that saved offline authentication. Even steam and origin work that way now, and that's just for gaming, hardly a critical job-dependency! Doing it the way they did is shoddy, and a giant middle finger to professional users.
Switching to the cloud-based scheme is about
a) making sure you stay on the upgrade treadmill, and don't stop paying for minimal new features
b) using intrusive online-auth DRM to tackle piracy.
It's the next step forward from the CS series, which has had increasingly hardline authentication systems. Not that that stops the pirates of course; a quick glance at the pirate bay shows creative cloud apps on there.
So in an ineffectual attempt to stop pirates, they're making life ever harder and more annoying for paying customers, while also nickle-and-diming them to death by end of lifeing the standalone offline versions where you could avoid upgrading for a number of years.
Sure, for light users I'm sure only paying for the few weeks in a year they need one app is a big improvement. I have no problem with the idea of cheap, temporary net-auth licences for them.
I do have a problem with making it incredibly annoying to use, totally reliant upon the 'net for regular DRM checks, and making it mandatory for everyone - and using the 2-machine limit to make sure you have to log in regularly if you actually use it a lot, given reliable internet is not exactly universal, especially when mobile. Ultimately, pissing off your regular customers is a great way to drive them racing to a competitor when one does show up. But then, pissing off the customer seems to be an Adobe speciality.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [12 favorites]
When Creative Cloud was down for a day or two this week, it didn’t affect my usage of InDesign at all, in the sense that I could still open up Indy (or any of their other apps) and create and save files just as I’ve always done. However, what I *did* notice was that the fonts that I had desktop-synched from Typekit were missing in all of the files where I had used them (I got the dreaded pink highlights, indicating missing fonts). So whereas you can still use the main apps for several days or weeks if you (or Adobe) were knocked offline, you do have to be signed in to the Creative Cloud app in order to have font sync working. Now I know!
posted by kentk at 5:08 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by kentk at 5:08 PM on May 17, 2014
I have a second CC license for the laptop because I was under the impression that you had to do a complete uninstall any time you deregistered/deactivated.
Now I'm seeing comments around the web that as long as you log out of CC, it's fine (note I don't do any syncing with files, though I do some font sync) - that is, you can keep your apps/plugins, etc. on all machines, as long as you aren't logged in to more than two at once.
Yes, logging out should be sufficient from what I've seen when supporting it. You can only have the CC versions activated on two installs at once per account; they're activated by signing in with the manager software. Once signed in, it will stay activated, with periodic online checks to reactivate in the background (I believe every 2 weeks). If not activated, it runs in 30-day trial mode, then you need to re-sign in again.
To deactivate a machine, you only need to sign-out of CC; you don't need to specifically deactivate like you did with CS6, and it doesn't force you to uninstall the extant software. If you have it activated on 2 installs already and a machine dies etc and you can't logout, you install on a 3rd pc/mac, and it will prompt you to reset your activations - then the new machine will be activated, you can then reactivate the 2nd working machine and you're back to how you were.
So as long as you sign out of one computer before signing in on the 3rd machine, you will be ok. If you accidentally sign in on all 3 at once, you can either cancel and sign out one of the others first, or reset the activations to just activate the 3rd pc. Given the account is assigned to you, not on a machine basis, and people often have laptops/desktops plus bootcamp etc, it seems rather low to only have 2 activations at-once these days (office 365 is 5, for example) but that's Adobe for you.
posted by ArkhanJG at 5:09 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Now I'm seeing comments around the web that as long as you log out of CC, it's fine (note I don't do any syncing with files, though I do some font sync) - that is, you can keep your apps/plugins, etc. on all machines, as long as you aren't logged in to more than two at once.
Yes, logging out should be sufficient from what I've seen when supporting it. You can only have the CC versions activated on two installs at once per account; they're activated by signing in with the manager software. Once signed in, it will stay activated, with periodic online checks to reactivate in the background (I believe every 2 weeks). If not activated, it runs in 30-day trial mode, then you need to re-sign in again.
To deactivate a machine, you only need to sign-out of CC; you don't need to specifically deactivate like you did with CS6, and it doesn't force you to uninstall the extant software. If you have it activated on 2 installs already and a machine dies etc and you can't logout, you install on a 3rd pc/mac, and it will prompt you to reset your activations - then the new machine will be activated, you can then reactivate the 2nd working machine and you're back to how you were.
So as long as you sign out of one computer before signing in on the 3rd machine, you will be ok. If you accidentally sign in on all 3 at once, you can either cancel and sign out one of the others first, or reset the activations to just activate the 3rd pc. Given the account is assigned to you, not on a machine basis, and people often have laptops/desktops plus bootcamp etc, it seems rather low to only have 2 activations at-once these days (office 365 is 5, for example) but that's Adobe for you.
posted by ArkhanJG at 5:09 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
I feel like there must be a sizable market out there for a solid $50 Photoshop CS2 clone. Yes, I've tried the latest Gimp, and no, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Or even their dog.
I've you're running OS X, try Pixelmator, which I got for $30. I'm not really competent to compare it to Photoshop, but I've heard very good things about it, and the UI is beautiful.
posted by gsteff at 5:10 PM on May 17, 2014
I've you're running OS X, try Pixelmator, which I got for $30. I'm not really competent to compare it to Photoshop, but I've heard very good things about it, and the UI is beautiful.
posted by gsteff at 5:10 PM on May 17, 2014
ArkhanJG: Awesome. Thanks for the detailed reply. And I agree that 2 seems really stingy given how people work (Ofc 365 with 5 feels about right -- enough that you don't have to think about logging out when you leave for the weekend).
posted by 99_ at 5:16 PM on May 17, 2014
posted by 99_ at 5:16 PM on May 17, 2014
Creative Cloud is a price reduction from Adobe for sporadic users, and for regular users that were upgrading regularly.
Horsepuckey. Photoshop upgrades were $200 with releases every 18-24 months; Photoshop CC is currently $240/year. And that's in perpetuity, because if you stop paying the software stops working so you lose access to everything you created with it.
posted by Lazlo Nibble at 5:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Horsepuckey. Photoshop upgrades were $200 with releases every 18-24 months; Photoshop CC is currently $240/year. And that's in perpetuity, because if you stop paying the software stops working so you lose access to everything you created with it.
posted by Lazlo Nibble at 5:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
How are Netflix and Adobe CC in the same situation, other than the fact that they charge you monthly and require active credentials to work properly?
Look, I think I'm done after this comment. I also want to make it clear I use and paid for CS6, and I avoid CC at all costs, so I appreciate all your reservations and the hard time you're giving to Adobe. It's like I'm arguing with my inner child here.
Adobe and Netflix are in the same situation because they suffer from a lack of vertical integration and cash-flow, relative to future potential competition. If Adobe didn't develop Creative Cloud, they would be out of business in five years. "You guys are about to get seriously fucked" could have been the name of your PowerPoint presentation at their headquarters in 2011. You think piracy is their #1 problem? What about getting professionals to continue paying through the nose for upgrades? The application has to upgrade. The future - for other companies, whether Adobe likes it or not - is sharing of all digital content, mobility, alternative revenue streams and the illusion of keeping costs low - i.e. monthly subscriptions.
Do you have a problem with a lack of true ownership over your product? Logging into the internet just to do work? You can bullshit me all you want, but the truth is you run into the same impactful business-related issues if and when your company's email server goes down. You deal with it, and the public has a certain tolerance for it. Maybe Adobe just hasn't pitched this to you in a way that you find understandable, or they just have a horrible track record of doing you in the rear end for so many years.
Regardless, if you look around, Google and Apple have successfully developed and managed communities with a user base numbering in the hundreds of millions. With $1B being thrown at Instagram just to share images, these companies have the money and the motivation to altogether eliminate Adobe from the market, by offering "professional editing tools" to the public at large, or at the very least, by diluting the need for "professional services" by giving everybody the ability to shoot and distribute a photograph (on proprietary hardware of course). Whereas Adobe, up until this point, has only appealed to the professional user who:
1. can write off a large, upfront Creative Suite purchase as a business expense
2. has a face-meltingly fast computer, the faster the better
If Google merges top-shelf photo editing tools into Picasa, and if the internet infrastructure/photography technology changes enough to make online editing possible, and you don't think any of what I'm saying should enter into Adobe's business calculus, then fine, that's your opinion. If you speculate that the mobile or cloud markets are something Adobe can afford to sit on the sidelines and watch it go by, great. Maybe I'm wrong.
One of the side points I'm trying to make is that Netflix's transition to streaming was as horrific if not more so than what is happening at Adobe. They survived and the gamble was well worth it. Yes, this is a gamble for Adobe. Moreover, prior to developing a studio, Netflix was a pure service provider. They created nothing and their business was wholly dependent on contracts with large studios that were set to expire. To this day, they still do not provide an admirable selection top-tier content for streaming. To be totally blunt, the selection is beyond shit. And yet they survive and people seem to be rooting for them. A soon-to-be relic of the golden age of the Internet. With Adobe, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
These "cloud communities" are going to play a greater role in the future of the internet. Whereas today we still "surf the web" with a certain amount of impunity, this may very well not be the case for much longer, as the mega-conglomerates seek to channel users into all-inclusive experiences, and in doing so, are also able to throttle their competition.
So that, for example, when your government allows one or two vertically integrated entertainment monopolies (like Comcast) to both produce content and distribute it online, that leaves you wondering how in the world companies like Netflix are going to survive. Same goes for Adobe. It's just a matter of time. This isn't about some short-term squeezing of your users for money. It's about inevitability.
posted by phaedon at 5:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Look, I think I'm done after this comment. I also want to make it clear I use and paid for CS6, and I avoid CC at all costs, so I appreciate all your reservations and the hard time you're giving to Adobe. It's like I'm arguing with my inner child here.
Adobe and Netflix are in the same situation because they suffer from a lack of vertical integration and cash-flow, relative to future potential competition. If Adobe didn't develop Creative Cloud, they would be out of business in five years. "You guys are about to get seriously fucked" could have been the name of your PowerPoint presentation at their headquarters in 2011. You think piracy is their #1 problem? What about getting professionals to continue paying through the nose for upgrades? The application has to upgrade. The future - for other companies, whether Adobe likes it or not - is sharing of all digital content, mobility, alternative revenue streams and the illusion of keeping costs low - i.e. monthly subscriptions.
Do you have a problem with a lack of true ownership over your product? Logging into the internet just to do work? You can bullshit me all you want, but the truth is you run into the same impactful business-related issues if and when your company's email server goes down. You deal with it, and the public has a certain tolerance for it. Maybe Adobe just hasn't pitched this to you in a way that you find understandable, or they just have a horrible track record of doing you in the rear end for so many years.
Regardless, if you look around, Google and Apple have successfully developed and managed communities with a user base numbering in the hundreds of millions. With $1B being thrown at Instagram just to share images, these companies have the money and the motivation to altogether eliminate Adobe from the market, by offering "professional editing tools" to the public at large, or at the very least, by diluting the need for "professional services" by giving everybody the ability to shoot and distribute a photograph (on proprietary hardware of course). Whereas Adobe, up until this point, has only appealed to the professional user who:
1. can write off a large, upfront Creative Suite purchase as a business expense
2. has a face-meltingly fast computer, the faster the better
If Google merges top-shelf photo editing tools into Picasa, and if the internet infrastructure/photography technology changes enough to make online editing possible, and you don't think any of what I'm saying should enter into Adobe's business calculus, then fine, that's your opinion. If you speculate that the mobile or cloud markets are something Adobe can afford to sit on the sidelines and watch it go by, great. Maybe I'm wrong.
One of the side points I'm trying to make is that Netflix's transition to streaming was as horrific if not more so than what is happening at Adobe. They survived and the gamble was well worth it. Yes, this is a gamble for Adobe. Moreover, prior to developing a studio, Netflix was a pure service provider. They created nothing and their business was wholly dependent on contracts with large studios that were set to expire. To this day, they still do not provide an admirable selection top-tier content for streaming. To be totally blunt, the selection is beyond shit. And yet they survive and people seem to be rooting for them. A soon-to-be relic of the golden age of the Internet. With Adobe, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
These "cloud communities" are going to play a greater role in the future of the internet. Whereas today we still "surf the web" with a certain amount of impunity, this may very well not be the case for much longer, as the mega-conglomerates seek to channel users into all-inclusive experiences, and in doing so, are also able to throttle their competition.
So that, for example, when your government allows one or two vertically integrated entertainment monopolies (like Comcast) to both produce content and distribute it online, that leaves you wondering how in the world companies like Netflix are going to survive. Same goes for Adobe. It's just a matter of time. This isn't about some short-term squeezing of your users for money. It's about inevitability.
posted by phaedon at 5:27 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Do you have a problem with a lack of true ownership over your product? Logging into the internet just to do work? You can bullshit me all you want, but the truth is you run into the same impactful business-related issues if and when your company's email server goes down.
The fact that the e-mail server needs to be online all the time is inherent to the nature of e-mail. There is nothing inherent in Adobe's software that requires it to be able to call home at any time, other than making sure people have paid for it (which, as has been mentioned above, doesn't even work).
Your e-mails are stored in the cloud (unless you're using POP3); your work in Creative Cloud isn't (which is good, because it would be illegal for my workplace to use in a lot of cases if everything actually were in the cloud).
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 5:39 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
The fact that the e-mail server needs to be online all the time is inherent to the nature of e-mail. There is nothing inherent in Adobe's software that requires it to be able to call home at any time, other than making sure people have paid for it (which, as has been mentioned above, doesn't even work).
Your e-mails are stored in the cloud (unless you're using POP3); your work in Creative Cloud isn't (which is good, because it would be illegal for my workplace to use in a lot of cases if everything actually were in the cloud).
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 5:39 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Yes, Pixelmator! It's lightweight, it's gorgeous, and if you're already familiar with Photoshop, the learning curve is shallow. It does have a couple of odd quirks -- I've never worked out how to select text without a weird clicking/backtracking thing, for example -- but for the casual way I need a graphics programme, it ticks all the boxes.
Looks like they're having a 50% off sale at the moment, too.
posted by Georgina at 5:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Looks like they're having a 50% off sale at the moment, too.
posted by Georgina at 5:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
99_ re: the cloud stuff. Everyone hates on Adobe, blah blah blah. It's an extraordinary amount of software for $50 a month. I find these comments break down into professionals to whom the cost is pretty trivial against revenue, and recent students or casual & prosumer users who either never paid before or just use on occasion.
Prepress professional here. The licensing cost for professionals is trivial, but the liability due to service interruptions is non-trivial. We simply cannot risk 24-hours of downtime because Creative Cloud is broken.
posted by nathan_teske at 5:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
Prepress professional here. The licensing cost for professionals is trivial, but the liability due to service interruptions is non-trivial. We simply cannot risk 24-hours of downtime because Creative Cloud is broken.
posted by nathan_teske at 5:45 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
nathan_teske: Prepress professional here. The licensing cost for professionals is trivial, but the liability due to service interruptions is non-trivial. We simply cannot risk 24-hours of downtime because Creative Cloud is broken.
Absolutely (I'm on site at an event as I type this, and if the outage had affected me I would have been screaming to high heaven). Adobe's DRM/Authentication scheme has been unacceptable for about 10 years now. But the cost of the software and value it provides at that price point is at its best point in 10 years, and regardless of the reason, any time you say 'Adobe' the speed with which people reply 'GIMP!' is somewhat old at this point.
A significant portion of the complaints here and elsewhere are very valid arguments about how Adobe treats its most loyal customers and its seeming total lack of understanding of what enterprise and mission critical mean. But a not insubstantial number of people that carp either had an old student license they neglected to get on the easy upgrade path with or pirated copies of PSD and can't imagine why people would pay $600 for a piece of software.
posted by 99_ at 5:55 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Absolutely (I'm on site at an event as I type this, and if the outage had affected me I would have been screaming to high heaven). Adobe's DRM/Authentication scheme has been unacceptable for about 10 years now. But the cost of the software and value it provides at that price point is at its best point in 10 years, and regardless of the reason, any time you say 'Adobe' the speed with which people reply 'GIMP!' is somewhat old at this point.
A significant portion of the complaints here and elsewhere are very valid arguments about how Adobe treats its most loyal customers and its seeming total lack of understanding of what enterprise and mission critical mean. But a not insubstantial number of people that carp either had an old student license they neglected to get on the easy upgrade path with or pirated copies of PSD and can't imagine why people would pay $600 for a piece of software.
posted by 99_ at 5:55 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
Wait, wasn't one of the selling points about Creative Cloud supposed to be that it was cloud-based somehow but could still operate without internet service? If can operate without internet, how can it be killed like this by a server outage? I figured that meant it had some sort of grace period in how often it needed to phone home.
...so, I go and look at the articles, and it sounds like if you already had it installed, if you forced the computer offline it would work, but somehow if the computer was online and the server was down it wouldn't. Jesus christ, Adobe. I think the Creative Cloud thing is dumb, and I say this as a person who doesn't have a problem with cloud software in my own industry because we do actually need so many updates and stuff, but this was supposed to be the thing that Made It Okay that they were forcing people to the cloud and they still managed to screw it up.
And this is after that whole debacle with how their login information got out and it turned out they hadn't been hashing passwords.
Do they actually employ any real developers over there or is it some kind of trained monkey situation?
posted by Sequence at 6:37 PM on May 17, 2014
...so, I go and look at the articles, and it sounds like if you already had it installed, if you forced the computer offline it would work, but somehow if the computer was online and the server was down it wouldn't. Jesus christ, Adobe. I think the Creative Cloud thing is dumb, and I say this as a person who doesn't have a problem with cloud software in my own industry because we do actually need so many updates and stuff, but this was supposed to be the thing that Made It Okay that they were forcing people to the cloud and they still managed to screw it up.
And this is after that whole debacle with how their login information got out and it turned out they hadn't been hashing passwords.
Do they actually employ any real developers over there or is it some kind of trained monkey situation?
posted by Sequence at 6:37 PM on May 17, 2014
I have Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign open all day every day. I'm not a big fan of the cloud scheme because it prices me out as an individual, but fortunately, the money's not a problem for my employer. I have my second install at home. So there's one rub -- I need to keep my job if I want to able to use CC at home, otherwise, I'm stuck with CS6. That said, even at work, I save my Illustrator files back as CS6 in case of an interruption or billing problem, so that I'll have something that will run. It keeps me on edge.
I didn't have any problems during the recent outage, but then I don't use any of their cloud crap at all except for app updates. All my fonts are local, having long since shelled out for the hugely expensive Master Collection back when I owned my own printing company. Is there a person on Earth who uses Behance besides Adobe employees?
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
I didn't have any problems during the recent outage, but then I don't use any of their cloud crap at all except for app updates. All my fonts are local, having long since shelled out for the hugely expensive Master Collection back when I owned my own printing company. Is there a person on Earth who uses Behance besides Adobe employees?
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Creative Cloud is attractive to some CIOs simply because it transforms a high CapEx refresh cost into a more "reasonable" and easier to swallow OpEx. That's pretty compelling for CIOs that constantly are expected to do more with less. Even if the end product is inferior it makes compelling business sense.
The problem of course is maintaining reasonable uptime standards for industries that simply can't afford to have all their graphic designers or whatever lose a day's work waiting for the cloud to come back. Of course if they make CC run independently without requiring to dial home you are basically telling users buy one month worth of CC and then block it's ability to dial home.
posted by vuron at 6:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
The problem of course is maintaining reasonable uptime standards for industries that simply can't afford to have all their graphic designers or whatever lose a day's work waiting for the cloud to come back. Of course if they make CC run independently without requiring to dial home you are basically telling users buy one month worth of CC and then block it's ability to dial home.
posted by vuron at 6:44 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Adobe moving to the cloud taught me that I actually do have the intestinal fortitude to just say no. I had recently upgraded my computer and actually went to a brick-and-mortar to buy CS. The dude behind the counter started in on signing me up for a monthly subscription. I explained that I wanted the buy the software, not a subscription. When I realized what was happening my brain sort of broke for a second and I said, "I will absolutely never rent software." He said a lot of folks felt that way.
This is some stupid shit and I hope it fails spectacularly.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 6:55 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
This is some stupid shit and I hope it fails spectacularly.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 6:55 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Slight derail, but Adobe is grudgingly moving Flash towards what it it is much better suited to - a 'develop-once-deploy-anywhere' app builder.
So the latest Flash CC exports animations to HTML5 Canvas (badly, at this stage). You've been able to export animations to spritesheets for over a year. You can package apps for iOS, Android, PC and Mac, all built at once.
That said, you only have to look at Unity3D to see how badly Adobe is lagging - for 3D stuff and now 2D, Unity just keeps adding new features, and looks after their community much better, too.
In the hands of another company, Flash could be awesome. Adobe just seems to do so little with it.
posted by Sedition at 7:31 PM on May 17, 2014
So the latest Flash CC exports animations to HTML5 Canvas (badly, at this stage). You've been able to export animations to spritesheets for over a year. You can package apps for iOS, Android, PC and Mac, all built at once.
That said, you only have to look at Unity3D to see how badly Adobe is lagging - for 3D stuff and now 2D, Unity just keeps adding new features, and looks after their community much better, too.
In the hands of another company, Flash could be awesome. Adobe just seems to do so little with it.
posted by Sedition at 7:31 PM on May 17, 2014
I am so glad to be using older versions of this software right now and not messing about in this cloud because I have a deadline and I would DIE. DIE DIE DIE.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:50 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by louche mustachio at 7:50 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
Their website still says:
No Internet connection?
No problem.
I'm guessing this claim is overstated.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:50 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
No Internet connection?
No problem.
I'm guessing this claim is overstated.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:50 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Do they actually employ any real developers over there or is it some kind of trained monkey situation?
Chicken-or-the-egg problem of software development (really all capitalist enterprise): the quality of a company's products reflects its employees' enthusiasm for said product.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "I want to get hired by Adobe today." Nobody except for the desperate or the damned, at any rate.
posted by Ryvar at 7:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Chicken-or-the-egg problem of software development (really all capitalist enterprise): the quality of a company's products reflects its employees' enthusiasm for said product.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "I want to get hired by Adobe today." Nobody except for the desperate or the damned, at any rate.
posted by Ryvar at 7:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
I see a different problem than the cloud-based authentication. If you're making your living off of these programs, the $50 per month is an expense that can be easily justified. I'm using InDesign and Photoshop all day long at work, and the company got me CC when my new computer came in a few months back instead of dropping the money on CS6 in a huge chunk.
The bigger problem, though, is what Adobe is doing to the more casual userbase. Hobbyists often can't see themselves justifying a $50 per month recurring payment. (I know Photoshop is $10 or so - if you sign up for a year at a time.) Those who are using Photoshop right now are likely to keep their already paid-for version and not upgrade. Those who want to do image editing at home for fun in the future are now starting to see other viable alternatives. I'm not talking about GIMP - I've always despised it, and the learning curve to newbies isn't friendly. I don't know what's out there for PCs, since I've been a Mac guy for a long time, but Pixelmator has developed a nice following. iDraw can handle vectors. Sketchbook by Autodesk is the closest thing I have seen to drawing on paper on the computer. Pixlr offers some decent capabilities in a browser-based editor. I don't know that there are going to be enough paying customers as the years pass to keep CC a viable business model. And as someone said upthread, if Google were to decide to create a robust image editor, Adobe is hosed.
The Netflix comparison is not really apt either. I can watch movies on Netflix, but if I want to buy a movie or TV show and have it to keep, I can still do that. I can't buy a copy of CC - I can only rent it.
posted by azpenguin at 8:28 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
The bigger problem, though, is what Adobe is doing to the more casual userbase. Hobbyists often can't see themselves justifying a $50 per month recurring payment. (I know Photoshop is $10 or so - if you sign up for a year at a time.) Those who are using Photoshop right now are likely to keep their already paid-for version and not upgrade. Those who want to do image editing at home for fun in the future are now starting to see other viable alternatives. I'm not talking about GIMP - I've always despised it, and the learning curve to newbies isn't friendly. I don't know what's out there for PCs, since I've been a Mac guy for a long time, but Pixelmator has developed a nice following. iDraw can handle vectors. Sketchbook by Autodesk is the closest thing I have seen to drawing on paper on the computer. Pixlr offers some decent capabilities in a browser-based editor. I don't know that there are going to be enough paying customers as the years pass to keep CC a viable business model. And as someone said upthread, if Google were to decide to create a robust image editor, Adobe is hosed.
The Netflix comparison is not really apt either. I can watch movies on Netflix, but if I want to buy a movie or TV show and have it to keep, I can still do that. I can't buy a copy of CC - I can only rent it.
posted by azpenguin at 8:28 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
I advise on purchasing for a mid-size community college, and we are hotly debating whether to bother with CC because our purchasing department is willing to drop $800/seat at the end of the semester, but can't wrap their heads around the idea of renting software for $50/month/seat (and not paying for it over the summer). Granted, this is largely evidence that our purchasing department sucks. But it's a fact, and I suspect a lot of schools are in the same boat.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:31 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:31 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
The bigger problem, though, is what Adobe is doing to the more casual userbase. Hobbyists often can't see themselves justifying a $50 per month recurring payment. (I know Photoshop is $10 or so - if you sign up for a year at a time.) Those who are using Photoshop right now are likely to keep their already paid-for version and not upgrade.
People buy Photoshop? I thought it was something you pirated for yourself and then your company bought it if you were actually making money with it?
posted by Talez at 8:32 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
People buy Photoshop? I thought it was something you pirated for yourself and then your company bought it if you were actually making money with it?
posted by Talez at 8:32 PM on May 17, 2014 [4 favorites]
I can't buy a copy of CC - I can only rent it.
That's the real issue. There are lots of people for whom the rental model would make sense. But Adobe is forcing it on those for whom it doesn't.
Look, I can buy a new car if I want to, or I can lease one. I'd be pretty pissed if leasing were my only option.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:34 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
That's the real issue. There are lots of people for whom the rental model would make sense. But Adobe is forcing it on those for whom it doesn't.
Look, I can buy a new car if I want to, or I can lease one. I'd be pretty pissed if leasing were my only option.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:34 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
An Adobe product shit the bed ?
Color me surprised. I'd comment more on it, but I have to apply a security update to flash for 174th time today.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
Color me surprised. I'd comment more on it, but I have to apply a security update to flash for 174th time today.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:52 PM on May 17, 2014 [5 favorites]
Here's a list of alternatives to some of the more popular Adobe production apps.
I don't see it mentioned much, but Photoline is supposed to be a pretty decent alternative to Photoshop.
posted by crumbly at 10:43 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
I don't see it mentioned much, but Photoline is supposed to be a pretty decent alternative to Photoshop.
posted by crumbly at 10:43 PM on May 17, 2014 [3 favorites]
ThatFuzzyBastard: Yeah, but then you can leave it installed forever and it still works. My high school had Photoshop 5 or some such madness still installed on a few computers, and it worked. My university had some problem getting a MS Visual Studio on the computers in the lab assigned to my class, but they still had the license for Borland Turbo C, and well, the C you learn in 1st year CS hasn't really changed since the 90s.
Best of all: The copy of Visio 1.0 my Dad bought for Windows 3.1 worked until we moved to 64 bit computers. We only used it to rearranged rooms (It makes it stupid easy to scale a room, then add furniture of the right size, and drag and drop it to the right location). Why buy new software? It worked perfectly and we only used it once every few years.
I can't do this with cloud applications.
Also: Do we not have enough examples of things going offline and people getting hosed yet to know that this is a bad idea? Google reader, Google video and its DRM, etc.
posted by Canageek at 12:27 AM on May 18, 2014 [3 favorites]
Best of all: The copy of Visio 1.0 my Dad bought for Windows 3.1 worked until we moved to 64 bit computers. We only used it to rearranged rooms (It makes it stupid easy to scale a room, then add furniture of the right size, and drag and drop it to the right location). Why buy new software? It worked perfectly and we only used it once every few years.
I can't do this with cloud applications.
Also: Do we not have enough examples of things going offline and people getting hosed yet to know that this is a bad idea? Google reader, Google video and its DRM, etc.
posted by Canageek at 12:27 AM on May 18, 2014 [3 favorites]
There's nothing wrong with a subscription model. Phaedon might even be correct about it helping Adobe compete with Google's aspirations in the area. But, as I understand it, Adobe doesn't (or won't be) offering the choice between a subscription-based or a buy upfront option. I don't see why Adobe can't offer both to suit a larger range of client requirements.
posted by kisch mokusch at 2:05 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by kisch mokusch at 2:05 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
Horsepuckey. Photoshop upgrades were $200 with releases every 18-24 months; Photoshop CC is currently $240/year. And that's in perpetuity, because if you stop paying the software stops working so you lose access to everything you created with it.
Right. The math doesn't work out if you only use one thing. It does if you use a lot of the software and services and pay $50/mo, though.
posted by michaelh at 4:44 AM on May 18, 2014
Right. The math doesn't work out if you only use one thing. It does if you use a lot of the software and services and pay $50/mo, though.
posted by michaelh at 4:44 AM on May 18, 2014
I've been an Adobe customer since Illustrator '88. Right now, I'm happily motoring along in CS5 mostly because I find the UI in CS6 gets in my way. I snagged a copy of the CS6 Master Collection just before Adobe went all-in with its CC bullshit, so I'm future-proofed for a little while longer. There's no way in hell I'm ever jumping into the CC waters. Adobe can bite me.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:12 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:12 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm surprised no one brings up the worst case near-future scenario of a traffic-jammed congested internet leading to more outages.
It's been in the news recently with Netflix and Youtube making up an estimated 43% of internet traffic during peak times.
posted by xtian at 5:43 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
It's been in the news recently with Netflix and Youtube making up an estimated 43% of internet traffic during peak times.
posted by xtian at 5:43 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
Also filed under, Reasons to Question Trusting the Cloud, a couple of weeks ago a cloud-based qualitative data platform called Dedoose crashed and lost quite a bit of work being done by social science researchers. Their last full backup appears to date back to the first week in March and as a result, folks are justifiably upset.
posted by Toekneesan at 6:21 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Toekneesan at 6:21 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
> Switching to the cloud-based scheme is about
> a) making sure you stay on the upgrade treadmill, and don't stop paying for minimal new features
> b) using intrusive online-auth DRM to tackle piracy.
What I don't understand is, how on Earth did Microsoft manage to forget to make every copy of Windows contact a license server and re-authenticate every time it boots up? Somebody in Redmond is asleep at the switch.
posted by jfuller at 6:29 AM on May 18, 2014
> a) making sure you stay on the upgrade treadmill, and don't stop paying for minimal new features
> b) using intrusive online-auth DRM to tackle piracy.
What I don't understand is, how on Earth did Microsoft manage to forget to make every copy of Windows contact a license server and re-authenticate every time it boots up? Somebody in Redmond is asleep at the switch.
posted by jfuller at 6:29 AM on May 18, 2014
Microsoft can barely get people to move off of XP and 2003. Going to a subscription model would cannibalize their profits with the home market. Office and Exchange 365 locking business users into a subscription model is probably about as good as they can get right now.
posted by vuron at 6:48 AM on May 18, 2014
posted by vuron at 6:48 AM on May 18, 2014
My university system is not doing CC because the cost is EXORBITANT. How bad? Adobe execs had to fly out to explain it to us flyover folks on why Adobe would be eating the whole software budget for a university system. We are staying with CS 6.
posted by jadepearl at 6:58 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by jadepearl at 6:58 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
Did you investigate site licensing CC for the campus? Our cost is ridunklous but still somewhat in keeping with the rest of our ridiculously over priced site licenses.
posted by vuron at 7:01 AM on May 18, 2014
posted by vuron at 7:01 AM on May 18, 2014
It was examined and the system's concerns necessitated the Adobe conversations. My IT group asked me if the pedagogy and curriculum needs of certain courses would be hampered by not going to CC. I was probably not alone being asked that question.
In reality, I can find alternatives to what Adobe offers including FrameMaker, Captivate and RoboHelp. The design workflow also has alternatives. Adobe has chosen this model. I do not like being forced to rent and my files held hostage. I do not like students being burdened this way either.
posted by jadepearl at 7:11 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
In reality, I can find alternatives to what Adobe offers including FrameMaker, Captivate and RoboHelp. The design workflow also has alternatives. Adobe has chosen this model. I do not like being forced to rent and my files held hostage. I do not like students being burdened this way either.
posted by jadepearl at 7:11 AM on May 18, 2014 [2 favorites]
> People buy Photoshop? I thought it was something you pirated for yourself and then your company bought it if you were
> actually making money with it?
I just can't imagine that all the thousands and thousands of kids posting anime and MLP fan art to DeviantArt and Gaia Online and so on and claiming they were done in PS actually ponied up (ducks) hundreds of dollars for a legal copy, or even nagged their parents into getting a legal copy for them. This is a self-selected group of artist wannabees and surely a higher percentage of them (compared to the general run of kids) will actually go on to become graphics professionals. I wonder what the upshot will be for Adobe's future userbase if their antipiracy efforts really do manage to cut down on the number of young people who grow up fully used to working in PS.
Warning, anecdata dead ahead. It is my impression (based on number of PS screen shots posted vs. screen shots of other packages, number of PS tutorials posted vs. tuts for other packages, number of brush sets and other add-ons posted for download, number of files with layers posted, .psd vs. other formats, etc.) that I'm seeing considerable growth in the userbases of alternative software. Painttool SAI, ArtRage, Paint.NET, even GIMP, all on upward growth curves.
Certainly this alone isn't going to be instantly fatal for PS, but it can't be helping in the longer run.
posted by jfuller at 7:36 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
> actually making money with it?
I just can't imagine that all the thousands and thousands of kids posting anime and MLP fan art to DeviantArt and Gaia Online and so on and claiming they were done in PS actually ponied up (ducks) hundreds of dollars for a legal copy, or even nagged their parents into getting a legal copy for them. This is a self-selected group of artist wannabees and surely a higher percentage of them (compared to the general run of kids) will actually go on to become graphics professionals. I wonder what the upshot will be for Adobe's future userbase if their antipiracy efforts really do manage to cut down on the number of young people who grow up fully used to working in PS.
Warning, anecdata dead ahead. It is my impression (based on number of PS screen shots posted vs. screen shots of other packages, number of PS tutorials posted vs. tuts for other packages, number of brush sets and other add-ons posted for download, number of files with layers posted, .psd vs. other formats, etc.) that I'm seeing considerable growth in the userbases of alternative software. Painttool SAI, ArtRage, Paint.NET, even GIMP, all on upward growth curves.
Certainly this alone isn't going to be instantly fatal for PS, but it can't be helping in the longer run.
posted by jfuller at 7:36 AM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
> Microsoft can barely get people to move off of XP and 2003. Going to a subscription model would cannibalize their
> profits with the home market. Office and Exchange 365 locking business users into a subscription model is probably
> about as good as they can get right now.
Oh, I agree. The time to have done that was in the middle of the XP era, when MS's dominance was so overwhelming and apparently eternal.
Now? I met a traveler from an antique land....
posted by jfuller at 7:45 AM on May 18, 2014
> profits with the home market. Office and Exchange 365 locking business users into a subscription model is probably
> about as good as they can get right now.
Oh, I agree. The time to have done that was in the middle of the XP era, when MS's dominance was so overwhelming and apparently eternal.
Now? I met a traveler from an antique land....
posted by jfuller at 7:45 AM on May 18, 2014
For my part, I hate cloud-based licensed software models and will avoid them as long as humanly possible. Since I'm just a casual artist at best (digital collage), I stuck with Photoshop 7. That was entirely adequate for my needs, and produced print ready pieces for me more than once. I only stopped using it because I had to swap to a Windows 8 box and it wouldn't run.
In looking for replacements, there is an alternative I don't see a lot of people mentioning: Adobe Photoshop Elements. Costs between $50-90, has none of this cloud subscription nonsense, and does everything pre-CS Photoshop does. It's UI is slightly less good, but the functionality is there, at least.
posted by Queen of Robots at 8:20 AM on May 18, 2014
In looking for replacements, there is an alternative I don't see a lot of people mentioning: Adobe Photoshop Elements. Costs between $50-90, has none of this cloud subscription nonsense, and does everything pre-CS Photoshop does. It's UI is slightly less good, but the functionality is there, at least.
posted by Queen of Robots at 8:20 AM on May 18, 2014
Steve Jobs and iOS killed Flash. I'm not hoping that Tim Cook and the OS X App Store do the same to Photoshop and Illustrator, but I'm glad they are providing incentives to developers to put out alternatives.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:26 AM on May 18, 2014
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:26 AM on May 18, 2014
Chicken-or-the-egg problem of software development (really all capitalist enterprise): the quality of a company's products reflects its employees' enthusiasm for said product.
Those InDesign coders must be really happy.
posted by popcassady at 9:48 AM on May 18, 2014
Those InDesign coders must be really happy.
posted by popcassady at 9:48 AM on May 18, 2014
99_:A significant portion of the complaints here and elsewhere are very valid arguments about how Adobe treats its most loyal customers and its seeming total lack of understanding of what enterprise and mission critical mean.
Essentially we're at the point where CS6 is the last version of the Adobe suite we will use for production until we literally cannot buy hardware that supports it. 3500+ employees world wide with maybe 50 seats of CC that we bought for testing and to convert files back into something that actually works.
I can't get into too many details because of NDAs, but we've gone to Adobe with showstopper bugs and can't even get them to acknowledge there might be a bug until someone steps them through the problem to them on a fresh install over team viewer. Their response so far has been, "Oh." The constant refrain around my work is, "Why would Adobe care? They already have our money." New Quark same as the old Quark.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:22 AM on May 18, 2014
Essentially we're at the point where CS6 is the last version of the Adobe suite we will use for production until we literally cannot buy hardware that supports it. 3500+ employees world wide with maybe 50 seats of CC that we bought for testing and to convert files back into something that actually works.
I can't get into too many details because of NDAs, but we've gone to Adobe with showstopper bugs and can't even get them to acknowledge there might be a bug until someone steps them through the problem to them on a fresh install over team viewer. Their response so far has been, "Oh." The constant refrain around my work is, "Why would Adobe care? They already have our money." New Quark same as the old Quark.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:22 AM on May 18, 2014
Queen of Robots: In looking for replacements, there is an alternative I don't see a lot of people mentioning: Adobe Photoshop Elements. Costs between $50-90, has none of this cloud subscription nonsense, and does everything pre-CS Photoshop does. It's UI is slightly less good, but the functionality is there, at least.
Elements doesn't support CMYK or spot channels. For print work the Gimp is a better solution but even that is sorely lacking.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:25 AM on May 18, 2014
Elements doesn't support CMYK or spot channels. For print work the Gimp is a better solution but even that is sorely lacking.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:25 AM on May 18, 2014
Microsoft doesn't make Windows phone in constantly because that would be subverted by a crack anyway and irritate their legitimate offline users to a risky degree.
Just as with Adobe, Windows' competitor is piracy, not alternate software, and they price/behave accordingly.
posted by michaelh at 11:24 AM on May 18, 2014
Just as with Adobe, Windows' competitor is piracy, not alternate software, and they price/behave accordingly.
posted by michaelh at 11:24 AM on May 18, 2014
Also: Lots and lots of windows computers are used offline. None of the computers we have hooked up to lab equipment for example, many of the people I know in rural areas don't have decent internet (A women I know out in rural New Hampshire just moved up to satellite internet which means they now have a bandwidth cap of 5 GB a month, which means you don't connect the computer unless you are using the net, to avoid waste).
Heck, I've not bothered buying a router; I just move the ethernet cord between my laptop and desktop depending on which I want to use.
posted by Canageek at 12:07 PM on May 18, 2014
Heck, I've not bothered buying a router; I just move the ethernet cord between my laptop and desktop depending on which I want to use.
posted by Canageek at 12:07 PM on May 18, 2014
> Microsoft doesn't make Windows phone in constantly because that would be subverted by a
> crack anyway and irritate their legitimate offline users to a risky degree.
I confess I wasn't totally serious. It would be lunatic of MS to go to a constantly-phoning-home licensing model. But it wouldn't be the first lunatic thing they ever did, depending on the classic MS explanation "We are Microsoft, FU." And I would not have thought Adobe would ever do such a lunatic thing either, so what do I know?. Well, we shall see what we shall see.
posted by jfuller at 12:46 PM on May 18, 2014
> crack anyway and irritate their legitimate offline users to a risky degree.
I confess I wasn't totally serious. It would be lunatic of MS to go to a constantly-phoning-home licensing model. But it wouldn't be the first lunatic thing they ever did, depending on the classic MS explanation "We are Microsoft, FU." And I would not have thought Adobe would ever do such a lunatic thing either, so what do I know?. Well, we shall see what we shall see.
posted by jfuller at 12:46 PM on May 18, 2014
As a "design professional" I'm a fan of CC (though acknowledge as valid everyone's criticisms as well!). I get access to the latest and greatest of all the software I need and software I may use in the future. All the people I work with are now on CC, too, meaning all our files are compatible. In my mind the $50/mo go to adobe for continual feature development and bug fixes. Hopefully this pans out!
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:37 PM on May 18, 2014
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:37 PM on May 18, 2014
There's no way in hell I'm ever jumping into the CC waters.
My studio is trying not to either. But it's inevitable. Just recently I was sent a file from an overseas company that was created in InDesign CC. I had to sign up for a CC account so that I could open it and save down. This has always been the reason we have to upgrade. With any software. Because other studios do.
On preview: wemayfreeze illustrates my point.
posted by unliteral at 6:40 PM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
My studio is trying not to either. But it's inevitable. Just recently I was sent a file from an overseas company that was created in InDesign CC. I had to sign up for a CC account so that I could open it and save down. This has always been the reason we have to upgrade. With any software. Because other studios do.
On preview: wemayfreeze illustrates my point.
posted by unliteral at 6:40 PM on May 18, 2014 [1 favorite]
The only thing nice I can say about Photoshop CC is that $10/mo sure beats the hell out of a one-time $700 for Photoshop CS6.
One off, it's great. Long term though, I'm trying to decide if I should take Adobe's bet that I won't have a need to use their software in 5.83 years.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:29 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
One off, it's great. Long term though, I'm trying to decide if I should take Adobe's bet that I won't have a need to use their software in 5.83 years.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:29 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
> The only thing nice I can say about Photoshop CC is that $10/mo sure beats the hell out of
> a one-time $700 for Photoshop CS6.
If anyone's still watching this thread... Let's say you were, in the main, perfectly content with your installed-locally PS CS6 or earlier, but suddenly you did need to do something only CC can do, such as opening and downsaving a file you've received in CC-only format. Does Adobe have anything in place that would prevent your subscribing to CC for one month, doing what you need to do with it, and letting your subscription lapse? And then doing the same thing again four months down the road if the need arises again?
posted by jfuller at 4:50 PM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
> a one-time $700 for Photoshop CS6.
If anyone's still watching this thread... Let's say you were, in the main, perfectly content with your installed-locally PS CS6 or earlier, but suddenly you did need to do something only CC can do, such as opening and downsaving a file you've received in CC-only format. Does Adobe have anything in place that would prevent your subscribing to CC for one month, doing what you need to do with it, and letting your subscription lapse? And then doing the same thing again four months down the road if the need arises again?
posted by jfuller at 4:50 PM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
Took a quick look at Adobe's help, and they claim CS6 applications can coexist on the same machine with CC apps. Good news for the non-cloud diehards, like me, who might have to use CC occasionally.
posted by honestcoyote at 9:04 PM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by honestcoyote at 9:04 PM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]
With Photoshop PSD files, it's mostly ok, which has generally been the case historically. But with InDesign and Illustrator, you're shit out of luck.
posted by juiceCake at 6:34 AM on May 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by juiceCake at 6:34 AM on May 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Took a quick look at Adobe's help, and they claim CS6 applications can coexist on the same machine with CC apps. Good news for the non-cloud diehards, like me, who might have to use CC occasionally.
Yeah, they're fine side by side. They dropped TWAIN support in CC so I use Photoshop CS6 to scan stuff all the time. A double-clicked document will open in whichever you have open at the time, though if neiher are open, double-clicking a file will launch the CC version. I've got CS 5.5 & CC working side by side at home.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:29 PM on May 20, 2014
Yeah, they're fine side by side. They dropped TWAIN support in CC so I use Photoshop CS6 to scan stuff all the time. A double-clicked document will open in whichever you have open at the time, though if neiher are open, double-clicking a file will launch the CC version. I've got CS 5.5 & CC working side by side at home.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:29 PM on May 20, 2014
But with InDesign and Illustrator, you're shit out of luck.
May be true with InDesign (there's a convoluted process that mostly works, but is a pain), but there's a pop-up menu in Illustrator's save as... dialog that lets you save back quite a few versions. My work is meat-and-potatoes enough that I haven't missed a single CC feature in a file saved back to CS6, yet.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:34 PM on May 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
May be true with InDesign (there's a convoluted process that mostly works, but is a pain), but there's a pop-up menu in Illustrator's save as... dialog that lets you save back quite a few versions. My work is meat-and-potatoes enough that I haven't missed a single CC feature in a file saved back to CS6, yet.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:34 PM on May 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
May be true with InDesign (there's a convoluted process that mostly works, but is a pain), but there's a pop-up menu in Illustrator's save as... dialog that lets you save back quite a few versions.
Of course there is, and it's mentioned in the links (as well as the way to save back with InDesign). I was speaking to the issue of being able to open new versions of files in older version, such as if you have CS6 and you get a CC file from Illustrator that hasn't been back version saved you're not going to be able to open it, unlike PSD files, that mostly work except for the new features. In other words, in this situation for Illustrator and InDesign (but most likely not Photoshop), you're shit out of luck and would have to request a version that is back saved or "rent' CC to open the file(s).
It could grow into an issue as time passes on for those that do not move to Adobe's Cloud licensing scheme.
posted by juiceCake at 10:48 PM on May 20, 2014
Of course there is, and it's mentioned in the links (as well as the way to save back with InDesign). I was speaking to the issue of being able to open new versions of files in older version, such as if you have CS6 and you get a CC file from Illustrator that hasn't been back version saved you're not going to be able to open it, unlike PSD files, that mostly work except for the new features. In other words, in this situation for Illustrator and InDesign (but most likely not Photoshop), you're shit out of luck and would have to request a version that is back saved or "rent' CC to open the file(s).
It could grow into an issue as time passes on for those that do not move to Adobe's Cloud licensing scheme.
posted by juiceCake at 10:48 PM on May 20, 2014
To be fair, that's always been the case. I've downloaded my share of Adobe trials to open a file just to back save it.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:51 PM on May 21, 2014
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:51 PM on May 21, 2014
Yes, of course it's always been the case. It's more of an issue now because of the licensing that certain companies and individuals do not care for. This is all just verification of a couple of questions. The fact that you can run more than one version of CS on the same machine helps but eventually, with the passing of time, if the CC model proves popular enough, people may have to move to it.
posted by juiceCake at 6:06 AM on May 22, 2014
posted by juiceCake at 6:06 AM on May 22, 2014
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posted by octothorpe at 2:50 PM on May 17, 2014 [13 favorites]