Adobe Creative Cloud Services Offline (Again?) 164
New submitter jvp (27996) writes "Adobe's authentication system for its Creative Cloud as well as its website services is down, and has been since Wednesday (14 May) afternoon. What this means: If you're a Creative Cloud subscriber, you can't log into your account via the desktop application. Online services such as the fonts are not available. Applications (eg: Photoshop, Premiere, etc) will continue to work. Softpedia has a nice article on it, but their time frames are off quite a bit." As of this writing, a message on the Adobe Creative Cloud page says "Creative Cloud is currently undergoing maintenance. Please check back later. Thank you for your patience." Even though I've come to like some remote-hosted software, like gmail, I don't think I'd want tools for manipulating local media tied even loosely to the uptime of a remote computer (or network connection).
NO Photoshop for you! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is truly a spectacular failure on Adobe's part.
Re:NO Photoshop for you! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't avoiding the "single point of failure" a large part of the reason for cloud services being pushed in our faces in the first place? This is truly a spectacular failure on Adobe's part.
The Cloud can NEVER fail. NEVER I tell you! Only we can fail the cloud.
Software as a service has only one thing to recommend it. When it fails, just like it has here, you'll have someone else to blame it on. Of course your boss might not believe you, since he or she has been sold on the cloud and all it emcompasses is the zenith of civilization, the first thing mainkind has ever designed that is fail safe, and will never ever have a problem.
Re:NO Photoshop for you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cloud Services are the FUTURE! (Score:5, Insightful)
For all of you who take your cue from the Adobe marketing team, the moniker "Creative Cloud" is really a misnomer. Yes, the applications have to hit the authentication servers - every 90 days or so. The applications are run locally. The only thing that is 'cloudlike' is Adobe's 'Behance' service which is a store, a Dropbox wannabe and a typeface collection.
It's a dick move and one that benefits Adobe rather than Adobe's customers (amazing ...), but it's Not The End Of The World.
Re:NO Photoshop for you! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't avoiding the "single point of failure" a large part of the reason for cloud services being pushed in our faces in the first place?
No, that was only the rationale used to justify it to Photoshop users. The *reason* for it in many cases- such as this one- is quite obviously to increase software companies' control over users, and to get them used to a subscription model that provides those companies with a continuous income stream, rather than having the hassle of creating upgraded versions of software (gratuitous or otherwise (*)) and then having to convince users to pay for that upgrade when they might not feel the need for it.
That's not to say that cloud computing (i.e. distributed computing and distributed storage) is a bad idea in itself; of course, it has many theoretical benefits. But the concept has been co-opted and distorted by marketing, who have reduced the meaning of "cloud" to little more than a buzzword that applies to anything with online connectivity, even if that's not designed in a cloud-like way. And they've used that to make a method of control a selling point- or at least to try to sweeten the pill Photoshop users are being forced to swallow (**).
Really, what major cloud-like benefit does the latest Photoshop offer users? Does it let them harness the enormous power of a distributed computer network to massively speed up processing times on slow operations (vs. doing it on their own computer) in short bursts?
(*) Canonical example, Microsoft Word, which reached what most people needed several versions ago, but had to force upgrades to keep it selling, so kept adding new features, which also force other users who want to interoperate with those using the latest versions to *also* upgrade.
(**) Along the lines of (*) above, while some may argue that "you don't *have* to upgrade", those in industry who wish to interoperate with others and keep up with latest developments probably *will* need to upgrade eventually
Re:The best part... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, if you are heavily tied to Adobe products, paying $50/month to ALWAYS have the latest version is actually a good deal, from a usability perspective. Adobe likes to change/abandon file formats with every upgrade, and that causes issues. If you always have the newest version, you don't have to worry about that.
You're right, though: Adobe has no competition. But that isn't Adobe's fault. For all the screwy-ness of Adobe's software, they are STILL better than any of the alternatives, and basically always have been. They "won" their market legitimately.