Adobe's Creative Cloud Illustrates How the Cloud Costs You More 403
Nerval's Lobster writes "As we discussed yesterday, Adobe plans on focusing the bulk of its software-development efforts on its Creative Cloud offering, with no plans to further update its 'boxed' Creative Suite products. The move isn't surprising, considering the tech industry's general movement toward the cloud over the past few years. Creative Cloud will cost $19.99 per month for a 'single app' version that features the full version of 'selected apps,' 20GB of cloud storage, and limited access to services. Those who opt for the 'complete' version will pay $49.99 per month for every Creative Cloud app, 20GB of cloud storage, and full access to services; it also requires an annual commitment. At that price, it would take a little over two years for a customer spending $49.99 per month to exceed the full retail cost of box-based Adobe Creative Suite 6, which currently retails for $1299.99 at Staples and $1100-1200 on Amazon. In a recent interview with Mashable, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen insisted that the Creative Cloud's cost to customers is lower, especially since they won't have to pay for cloud storage and other services — never mind that 20GB doesn't carry anyone far when it comes to visual design. However much customers stand to benefit from the cloud, it's easy to see that, over a long enough timeline, and with the right financial model in place, the companies providing those services stand to benefit even more than they did with boxed software. That's liable to make just as many people angry as happy, no?"
Update: 05/08 03:29 GMT by S :Changed prices involved to reflect standard versions of Creative Suite, rather than the discounted Student & Teacher editions.
I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cloud" storage. And I'm not going to pay for it.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cloud" storage. And I'm not going to pay for it.
Why would you? "Clouds" can easily disintegrate in a matter of minutes, leaving nothing but blue sky behind.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
This will be the divergence in Adobe customers. Large corporations, who see benefit in a 100% tax deductible monthly subscription expense as opposed to an asset purchase that depreciates over time, plus don't really give two hoots about software price, will happily upgrade. Smaller companies and most independent graphic artists will likely continue to use the final desktop version. When retail prices soar too high because of scarcity in legitimately licensed copies, these users will move to pirated versions of the software. Adobe will then change something in file formats to make the cloud files incompatible with desktop versions of the software.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
By which time all the small shops will have been pouring money into competing products long enough that Adobe will no longer hold a viable monopoly on the industry, and at that point, you'll see the bigger shops having to maintain both the incompatible Adobe product and the competing product. Within a few years after that, the big companies will ask, "Why are we paying these clowns, again?" and Adobe will be dead and buried shortly thereafter.
Re: I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
That's sort of how InDesign got popular.
Re: (Score:3)
It's also how Photoshop got popular. Letraset ColorStudio was insanely powerful for the day but priced themselves too high and Photoshop came in as the low-end competitor with the friendly interface that could do most of the common stuff acceptably well. Now you've got Photoshop at the high-end and, at least on the Mac, competitors coming in like Pixelmator. We'll see where it leads...
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By which time all the small shops will have been pouring money into competing products long enough that Adobe will no longer hold a viable monopoly on the industry...
How did that work out for people who used Macromedia Dreamweaver and Jasc Trajectory Pro?
(Your scenario is an attractive one, but I'm skeptical.)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, Jasc had 2 products that Adobe wanted to bu(r)y, the other one being PaintShop Pro.
But Trajectory was the first visual SVG authoring app that had any serious potential, and I have since then nursed a recurring desire to see Adobe's collective toes toasting in Hell for removing it from the market.
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Toes? The entire Adobe body, hooves, tail and all should be placed in the beam line at the LHC and sent to some other, more deserving, universe.
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and then Adobe will wonder why they ever hired Shantanu as ceo - a man so determined to wreck the company, they might as well have just thrown the towel in, there and then.
his latest brainwave is to move the firm away from creative stuff and onto tools that can analyze the data from digital marketing. wow, what a great idea!!!!! except hasn't he ever heard of google - they've been working on this for a while and are really quite good at it from what i hear.
what this piece of ordure will come up with next is anyone's guess - maybe he will move adobe onto stage shows - and how about a musical version of spiderman - oh dammit someones done that, well how about a musical planet of the apes!
...Well, if they want to improve on that, my money says Ballmer will be on the market within 12 months. since they have less cash to burn it will take him less time to crash the company.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I imagine piracy is a major reason why Adobe would do this. Photoshop is probably the most pirated app of all time. Gimp will probably have a windfall of new users soon.
Re:I don't want (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt GIMP will benefit much. Anyone who wants to pirate CS5 or 6 will still be able to. The only way GIMP will get more traction is if the program is actually improved at a more reasonable pace, which I don't see happening any time soon. And since there aren't any other good alternatives to Photoshop right now, people will just continue pirating Adobe products.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I imagine piracy is a major reason why Adobe would do this. Photoshop is probably the most pirated app of all time. Gimp will probably have a windfall of new users soon.
Which is a very stupid logic.
Eliminating a pirate doesn't mean you are transforming him into a customer. It almost never happen.
My guess is Adobe is targeting those legitimate customers who buy their software and use the same version, without paying for upgrades, for 4+ years. With the Cloud model, you are forcing them to (re)pay full price every year.
12 year cost analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is Adobe is targeting those legitimate customers who buy their software and use the same version, without paying for upgrades, for 4+ years. With the Cloud model, you are forcing them to (re)pay full price every year.
BINGO! It's my understanding that most Photoshop users surveyed a few years ago said they skip 1 or 2 upgrades. Their upgrade income is dictated by the addition of new features. The cloud removes that pressure.
Notice Adobe compares the cost of the cloud with full retail price. But in the real world, skipping 1 or 2 upgrades save a lot of money. Based on $699 initial price, and $199 upgrades, a 12-year cost is:
$3087 - Upgrade every year
$1893 - Upgrade every 2 years
$1495 - Upgrade every 3 years
$2879 - Cloud @$19.99/month
So the Cloud looks OK if you already upgrade every year. But if a new version is bad, you don't have the previous disks to downgrade. But for those of us who skip upgrades, it can double our cost. And anytime Adobe needs a boost in income, they just raise the price. If we don't pay, we have no software to use.
This is an opening for Adobe competitors. This makes Microsoft look like really nice people - quite a feat!
Re:I don't want (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that GIMP is a mess that makes creative types want to claw their own eyeballs out to escape. It has all the mass market appeal of a poo on a stick. I know, every time someone points out that it's a train wreck, a couple people come out and say that they use GIMP all the time (usually meaning, a couple times a week) and are really happy with it. In most cases it turns out that these are people who enjoy the Linux user experience, or who enjoy DOM manipulation via JavaScript, or have built the most epic thing ever out of [PIC microcontroller and LEDs | Minecraft | LEGOs]. What they are not, however, is a professional graphic designer who sits being paid to use Photoshop for at least half his/her day every day of the week.
I am glad there are people who like GIMP and I'm sure they will continue to use it. Unfortunately it's pretty much a nonstarter for most of the people whose livelihoods depend on image editing, and there are few indications this will change anytime soon.
I also doubt that most casual image editors who are not already infatuated with Linux are going to take two glances at GIMP, especially if they've previously experienced Photoshop. It just too weird, in the miserable way not the quirky hip way, even if it's not quite as bad as it was several years ago.
Still topical. [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3)
This only works on PowerPC Macs or on Snow Leopard (10.6) or earlier versions of OS X. Its not a viable option for many people unless they switch to Windows.
So what you are saying is that it is a viable option for the vast majority of Photoshop users?
You are aware that Photoshop is just as popular on Windows as on OS-X, right?
Apple lost the graphics-crown well before OS-X even existed.
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not accountant here. You're a jerk for insulting but not even addressing and argument or explaining anything.
You're wrong! I'm X doesn't cut it.
probably what he meant was, depreciation is usually tax deductible, since the very concept was introduced to render a fair representation of the ability of an organization to produce earnings, irrespective of the fact that it needed inputs which lasted more than one period (i.e., machinery, buildings etc.) or not (for example, by renting all of the above).
While taxation treats depreciation in different ways depending on country and underlying asset, the concept is that in an ideal world it would render ch
Re:I don't want (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
20GB is about 20 minutes of HD footage. Even for stills that's only a few hundred images if you are working in RAW. Can't imagine Adobe exects anyone to use it other than as a demo.
Not to mention the time it would take to upload/download 20GB of data to the cloud. This will also wreak havoc on people with ISPs that have monthly bandwidth caps.
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine the only real "cloud" part to this will be some sort of encryption key exchange that amounts to "if(productexpired) extort(money);"
Re:I don't want (Score:4, Insightful)
20GB is about 20 minutes of HD footage. Even for stills that's only a few hundred images if you are working in RAW. Can't imagine Adobe exects anyone to use it other than as a demo.
The first hit is free, kid, and since this 'cloud storage' only interacts with Adobe CS applications, and Adobe CS applications only interact with Adobe cloud storage or cloud storage that emulates a local filesystem, you'll have to buy expansion hits from us!
Re:I don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cloud" storage. And I'm not going to pay for it.
Even if you do want 'cloud' storage(it certainly has its uses), the trend of getting little tiny bits of it bundled under a zillion different credentials and EULAs and TOSes, from a bunch of different outfits that you are just trying to buy some other product from(and, excitingly, often hooked to specific applications, rather than some reasonably normal network file transfer mechanism) is totally fucked.
Yeah, I really want 5GB over here on dropbox, with one set of credentials, security issues, and iDevice applications that can sorta-kinda treat that 5GB as their filesystem; then another few GB over here on Skydrive, so that they work properly with MS' hotmail file attachment features, and then 20GB over here with Adobe that only 'Creative Cloud' applications can see...
It's a loss is basically every important respect: the credential soup is a pain in the ass and a likely security hazard, the fragmentation means that you need to manually shuffle around and/or duplicate files to support workflows that attempt to cross the ghastly little vendor silos, and the fact that the first-hit-is-free size limits are generally low creates an incentive for the vendor to gouge you on upgrades(If 'Creative cloud' only works with magic Adobe cloud storage, do you think that their per-GB overage prices will necessarily adhere to market norms for commodity cloud storage?).
It's as though a substantial fraction of your applications refused to use the OS's filesystem APIs and instead demanded their own partitions that they could format in their own weird way and store data in a way accessible only to themselves. Only better, because you have to remember a bunch of passwords, the files can go *poof* at any time, and the EULAs and TOSes are likely to be abusive!
creative clouds... an oximoron (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:creative clouds... an oximoron (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if I store my work in the cloud and the subscription expires, will Adobe "just" hold my work ransom until I pay again ... or will they even delete my data?
Re: (Score:2)
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they might sell your data and give you access again from the earnings they do :)
What liability do they have in the event of a security breach?
As product announcements can involve millions and leaks to a competitor can cost ten fold that if the competitor can stomp on your event.
I can see a run on the current shrink wrap version and then a total melt down in sales shortly after this program is in effect.
CS6 costs WAY more than $599.99 (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where they got those numbers from. Photoshop CS6 alone is $627 on Amazon and Design Standard is $1127.98. That makes the $49.99 take more than 2 years to be more than the cost of outright purchasing it.
If they are using Student/Teacher editions or something to make an unfair price comparison, how could you trust anything else in the article?
Except this little thing your skipped (Score:5, Informative)
CS6 will run pretty much for ever unless an OS change makes it not compatible. You stop paying after two years and you got NOTHING. Wanna resumer after a year or two, dig out the Cs6 install and off you go for free.
Re:Except this little thing your skipped (Score:5, Informative)
CS6 will run pretty much for ever unless an OS change makes it not compatible.
Virtual machines take care of that problem pretty nicely.
Re:CS6 costs WAY more than $599.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, those numbers are crap. That said, the conclusion isn't wrong, only the numbers. A typical non-corporate user:
A Creative Cloud user:
So it's on the order of 6 times as expensive for your typical Photoshop-only user. For a multi-app user, it's $600 per year, so for new users, it is cheaper initially, but unless you are the sort of person who buys an upgrade at least every two years, it ends up being more expensive. Existing users are badly screwed.
But the biggest problem I have with this arrangement is that it leaves me completely dependent upon Adobe's good graces. At any time, they can decide to crank the price to $100 per month, and I can either pay it or I lose access to all my files. They can decide to drop Mac support, and I either buy a Windows box or I lose access to all my files. They can lose so many customers over this idiotic rental plan that they file for Chapter 7, and thirty days later, my files are no longer readable. And so on. It's a lack of permanence that I would have a very hard time swallowing, even as a corporate user, much less as a home user.
In other words, this has all of the problems of a free Google App, only I'd be paying a quarter of a grand per year for the privilege of putting my faith in Adobe. And yet, this is a company whose management has so consistently proven themselves incompetent beyond measure that I have no faith that they will still be around in ten years.
My prediction is that a sizable percentage of users will treat the Creative Cloud a stopgap measure, to allow them to get by until they can fully migrate away from Adobe products to a competing solution. Now would be an excellent time to short Adobe's stock. I fully expect it to go down to somewhere around $15 (just above their book value per share) in short order.
Re:CS6 costs WAY more than $599.99 (Score:4)
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I don't know where they got those numbers from. Photoshop CS6 alone is $627 on Amazon and Design Standard is $1127.98. That makes the $49.99 take more than 2 years to be more than the cost of outright purchasing it.
Most buyers of the big suite packages are without doubt businesses where people use the tools for work. And from a business perspective a one-time purchase is an investment which in the U.S. is paid for with taxed money (at a 40-50% rate depending on state), and then depreciated over a number of years as determined by the IRS. A monthly recurring fee however is an expense. It's the same reason airlines sell their plane engines to financing groups, which then lease them back to the airline - a pure paper
Re: (Score:2)
If they are using Student pricing they should use the $30/month Student pricing on the cloud version though it's on a special for $20/month right now.
This includes access to everything, not just Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign which make up Creative Suite Design and costs the same as the yearly cloud price.
Re: (Score:3)
$360 per year for a student price? Is that a joke?
That's an entire semester worth of textbooks or an entire month's room and board. Over four years, that's like buying eighteen student copies of Microsoft Office.
Surely Adobe cannot be that stupid. Then again....
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Great, now they need to pay an additional 360 on top of everything else? Adobe should be giving the damn software to schools, for free, since they want grads to know their software when they enter the workforce..
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Ah, but the upgrade price is the only one that matters. Apart from companies adding more headcount or new students graduating from college, nobody buys a full version of an Adobe product. If they need it, they almost certainly already own it.
The cloud (Score:2)
No Shit, Sherlock - (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what cloud computing is all about. It's not about providing a service to customers that's better than what they can get at their own desktops. It's about returning us to the mainframe days when computing was a service and time on the machine was rented out to users. By refusing to publish popular consumer software and moving it onto the cloud where it can be accessed for a fee, software makers can collect rents from their users forever without even having to improve their software. They can also strictly control what users do with the program, what kinds of files they make and how often, and even monitor what they do, all such activities having their own business case.
The push toward cloud computing, more accurately called centralized computing, is about taking as much control away from the user as possible and selling their computing experience back to them piecemeal at a greatly elevated price. Very few enterprises will actually benefit from this model and most of them are the ones selling, not buying, the software.
Re:No Shit, Sherlock - (Score:5, Informative)
This is what cloud computing is all about. It's not about providing a service to customers that's better than what they can get at their own desktops.
Indeed. Especially because, in this case, the software isn't even running on Adobe's infrastructure, it's still installed locally. The "Cloud" here consists exactly of a subscription pricing model and a more annoying DRM, which will probably be cracked anyway. From Adobe's website (http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html):
Do I need ongoing Internet access to use my Creative Cloud desktop applications?
No. Your Creative Cloud desktop applications (such as Photoshop and Illustrator) are installed directly on your computer, so you won't need an ongoing Internet connection to use them on a daily basis.
You will need to be online when you install and license your software. If you have an annual membership, you'll be asked to connect to the web to validate your software licenses every 30 days. However, you'll be able to use products for 180 days even if you're offline.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could just do that with the trial version. Why go to all the trouble of paying them for a month to do it? If you're gonna pirate it, just go it the whole way and get a torrent.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
You neglected to mention that it's also an end-run around software licensing issues.
And yes, a long-time Linux user here. I *like* having control of my own machine, thanks very much.
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If Adobe, or any other software companies, go to this model, I will simply refuse to "upgrade" as long as I can stand it. And, I suspect, by the time that I do need to "upgrade" (based not on new features but on OS compatibility), someone else will have entered the same market-space with a "boxed" product. I will switch over to that.
The root of this SAS and cloud-based nonsense is that many software applications
Re:No Shit, Sherlock - (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what cloud computing is all about. It's not about providing a service to customers that's better than what they can get at their own desktops.
No, it is not. Cloud computing is things like Amazon's EC2 cloud; Which provides people who host content on the internet the valuable service of being able to add extra capacity on demand. It eliminates the slashdot effect on websites. It's also useful for a variety of other functions, like video encoding/decoding, load balancing, etc. Cloud computing is a Good Thing.
You've confused cloud computing with profiteering asshat corporations who are using it to effectively create a new kind of DRM. And like all forms of DRM, it isn't wanted, causes a wide range of problems, and screws over the paying customers. Which, from the article summary, is pretty much what everyone's predicting will happen.
Re:No Shit, Sherlock - (Score:4, Funny)
Not really. The cloud part here is only about storage - and you have the relatively slow ISP link in between. Mainframes were doing the actual computing work. And in the meantime, data requirements growth have outstipped network speed growth.
We're now thinking of 20 GB as a smallish amount of data. Some 20-25 years ago, 20 MB was a smallish amount. My current download is 8 Mb/s, about 4,000 times the 2.4 kb modem back then. However my upload is a mere 640 kb/s- just 30 times modem speed. So sending data to the cloud takes longer for modern upload speeds, and modern data needs, compared to the mainframe era.
Also most of those mainframes were accessed over LANs, which were much faster of course than modems. Not as fast as modern LAN but again data demand growth has outstripped network speed growth there as well.
Well then it sounds like what we need to do is move to an architecture where the bulk of the processing is on the local machine and that the bulk of the data is on the local machine as well. Sounds good to me.
The cost comparison is off (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The comparison should be made to Adobe CS6 Master Collection
Only if you actually use most/all of the applications. I expect that many customers go for something less comprehensive like Design Standard instead, for a little over half the price you mentioned depending on the choice of package.
With the prices actually being charged where I am and right now, not any hypothetical future ones they've said they'll do later or anything that is restricted to a short period of time or in another country, it works out cheaper to buy the entire package if you use more than two
Re:The cost comparison is off (Score:5, Insightful)
The comparison should be made to Adobe CS6 Master Collection which is going for $2,100 on Amazon right now, not the smaller package of CS6 goes for $403.99. Adobe also announced the monthly cost for a single app will be $10/mo. for the first year, not the current $19.99/mo. Similarly, if you are an existing CS3 or higher owner, you can get the first year of everything for $39.99/mo. for the first year. Now I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad change, just pointing out that the summary's numbers aren't accurate.
Yes, and it omits an important number: People who are going to run away screaming from the idea of paying a monthly subscription fee and will turn to software piracy instead. Adobe is basically walling off the consumer market and then pouring concrete over it to kill it off, while telling it's corporate buyers that subscriptions are the way to go. Well, businesses don't care... it's just another line item to them. Of course they'll sign on.
And so it goes that Adobe becomes the enemy of self-employed graphic designers everywhere, attempting to destroy the artist who's barely scraping by.
Something Microsoft got mostly right w/ Office365 (Score:5, Insightful)
We have our full time employees and thus we know we need X seats of Microsoft Office split between Windows & Mac users. Well we're coming up on summer where we will have 3 - 5 interns working for us and bringing their own computers. Office365 gives us the ability to add an extra 3 seats for 4 months costing ~ $150 vs. $1500 to go buy extra seats. Actually one of the interns is a graphics arts major and instead of spending nearly $2k for software to be used by one person for a couple months it's going to cost us around $200 for Adobe Cloud. Usually we sub the graphics design stuff out, but we have a project the students will be working on over the summer. So for us, it gives us great flexibility being able to price things per project as opposed to having to sink large sums of money into software that we may only need for one project.
Now to those like the graphics artist we hire to do most of our graphics work, yeah I can see where they'd be pissed. Many of them I know generally spend $2k and get about 4 years out of the software before upgrading. I still know a lot of professionals still using CS2 because it does all they need and see no reason to upgrade until they absolutely have to.
Re: (Score:2)
Spending $2k and getting four years of usage isn't a very good deal compared to this new offer.
CS6 Master Collection retails for $2,600, though it's on sale for $2,100 on Amazon. $50/month x 48 = $2,400 so $300 more over those four years. Spreading out the cost of the purchase and getting all updated versions seems like the better deal.
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Having control of access to your tools is worth as much as their capabilities..
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Disruption to work (Score:3)
Worst is the potential for disruption of work. With the non-cloud model, users can upgrade on their schedule. If they're in the middle of a big project, they can postpone upgrading until they've got a few weeks of slack time. With the Cloud version it'll be very easy for Adobe to force upgrades when Adobe, not the user, wants. You can imagine the headaches that could create.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no. The adobe application updater works just like most updaters - it tells you there is an update and asks if you want to install it. You're quite free to say no, as I do all the time because I'm busy. On the other hand, they push out lots of of updates now that otherwise might have had to wait 2 years for the next version of the software. I'm quite happy with it, I don't mind the cost which is considerably less than I spend on coffee every month, but ymmv.
CS6 != Photoshop CS6 (Score:5, Informative)
Adobe Photoshop CS6 retails for $599 all by itself.
Creative Cloud @ $50/mo includes:
I begin to suspect that Nerval's Lobster and the slashdot editor Soulskill lack appropriate knowledge to be commenting on this subject.
Re:CS6 != Photoshop CS6 (Score:4, Informative)
And if you stop paying the cloud stops working....
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Right in the summary, it is stated that a single app version will cost $19.99 a month. So if you just need Photoshop, you'll pay $19.99 each month instead of a one time fee of $599. This means you break even at the 30 month mark (a few months more if you pay for 25GB of Google Drive cloud storage to replicate Adobe's offering). This doesn't look too bad at first if you usually upgrade every 3 years, except that upgrading usually meant you'd get a discount on the new version. Instead of paying $599 every
Complete Rip-off (Score:5, Informative)
The cost of upgrading CS5.5 Premium Design suite to CS6 is $375. Cost of Creative Cloud? $50 a month, $600 a year.
We use to only upgrade Adobe suites every 2-3 years, at $375 a pop. Now for the same thing, we must pay $1200-1800 over those two to three years?
That's an increase of 200-250% depending on your suite.
Why is no one bringing this up?
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Even at face value it's stupid (Score:4)
I want cloud storage! My boss says it's going to be the next big thing to contextualize our value process, so I have to have it! Hmm, let's see:
13 months of Creative Cloud with 20 GB of cloud storage: $650
Infinity months of Creative Suite 6 plus 13 months of 25 GB Google Drive storage: $635
Being able to put non-Adobe files in my cloud storage: priceless.
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Being able to put non-Adobe files in my cloud storage: priceless.
Creative Cloud let's you put non-Adobe files in your cloud drive. It's just a file store, like Google Drive. I keep Apple Motion and bitmap files in mine just fine, and it'll sync them.
There are a lot of issues in Creative Cloud, but that's not one of them. Not to mention, Creative Suite Master Collection (which is what Creative Cloud is) is $2000, so even ignoring the cloud storage entirely, Creative Cloud is the better deal.
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I wouldn't know, I bought Illustrator CS3 TEN YEARS AGO and it still works fine for everything I do.
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No, it isn't 10 years old-- just 5. Working just fine for my needs as well. Creative Cloud would cost only "slightly" less based on using once every three months for a couple days compared to the purchase price of CS3. There is a very small set of people that would save money, but it would cost most people much more.
But this is nothing compared to the cost of say Salesforce! I don't understand how people can justify the 3x premium over owning your own software...
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In that case, it would take 24 months to break even. Adding in the 25GB of Google Drive cloud storage (at $2.49 a month) only adds 2 more months of equivalent Adobe cloud pricing.
So modifying the GP post:
26 months of Creative Cloud with 20 GB of cloud storage: $1,299.74
Infinity months of Creative Suite 6 plus 26 months of 25 GB Google Drive storage: $1,264.74
I'd also add that, with the $35 in savings, you could keep your 25GB Google Drive storage going for another 14 months.
Aka "business opportunity" (Score:2)
Bandwidth issues no? (Score:2)
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Can someone enlighten me why you'd want to store or access potentially giant images on their happy shiny 'creative cloud' considering it could take minutes or even hours to load or save a picture/project?
Because it's the cloud, man, the cloud! Jesus Christ, how many times do we have to tell people that?
Seriously though, did anyone ever think that software as a service was going to at all be geared toward the consumers? Just wait until you se what those prices will end up being from Adobe, Microsoft, and whoever decides you are going to rent their software. And no more choices either. If Adobe wants to have a Metro interface? Enjoy that! You will get your software updated when they want you to, and you wil
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Can someone enlighten me why you'd want to store or access potentially giant images on their happy shiny 'creative cloud' considering it could take minutes or even hours to load or save a picture/project?
They don't. "Cloud" is just a marketing buzzword. This is rental software that is required to phone home once a month or it stops working. Other than that it runs the same as before.
Not comparing to the right version (Score:4, Informative)
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a terrible idea, and am thanking my lucky stars the only Adobe software I use extensively anymore is Lightroom, which for the time being can still be purchased as a standalone version. But for people/companies who actively use the different CS products and upgrade them with each release, it doesn't sound like that bad a deal. It will suck for casual users though. I keep an old copy of Photoshop CS2 around for the stuff I can't do in Lightroom. I feel sorry for the kids graduating now - if they need to touch up one photo in PS, they'll have to pay $20/mo for a year = $240 for that casual use.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also a $75 one-month-access fee that you can pay if you need the software every so often. So it looks like the people who upgrade constantly will win out, the people who only use it once every year will win out (not needing to lay out hundreds of dollars for a few uses), but the people who buy one version and use it for years won't.
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I feel sorry for the kids graduating now - if they need to touch up one photo in PS, they'll have to pay $20/mo for a year = $240 for that casual use.
Photoshop isn't a tool for the casual user --- and never has been.
If it's crunch time and you need the pro's $2700 tool kit for a month or three months then rent it for a month or three months,
Pirate proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Assuming that the software exists on the vendor's server, suppose the following:
1) I purchase a subscription to Creative Suite
2) I setup my computer to allow others [that I choose] to remotely use the internet as if from my computer
3) I sell time on my computer to allow others to use Creative Suite from my computer when I'm not using it
4) Profit!
This will clearly be a violation of their terms of service, but isn't it protected under the first sale doctrine? Is there any way that they can enforce a ban on this activity?
A website similar to Craigslist could let people register their computers, the software they have registrations for, and the hours when it will be available. The website would manage time, passwords, and payment. Sounds like a potential business opportunity.
Note that Windows already has most of the features you need for this (keeping the remote user out of your personal files, for example).
Fantastic chance for free software (Score:4, Insightful)
While the concept of freedom which lies at the base of the term 'free software' still continues to be misunderstood by many, these nebulous moves by all those entrenched purveyors of proprietary software should make it clear to even the most bone-headed sub-species of manager. Free software means you get to run it the way you want, when you want, however often you want, without any risk of the software suddenly disappearing because you missed a payment or the vendor went out of business or or or...
In short, if the cloud gets so nebulous you can't even see your wallet in your hands any more, just follow the beacon to dot.org which has been shining for years now without you even noticing.
Cloud vs. App Store (Score:3, Interesting)
Cloud/Software-As-A-Service/Web Apps are obvious wins for the Googles/Microsofts/Adobes of the world. They
Adobe's move is not just about locking-in customers, it's about ensuring that they don't have to give Apple and Microsoft a cut of all their sales. Gatekeeper on the Mac and Windows RT are harbingers of Apple's and Microsoft's long-term strategies: force everything through the App store and skim off the top. All the major software vendors are fighting a war and the consumers caught in the crossfire.
This is the academic pricing (Score:3, Interesting)
Adobe's Trying to Stop Piracy? (Score:3)
As Bill Gates was just quoted, 90% of MS software in use in the Chinese government offices and in large companies (mostly government owned) is pirated.
If Adobe is doing this to stop piracy in foreign countries that is their choice. That doesn't mean Adobe will be my choice.
I think I will do my light duty image editing in other applications from now on. No way am I going to store images of patent pending proprietary products on Adobe's servers or my own equipment that Adobe can deny me access to whenever I don't come up with their monthly fee, for whatever reason (ever heard of credit card theft and a card is cancelled: been there already).
Holy grail: software subscriptions (Score:2, Insightful)
Software subscriptions have been the Holy Grail for decades now. Consumers have generally - so far - been wise enough to reject it in general, but like IP legislation the potential gains are so enormous that corporations will never stop trying to reinvent it in a palatable fashion. Here we go again....
Cloud Storage Savings? (Score:3)
So they claim that their cloud offering will save money because you won't need to spend money on a separate cloud storage service? Ok, let's suppose you were going to pay for a cloud storage service. I'll pick the one I use: Google Drive. (I'm guessing other providers will be competitive in pricing.) I use their free offering, but let's say I wanted 20GB. 25GB of Google Drive storage costs $2.49 a month. (Source. [google.com]) Their $49.99 monthly fee could buy you 20 months of 25GB Google Drive.
Suppose you had an extra $49.99 that you were going to spend anyway. How much Google Drive could you get (instead of renting Adobe's software+20GB)? 1TB.
So, depending on how you look at it, Adobe's offering is either 20 times more expensive or 50 times more expensive than Google Drive. How is this saving the customer money again, Adobe??!!!
Adobe will lose (Score:4, Insightful)
"it's easy to see that, over a long enough timeline, and with the right financial model in place, the companies providing those services stand to benefit even more than they did with boxed software."
Not really. Adobe stands to lose a lot of customers. There are alternatives to all of their software. Adobe's move just makes look more closely to the competition.
Time for a comeback (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm extremely pissed off. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've spent a lot of money, and a lot of time learning Adobe products--and this is how that corporation treats me.
I've got to run the numbers, but I think that I am done with Adobe. Microsoft is Jesus compared to them.
No need to innovate (Score:3, Insightful)
With a guaranteed income from locked-in design professionals, Adobe can finally stop worrying about innovating with each new release. They can continue to sell the same version for years to come, month by month, with no expectation of adding new features, capabilities, etc.
Sadly, Adobe also owns a boatload of patents when it comes to computer-based graphic design, so the threat of serious competition from new upstarts is almost nil, too.
Don't speak ill of your new owners.
Re:More != more (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to use if for a couple of months at $20/month you'll have to steal it. The $20 a month plan is only available to people who bought the perpetual license and are willing to sign up for a 12 month contract.
Re:Less is more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you use the obviously inferior GIMP, when you already own CS3,4,5 or 6?
The real answer is to stop upgrading until something better comes along. Now whether that option is Adobe Cloud (which I highly doubt) or another competitor is to be seen.
But it's not GIMP and it never will be.
Re:Less is more. (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who uses The GIMP extensively and Photoshop occasionally.. "uhm. no."
The GIMP is not even close to Photoshop yet. That's not to say it isn't a perfectly capable tool for what most people do, but then 'most people' would be fine with Elements, or Lightroom, or Instagram. Graphics professionals will have to weigh their individual demands and see whether The GIMP or one of the many plugins/scripts fills those demands in an acceptable manner.
Just as an example of what I mean by the latter, and I know it's a limited use case but this applies to so many things, content-aware rescaling.
In Photoshop you activate the tool and just scale the layer through the typical scaling interface (e.g. drag edges), and the result is shown instantaneously if your machine can handle it.
Now let's do it with The GIMP. First off, The GIMP doesn't have this feature. You'll have to grab the Liquid Rescale plugin. The main interface offers some great control, but if you just want to rescale the layer the Interactive mode sounds more promising. Except that all it does is update the layer every time you let go of the up/down control / enter a number into the fields while scaling from a fixed pivot (top left corner) While much better than going through the main plugin interface (where you have to commit, then undo if not to your liking, etc.), it's a far cry from essentially the scale tool using a different algorithm for its scaling - who knows, maybe that's on the feature list for a future version, it would certainly be a sensible place to put it.
Perhaps a bit less esoteric, adjust the canvas size, and let's say you want to add a 2mm border around the edges. First of all, you can't just say you want a 2mm border. You'll have to add 4mm to the width and height first, and then set the offset to 2mm on each axis. Great, keeps your brain accustomed to doing remedial math. So you do that and now go do it again. Notice how the unit dropdown is no longer set to mm? The reason for this is that the unit dropdowns always use the unit associated with the image (bottom left below canvas) rather than the last-used setting. Both have their merits, but % (percent) is not a unit for images, but is a common unit in the drop-downs. Similar things apply to e.g. the aspect lock button.
Some things a script-fu can address, but many things it cannot. Yes, it's open source, I can add the features (or pay somebody to add them) and with a lot of luck even get them accepted into the trunk (so I don't have to keep patching and compiling / paying somebody to do so). Can't really do that with Photoshop. But but for a long, long list of such features the fact is that with Photoshop, you don't have to to begin with.
There's plenty of reasons I dislike working with Photoshop - it's far from perfect and I like the direction The GIMP is going in - but there's many more subtle and yet aggravating things besides the ubiquitous CMYK and GUI layout arguments (two areas that are very, very low on my list - if I went into why, this comment would be even more rant-y.)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It's my understanding that most of Adobe's customers are businesses. A pay-as-you-go model means there's less chance of wasting money on licenses you don't need. After all, many businesses use temps, interns and contractors. And sometimes you'll need to switch an employee from one project where they need photoshop to another project where they need something else.
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That's true, but they do offer a 30-day trial if you just wanted to check out the software. That $75 for the single month is also access to the whole creative suite, not just a single app.
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So you're saying if I want to use Photoshop for a couple months via the cloud (at a cost of $20/month) that's more expensive than buying a shrinkwrapware copy (at $600)?
Please explain.
On long term, yes.
Car analogy - what solution is preferable for someone to learn driving: use a second-hand car or rent a car by the day?
Translation: how long it takes a PS-noob to get enough experience to finish a project in 2 months? How much it will cost if all one can find on the market is rental-software?
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Car analogy - what solution is preferable for someone to learn driving: use a second-hand car or rent a car by the day?
The better car analogy is the guy who likes to lease a new car every 3 years instead of buying one. You always get to have a new car, and there are rarely ever maintenance costs. The same would probably be true for the software subscription where you will automatically get the newest upgrades for free as part of the subscription.
Re:More != more (Score:4, Informative)
Car analogy - what solution is preferable for someone to learn driving: use a second-hand car or rent a car by the day?
The better car analogy is the guy who likes to lease a new car every 3 years instead of buying one. You always get to have a new car, and there are rarely ever maintenance costs. The same would probably be true for the software subscription where you will automatically get the newest upgrades for free as part of the subscription.
Not quite. With an offline version, one can buy a "second hand" install CD. With an "only for rental" offer on the market, there's no chance to do it.
Think textbooks [gnu.org]
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People who stay on one version forever... yes Creative Cloud is going to cost more money.
Although, the whole thing is more a testament to how expensive Adobe Creative Suite has been.
The people who just bought CS6 instead of CC are the ones who are really screwed here as Adobe has made it very clear that they are going to have "exclusive features" for Creative Cloud that will not flow down t
Re:The Obvious Question (Score:4, Insightful)
None. There are lots that get about 80% of the way there. But as anyone who has developed a complex product can tell you, the first 20% of the cost and effort gets you 90% of the functionality, the remaining 10% functionality takes the remaining 80% of the investment. The odds are against F/OSS products ever being a total replacement for the products in Adobe's portfolio.
Re:Lots of advantages, none for the customer (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming the executable is on the vendor's computer:
I realize that the /. summaries and to a lesser extent Adobe have done a poor job at conveying this information, but that assumption isn't right.
This isn't really "creative suite in the cloud" so much as "subscription-based creative suite with some cloud storage you can use if you want." You still download the programs and install them locally, and they check in each month (according to comments in a previous story).
I don't really want to say that this is a good thing; that's for each person to decide. But it does invalidate almost all of your statements, which I will now attempt to correct in the name of reducing FUD:
The software only has to be compiled for one architecture - no more Windows/Mac/Linux versions
The user has no installation problems - conflicts with drivers, antivirus, &c
The code can be optimized to the execution machine
Not sure what versions will be available; I'd assume Mac and Windows. But they are native programs, not running in the browser. (Not sure why you say that last one is an advantage for the vendor...)
The code cannot be pirated
Slightly ironically, the way Adobe is doing probably won't mean much here.
If the company goes out of business or closes the server, you lose your work
You can still store information locally.
You need to be internet connected to the internet for it to work
You need a reasonably fast internet connection for it to work
You need a reasonably reliable internet connection for it to work
You only need a connection once a month for activation purposes.
The company gets to mine your activities for targeted advertizing
Unlikely. At least, it won't be significantly easier than it is now, since it's a local app.
Re:Lots of advantages, none for the customer (Score:4, Informative)
If Adobe went under tomorrow, Creative Cloud users would still be able access their files for 180 days, after which their copy of the app would no longer function. Unfortunately, Adobe tends to use proprietary file formats. A few other apps advertise the ability to partially read some Photoshop files, but AFAIK, none of them are anywhere near 100% compatibility with even CS3 files yet, much less CS6. I'd imagine the situation is similar (or worse) for their other apps.
So in effect, the GP was right, at least unless somebody buys Adobe out during those six months or until one of those other apps manages to reverse-engineer all the remaining file format bits that you depend on. Pedantically, the work isn't gone—merely inaccessible—but in practical terms, there's really little difference.
Re:Lots of advantages, none for the customer (Score:5, Interesting)
You only need a connection once a month for activation purposes.
I work in the visual effects industry. To comply with security audits and various contracts our production network does not have internet access. Doing so would put us in breach with many of out clients.
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These are still normal applications you install on your computer. The only "Cloud" is the online storage, and you install the application from the web. The software complains every 30 days for you to authenticate it, but it will run for three months without re-authentication. But you can run it day to day without an Internet connection.
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Actually more clarifications now that I've looked at the FAQ a bit:
You're forced to pay for access during months when you don't use the software - or you lose your data
Not only is this wrong for the reason I gave before (you still can use local files), but you have 90 days after cancelling your membership to still access your files. (After that, yes, you'll lose some work. Though there's still a free 2 GB you'll have access to.)
You need to be internet connected to the internet for it to work
You need a reaso
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No, I pay for an upgrade about every three to six years and the upgrade is only around $400 to $600 so the $400 quote was much more reasonable than your overpriced quote.