[scott w] wrote:

 

DocPixel-BMW wrote:

 

..... the only thing I can think of that would work is, after 24-months you can cancel and own the program... or 36 months the suite. ....

 

 

IF that is implemented, yes it would suffice. But that's a mighty big IF.

......

Back-saving on the fly is not an option. See item 1 above.

 

This is an unacceptable issue. I'm not of mind to simply "trust" that Adobe will do right by this. It is in their interest to keep me feeding at the CC teet as long as they can. It would seem, they feel holding me, or rather my files, hostage is their current solution.

 

My business does not operate in a bubble. I require my tools to be accessable in any situation under any number of circumstances. This is why I purchased my tools to begin with - to allow my busines the flexibility to operate how it needs to. By being forced into a one-direction path which ends abruputly in a dead end, I am being asked to forsee a day when my business dies and I no longer need any of the tools I've spend so much money and time investing in. Adobe is asking me to support their new business model while at the same time ruining mine.

Well I can definitly see your concerns... and truthfully... they should be the same ones as I should have.

It all very well does come down to trust... and I can only agree with you that Adobe has NOT earned it over the last few years. Not to mention transparency. Adobe MUST as you say write this all down for all to see and understand... not in a legalese filled EULA... but plain, simple to understand English (translated later of course). They have to put it in "Stone" (Sans please ) whether they want to or not, if the Internet uproar is anything to judge by. And I do think perpetual licensing will live on in way or another as well, for the forementioned reason. Folks just are not going to stand by and watch this time, that's almost for certain.

I guess you could call my stance simply "wishful thinking". All of my posts have stated somewhere my undying "hope" and how I would "like" to see Adobe progress. Maybe it's an Utopian wish(?)... but it doesn't stop me personally from seeing what they have to offer, even with the caveats that I secretly may have, and you express so eloquently.

Re: Rent Abatement: ... it would be a first. At least in the software and tech arena. Paid web services and "rented connectivity (cells)" as an example can go down (and do) without recourse, and most if not all software is "as is" and "no implied usability"... blah, blah, blah. I can't see that going anywhere, but it would be interesting to try.

MikeWenzloff wrote:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Iw9q2X9cU

Pretty amusing, however I doubt that would be the actual outcome decision. Aside from Adobe's "Koolaid Drinking Fanboys".

----------------------------

Corel is all about giving users choice | Corel Blogs

http://corelblogs.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/corel-is-all-about-giving-users-choice/

"At Corel, we strongly believe in giving users the choice to purchase your software the way you want."

I take it as resignation. A "Wanna keep updated, you have no choice" type of thing--and the rationale to make that decision. "Hitler" in the clip found something he could justify the sign-up.

BTW, these same people did a vid for when the iPad came out. Pretty funny, too.

Mike

"At Corel, we strongly believe in giving users the choice to purchase your software the way you want."

Other things I've noted about Corel over the years:

• Corel's development, marketing, and feature set doesn't act as if it's "ashamed" of certain vertical-market segments which Corel knows represent significant portions of its user base, like sign and embroidery shops and technical illustrators. In other words, Corel does a more effective job of broadening Draw's versatility for all its users. You can still use Draw to make a simple clip-art or dingbat font file, for example.
  
  Compare that to Illustrator's history, which (like all the others) is originally and historically overwhelmingly about offset print, with lately a handful of "me, too" (downright bizzarrely-implemented) web-centric features. You can kid yourself and call Illustrator's chronic and continued long list of missing no-brainer practical functionality "professional focus" if you what--but that's what you're doing: just kidding yourself, not fooling anyone actually familiar with the two programs. In many ways, Illustrator is the blunt crayon among a drawer full of accurate drawing pens.

• Corel's upgrade policy has been less restrictive (and less expensive) than Illustrator's, letting you upgrade from at least two versions back, often more.
• CorelDraw Graphics Suite ships with a plethora of added-value items including large font and clipart collections, a perfectly serviceable font management software (the only one I use these days), and other practical utilities.
• CorelDraw X6 actually shipped with a full-color, perfect-bound, hardcover user manual. How refreshing compared to the usual cheap-out these days.
• Corel's so-called Premium Membership essentially amounts to what some software vendors call a maintenance agreement; an optional annual fee which entitles you to upgrades to any new versions released so long as you have an active maintenance agreement.
  
  FileMaker, for example, does that. It makes perfect sense for a corporate workgroup, and for small-to-medium-size developers whose primary and ongoing function is FileMaker development; yet it constitutes no penalty to users and businesses who are just as serious ("professional") and quite skilled in their use of FileMaker, but carry individual licenses. Many graphics people (myself included), educators, medical field workers, and other creatives (many musicians, for example) consider FileMaker an absolutely essential mission-critical tool in their business (as do I). Yet a subscription based license would make no sense at all for many in such a braod base of professionals, and would not be tolerated.
  
  

JET

I take it as resignation. A "Wanna keep updated, you have no choice" type of thing--and the rationale to make that decision.

Exactly.

Adobe, of course, already has its own discounted volume license agreements for corporate customers. Don't believe for a minute that the by-subscription-only dictate isn't targeting the pocketbooks of individual freelance illustrators and designers and small shops--among them, the most highly skilled users and the very creatives whose decades of patronage put Adobe where it is in the first place.

Just look at the figures. Over two or three years, you will end up paying more; you will have to pay continually; and if you decide to stop paying, you will be immediately orphaned until you resume payments. And remember: these are "introductory" price schemes. Stay irrationally "married" to a single software vendor that acts like Adobe and you will become its captive.

The policy is a bit schizophrenic on Adobe's part. Those of you who have frequented this forum for a few years: Take a moment and consider how many posts you've seen from users in various professional fields--medical, education, even scientific research. The fact that these people are beginners or dabblers in Illustrator certainly doesn't make them dummies.

Moreover, consider: Who do you think has been the real targets of Illustrator development for the last decade or so? The no-nonsense, robustness-focused, serious-business-functionality mindset of seasoned graphics professionals...or the instant-gratification whiz-bang eye-candy of beginners without concern for the needlessly convoluted and untidy constructs under the  table?

Illustrator's focus--the features, the bullet lists, the ever-changing gratuitous eye-candy and increasingly marketing-saturated interface window dressing--has been toward gaining more vector-drawing beginners. And judging by the majority of threads in this forum, it's been working. Illustrator has become the "consumer-class" defacto assumption. So don't give me the "more 'professional' focus" nonsense. Adobe has always wanted as broad-based a neophyte-level general-purpose user base as it can capture--but with vertical market "professional" pricing; and now expects all those users--the infrequent casual user and the full-time independent creative alike--to accept a continuous-payment licence rental scheme.

Sweet deal for schizophrenic Adobe, if it can pull it off. Dark days for all of us if it starts a runaway software trend.

JET

What do you consider the most "professional"-focused major functional addition to Illustrator in recent versions?

• Perspective Grid (directly copied from the FreeHand feature which appeared years before)?

• Multiple Artboards (provided in all of Illustrator's primary competitors for many years, and still half-baked compared to the FreeHand implementation it tries to mimic)?

• Grad Strokes (with its curiously absent evidence of excitment in this forum)?

In comparison, consider some examples of  major new features in competing drawing softwares:

• Canvas's full GIS feature set. Opens a whole world (literally) of new data-driven mapping capability for a professional illustrator to offer his clients. And it's offered as an add-on, so you don't have to buy it if you don't want it.

• Draw's anticipated next-step integration with the axonometric capabilities of Designer. Again, an optional and affordable major enhancement. Open an industry-standard 3D CAD file, rotate it to the needed orientation, flatten it to efficient 2D, then modify and enhance it for commercial illustration use, leveraging the axonometric drawing features. And even a second-tier option for those whose clientelle justifies the associated third-party licensing of more vertical-market CAE programs (CATIA, etc.).
• Xara Designer Pro's truly WYSIWYG HTML/CSS functionality. A practically-seamless godsend for the static web-page builder or site mockup prototyper, compared to Illustrator's laughable piecemeal web-centric attempts. (Don't even get me started on Designer Pro's incomparably faster, better-integrated, and more intuitive integration of raster-based effects with vector-based illustration.)

Those are the kind of ambititious major features which actually broaden the profit-making potential of a professional illustrator by broadening his own illustration repertoire.

Those are the kinds of things any professional illustrator should consider before ever allowing himself to become effectively entrapped to a single software vendor by dependency upon a continuous-pay subscription-based dependency licensing scheme.

JET

Predictably, Adobe's removal of traditional licensing options is already being leveraged by Corel as a competitive advantage in its marketing. Hopefully, others (Quark, ACD, Xara) will soon follow in kind. If they're smart, they're already working the wee hours right now to configure generously-compelling side-grade offers from any legacy version of Adobe apps.

The migration doesn't have to be universal, merely significant. If the user base discards its single-vendor blinders and handles its wallets accordingly, this move could potentially, at long last, end the age of lethargy in which Illustrator's market share dominance and snail's-paced development has put the 2D vector drawing segment.

Also, step up to the 30,000 feet bird's-eye level for a few moments and consider a broader view of  technology trends.

The Unreal Editor is a mainstay development platform in an industry that now rivals (exceeds?) the motion picture industry. Yet it is freely available to young talents who are making themselves highly-skilled content developers. Needless to say (or should be), archaic Illustrator is not even in the same ballpark of sophistication-level of such a program.

Of course, you know about open source (or should). But ever visited PortableApps.com? Put the Portable Apps open source appication on a flash drive (or external SSD). It then serves as a tidy manager/downloader/launcher/update tracker of dozens of open source offerings that are bundled as "portable apps" (applications which are standalone; don't have to be installed to Windows's Registry). The result is an elegantly handy portable volume which you can simply carry from computer to computer and have all the associated apps immediately available; no muss, no fuss. As more discover it, it should be a boon to open source. You really should try it. While you're at it, be sure give Scribus--the open source page layout app--a try.

Even those otherwise oblivious to technology and business trends are aware of Google. I hear that Google is applying some of its conventional-wisdom-breaking business-model innovation to the connectivity infrastructure industry. Can hardly wait for that in my area.

My point is: In the light of recent innovative business models, Adobe's move appears almost despirately market-share defensive by comparison. Postscript was innovative. A world changer. 30 years ago. Since then, we've seen it develop InDesign (only after acquiring Aldus, and same basic functional model as PageMaker and XPress). We've seen it acquire Flash and turn it into a mass of confusion.

Removing/restricting licensing options from the customer base doesn't exactly warm the heart, and is not the kind of "innovation" my world is looking for.

A bird's-eye view of one kind of innovation the world is looking for is dramatic innovation toward user-friendly, highly-intuitive and highly-versatile interfaces for truly data-driven graphics. Not just professional graphics creators, but information-expert workers need to be able to build highly versatile build-once, publish-forever solutions without having to become fluent XML and Javascript and SQL coders and without tedious, convoluted, high-maintenance workflows. In short, Illustrator's stone-age Graphs and half-baked Variables just don't cut it. Not by a long shot.

A completely new-from-the-ground-up, serious-business 2D vector drawing program was needed two decades ago. Adobe is the obvious entity to have stepped up to that plate. But instead, it's just continued to milk Illustrator's mediocrity.

So it's long past time for a change anyway.

JET

Nice posts JET.

JETalmage wrote:

 

So it's long past time for a change anyway.

Speaking of change, amazingly Adobe feels that they are changing the world.

http://www.adobe.com/cc/letter.html

Changing the world by changing Adobe.

Within Adobe, we have challenged our teams to make bold changes that serve the evolving needs of the creative community.

If only they could understand their own deficiencies and inadequacies, look past merely focusing on sales numbers and the quality of their offerings. That is the change Adobe needs to make, but it seems too bold for Adobe to actually do that at this point, it goes against their very nature and greed.

"serving the evolving needs of the creative community". In what way? The only needs being served are Adobe's.

Another must read for people found in a recent previous thread;

Adobe Creative Cloud:  Lopsided Legal Agreement. It is not pretty:

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agree ment.html

[PS: Posts are being deleted and censored left and right over in the creative cloud forum.]

Jet, btw...Xara has always offered a competitive upgrade. One has to contact them off the purchase page, but it is there. That is how I first made the purchase. And I used a long dead vector application (Professional Draw) to do so.

Mike

Who does Adobe send to say customers will love the software? Not the CEO, CIO, not a Technical Director, etc… but instead what Adobe always relies on more than anything else - Marketing.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/11/adobe-creative-cloud-interview/

Just another example of empty dribble wrapped in smoke and mirrors PR nonsense. How can this guy sleep at night believing the snake oil he is pedaling? Shame on Adobe and all it's representatives.

For anyone not happy about the mandatory creative cloud subscription, you may be interested in signing this petition:

https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creati ve-cloud-subscription-model

Thanks for that link, W_J_T.

I particularly like this well-stated summary statement:

It shows an unmitigated contempt for customers as small-fry (“plenty more out there and we have 'em by the balls anyway”) to which no concessions need be made, with a very big hammer to get rid of unpleasant ones if need be...

JET

Jet, btw...Xara has always offered a competitive upgrade. One has to contact them...

I (and no doubt many others) have received generous side-grades from multiple software vendors from time to time. But being one-off concessions made at a sales rep's discretion, out of respect for the courtesy, I don't mention them online.

Most all businesses do things like that on occasion. I only consider it appropriate to mention advertised prices, and don't mind paying them when they're reasonable.

JET

One need only read the headline:

Adobe exec: Creative Cloud complainers will love us once they try us

See? Already you're not a long-time customer; you're "a complainer."

JET

@JET - Wow! What can I say? Some really... REALLY!... great, well thought out posts! Hats off!

I specifically liked the one where you broke down the vector programs... and what's still broken in Illustrator.

I would like to add the program Krita.org to the list of programs to keep an eye on... even though it's not a vector but an image program.

The Transform Tool is pretty much what I have been asking for in PS and CorelPainter for like 10+ years!

It's hopefully developers like these, introducing new advanced tools and getting some awareness and funding for their efforts, that will also spur a Renaissance in graphic design tools. Please be kind and dismiss for a moment my "high horse" comments, and see it is quality tools that I want and only quality tools.

It would be "convenient" if my personal wishes would come true with CC eventually. However, you made so many good points, and brought back so many bad memories dealing with Illustrator's and Adobe's BS especially in regards to Freehand that I had truly suppressed because it was seriously frustrating...  I have no other alternative than to take a big step back and re-analyse this CC move.

Another petition at Petitions Whitehouse Org -

ask DOJ to investigate Adobe Systems, Inc. recent announcement to change its software license to subscription-only.

Also, this extreme display of arrogance by Shantanu Narayen (Adobe CEO refuses to answer Australian pricing questions )

and him not being able to answer  a reasonable question... DOES NOT bolster any of my naive hopes for TRANSPASRENCY by this company. This video sickened me and actually tipped me to the other side of the line(!)

As I've said before, there needs to be some major changes in the executive offices... regardless of whether this new idea works or not. You've got Bean Counters, Smake Oil Salesman and Marketing Gurus running a technology company into the ground. I feel really bad for the engineers: how do they deal with these guys day in and day out! 

I just read through this post. Near the bottom, I read this:

17. Advertising and Your Content.

 

You agree that Adobe may display advertisements adjacent to Your Content, and you agree that you are not entitled to any compensation.

The manner, mode, and extent of advertising or other revenue generating models pursued by Adobe on or in conjunction with the Services and/or Your Content are subject to change without specific notice to you.

Are they kidding? This is just nuts.

Don't you embrace the phenomenal top new features of that new CC version, Scott ?

I for one am strongly impressed:

File packaging in 2013 – incredible

Unembed images in 2013 – unbelievable

Area and point type conversion – legendary

Images in brushes – Remember when Creature House Expression introduced that …

Touch Type tool – Well, that might be innovative

hahaha, I love this type of posts Kurt, that's my kind of humor

I for one am strongly impressed: File packaging...Unembed images...Area and point type conversion...Images in brushes...

Yeah. Mind-numbing progress, huh? Like watching paint dry. Or looking for shooting stars.

On a cloudy night.

Under tree cover.

With the sleeping bag zipped up over your head.

Wearing sunglasses.

And getting sleepy.

So what kind of timeframe do you figure for other things that are similarly already decades-late to the game: User-defined ruler scales; dimension tools; connector lines; callouts; reliable snaps; accuracy beyond the lame point-based coordinate system; a revamp of the hideous selection scheme; a proper cutting tool; a proper object inspector...freakin' no-brainer live shape primitives, fercryin'outloud?

You guys keep those subscription payments coming...you've ot a long, long way to go.

;-)

JET

Got an extra zero there, Scott. ;-)

But yeah, I agree. There are no doubt many who will not sign it because it asks for personal address info.

JET

Any valid petition seeks to validate the signers using real info and attempts to eliminate mulitple voting.

Really, there are scores of people that will never see the petition to make the choice whether to sign it or not.

I do note Adobe stock began to rise on the announcement and has steadily dropped since the 6th. If the backlash doesn't die out, who knows where the stock will end up...and Adobe's choices.

Mike

Dave_Burkett wrote:

 

Also, a CC user isn't forced to upgrade to the latest update when it becomes available via the Creative Cloud.  They can always stay on the version they have until it makes sense to move to the newer version.

I thought that this was only true for a single year. After that, you have to upgrade.

Which is true??

I encourage and advise anyone to just read through 3-5 pages (or more) of the threads over in the Creative Cloud forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/community/creative_cloud

To witness the "user" perspective concerning the reality of the Creative Cloud - Adobe's New Flagship Offering.

Most issues are not between the user's chair and their computer, but rather the user's computer and Adobe's Cloud.

It is as if it's a comedy of errors, at the paying customers expense. Is this thing secretly still in beta?

----

• I wish the change.org petition page would add the whitehouse.gov DOJ petition page to their list of links.

They can always stay on the version they have until it makes sense to move to the newer version.

I was unaware of this URL for checking Creative Cloud status:

http://status.creativecloud.com/

Look at all the issues each and every day, so this is considered the new "flagship offering" from Adobe?

I don't get it.  What's that downtime for? Cloud file storage? Does anyone actually use that?

I read it as an epic poem:

Some users may experience delays in working with their files.

Asset availability issues have been resolved.

Some users may experience poor performance with some features of the service.

Performance degradation issues have been resolved.

Some users may not be able to use the service.

Service availability issues have been resolved.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fabulous. Unfortunately it does not perfectly rhyme.

guys, Beta or not, product has delivery deadlines to meet, they'll get it right eventually...we're very optimistic

[scott w] wrote:

 

Yeah downtime for the "cloud" servers not the apps. And I'm certain many use it if they have it.

Yeah I was amazed (in a negative sense) to see the daily results when I came across that link. There are quite a few current threads over in the Cloud Forum with people not having access to their files and if you search many, many more in the past. Great for deadlines huh!? Also it should be noted that it is NOT JUST the cloud storage that can go down but access to the apps themselves, again in the cloud forum there are various current and recent threads where peoples subscriptions get un-synced or mishandled by the system and cause major issues also. I would be utterly embarrassed if I was an Adobe employee representing the Creative Cloud product. Sadly many of them no doubt feel as us consumers about it but have to grin and bear it and forge on.

CarlosCanto wrote:

 

guys, Beta or not, product has delivery deadlines to meet, they'll get it right eventually...we're very optimistic

Beta? More like "pre-alpha". Some of the most basic things seem to have gone untested.

Pre-alpha

Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the software project before testing.