Why are there two updates for Photoshop

Because apparently it is programmed deep, deep into Adobe's DNA that they cannot possibly manage to come up with a straightforward, clean, and logical installation process. It is demonstrably beyond what's possible for Adobe. I say that based on years and years of dealing with their byzantine, buggy, and bloated installers. The Cloud was supposed to magically make things better.

I also now have two versions of After Effects, Audition, Flash, Illustrator, Media Encoder, Muse, and Photoshop residing on my computer.

Why?

Well, because the Creative Cloud installer didn't really "update" the current software...it just installed new versions next to the old ones.

Why?

Beats the hell out of me. But I'm pretty sure if I expend my time to contact Adobe's support folks I will be told to go through some process of manually removing each copy of the old software. They won't know why the "upgrade" process worked this way, and they won't care. They'll just cheerfully advise me to waste my time cleaning up Adobe's mess. Again.

Looking forward to the day I no longer need to use Adobe products.

Are you listening, Apple?

Beer and brewery come to mind. How long to reinstall all the plugins??

Why CC 2014 https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1499663

I don't know about all the programs, but I know for a fact that Photoshop changed it's plugin architecture to an HTML5-based one, which means you won't be able to use your Photoshop plugins in the 2014 version until they are updated as it uses a different architecture. So the separate versions allows you to continue working on your current projects, but still try out the new stuff. Probably a better option than making people choose whether they want to try the new features, or continue to work on old projects with their plugins.

I'm guessing it's a similar situation for the other apps as well.

Brent

I think that Adobe should have announced the plugin architecture change as it would clear up a lot of confusion for sure. I'm a little confused why it's not really mentioned anywhere.

Brent