Though there may be no specific pressure to implement new features on a given date, no-one can doubt that strategically Adobe want as many customers on subscription as possible. I suggest that new features are not introduced mainly to satisfy existing subscribers, but to attract perpetual users and new customers to adopt the subscription model. As usual, this is driven by marketing not engineering.
Hi David,
It's obvious that they are in it for the money, but there are different ways of achieving that. Some do it by winning the sympathy of loyal and future customers, and others do it by acting as a monopolist and creating obfuscation and obstacles.
You can call it selfish, but after a working lifetime in application software, I have never, and never would, implement a new release of anything on day 1. I find it incredible to read a post from someone for whom Lightroom is at the centre of their business bemoaning that a new new release has stopped them working.
While I agree that there is a risk involved with being an early adopter, in this case Adobe said there was no issue other than what was caused by Epson. The truth only came out after many people doing sanity checks on their own workflow and materials, thus wasting money and other resources. Once, after a relatively long time they acknowledged their own role in yet another bad quality check before rolling out an update (not a new release/upgrade, but mostly 'bug fixes'), only then the fix was relatively soon to follow.
Software bugs can be complicated and they may take a while for some customers to detect, so how long should one wait before starting to use the updated features? Isn't the whole idea of the subscription model that one is kept up to date without have to wait? And again,
if everybody waits, nobody will find the bugs that Adobe should have.
Therefore, the only solution is for Adobe to sincerely own the problems they create themselves, and do their darnedest to avoid them in the future.
Otherwise customers will start looking elsewhere. On1 Photo 10 seems like a potent alternative for most LR users once it is established that their Raw converter (to be released soon) is good enough for prime time. The introduction price (expired yesterday but might return at a later date) is less than a year's subscription, and the license is perpetual. Other competitors will also start offering DAM + editing capable solutions, so Adobe better ramp up their efforts in taking customers more serious (not only their bank accounts).
Cheers,
Bart
