Adobe moving to the web

[daws]

I just feel sorry for the talented engineers at Adobe that business agendas seeingly driven by stock holders and investors keep alienating the end users who like their products.

Exactly. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues. And if, as has happened at so many other innovative companies that have jumped the shark, some of Adobe's best and brightest begin to leave for better, brighter opportunities.

[famalam]

Until there's a 100gb pipe running to my home with an fail-safe uptime, I'm completely uninterested in this.

I'll maintain a system capable of running CS5 for as long as possible. Definitely won't be switching until I'm forced.

[Farmer]

Until there's a 100gb pipe running to my home with an fail-safe uptime, I'm completely uninterested in this.

I'll maintain a system capable of running CS5 for as long as possible. Definitely won't be switching until I'm forced.

Which means you've failed to understand that you will still be able to purchase CS6 as a standalone piece of shelfware - not based in the cloud or requiring a subscription.

If people would actually read first hand material from the vendor instead of half of any given rant on a forum, they'd be much better informed.

[JonathanRimmel]

Which means you've failed to understand that you will still be able to purchase CS6 as a standalone piece of shelfware - not based in the cloud or requiring a subscription.

If people would actually read first hand material from the vendor instead of half of any given rant on a forum, they'd be much better informed.

I think it is still a fear that the "Cloud" mentality will take over in the future. Yes, we can still get the software on disk, but how long will that be the case?

[feppe]

I think it is still a fear that the "Cloud" mentality will take over in the future. Yes, we can still get the software on disk, but how long will that be the case?

Probably at least 2-3 major releases forward, or perhaps indefinitely due to piracy-related promotional reasons which I won't get into here. But the stand-alone version which doesn't need to phone home will be priced ever higher compared to the cloud version, until people are so used to the cloud it's not an attractive option anymore.

[ProDesignTools]

Probably at least 2-3 major releases forward, or perhaps indefinitely due to piracy-related promotional reasons which I won't get into here.

Feppe, curious what you mean by "piracy-related promotional reasons" keeping disc-based software around longer - Adobe has said they expect the cloud will reduce piracy, which may be one major reason for the push... thanks

[feppe]

Feppe, curious what you mean by "piracy-related promotional reasons" keeping disc-based software around longer - Adobe has said they expect the cloud will reduce piracy, which may be one major reason for the push... thanks

Cheaper (Elements, Paintshop) and even free alternatives (GIMP) become more attractive to potential and current PS users as Adobe increases prices, makes their upgrade policies stricter, or tightens their piracy controls.

I doubt Adobe execs would ever admit it, but there is a fine balance between ignoring a certain amount of piracy and eradicating it altogether - assuming it was even theoretically possible. It is obvious piracy among upcoming professional artists will make them more likely to use it when they can afford to buy it. Adobe has student discounts, but not every struggling artist gets formal education. Of course it is in Adobe's interest that most of them eventually buy PS.

It's a well-known but taboo subject among software developers.

[ProDesignTools]

Well, I've been a professional software developer over 25 years and have never heard anything like that...  My company has been partners with Adobe Systems for over 5 years and nobody here has ever heard it either.  Piracy is a bane to the company especially in emerging markets where the major growth is - in China it's almost 80% now (with a malware infection rate nearly as high, unsurprisingly). 

If Adobe could completely eliminate piracy everyone would be safer and better off with lower prices, generous policies, and stronger growth - think about how App Stores work with demand elasticity and little to no piracy.  But right now on the desktop, for some the perception of "free" sounds better than any price, student or otherwise.  The company has an active anti-piracy department that we talk to, while CEO Narayen rails against piracy in interviews and it's one of the stated goals with the cloud/web - so Adobe execs don't appear too conflicted about the topic.

[Ben Rubinstein]

I don't mind them trying to eradicate piracy but why should we have to pay such a considerable price hike at the same time?

[JBerardi]

If Adobe could completely eliminate piracy everyone would be safer and better off with lower prices, generous policies, and stronger growth - think about how App Stores work with demand elasticity and little to no piracy.  But right now on the desktop, for some the perception of "free" sounds better than any price, student or otherwise.  The company has an active anti-piracy department that we talk to, while CEO Narayen rails against piracy in interviews and it's one of the stated goals with the cloud/web - so Adobe execs don't appear too conflicted about the topic.

Oh, Adobe wants to give us better pricing and more generous policies, but those mean 'ol pirates won't let them! Now I see...

If Adobe really thinks that they can solve all their problems by cracking down on software piracy, they're delusional. They need to spend more time thinking about how to please the people who do pay for their software and less on how to punish those who don't.

[Rhossydd]

If Adobe could completely eliminate piracy everyone would be safer and better off with lower prices, generous policies, and stronger growth -

That's possibly true. The problem is that whilst Adobe continue to charge huge prices and have expensive upgrade policies lots of people will continue to be tempted into piracy.
The app store model works to prevent piracy because the amounts charged for apps is trivial, the profits come from the volume sold. I'm sure that if companies were charging the sort of amounts Adobe charge for their boxed desktop software you'd see a much higher degree of piracy in those market segments.

If they Adobe are so keen on anti-piracy measures, why are we not seeing Lightroom needing activation ? A cynic might suggest that by not including that sort of anti-piracy measure they're expecting people to pirate it with the long term aim of getting market share.

[Alan Goldhammer]

That's possibly true. The problem is that whilst Adobe continue to charge huge prices and have expensive upgrade policies lots of people will continue to be tempted into piracy.
The app store model works to prevent piracy because the amounts charged for apps is trivial, the profits come from the volume sold. I'm sure that if companies were charging the sort of amounts Adobe charge for their boxed desktop software you'd see a much higher degree of piracy in those market segments.

But the cost of apps for smartphones is trivial compared to full featured software.  Microsoft suffers a considerable amount of piracy on both Win and Office despite the fact that prices are not all that high and they don't update as frequently as Adobe.  Plus you can stay on Office applications for a long time before there is really a critical need to upgrade (there is also a much larger user base for Office than PS or LR).

[feppe]

PS's dominance is certainly in part due to piracy, there's absolutely no question about it. And piracy drives sales as I pointed out earlier. It might not be right, but that's how things are.

Being in a dominant position gives Adobe room to exploit that, and that's exactly what we're seeing with this policy (also see what's happening in screen calibration space). Fortunately they are not a monopoly, and there are viable alternatives in the horizon even for pro use (not so much in screen calibration).

Stricter upgrade policies, price increases, and harder-to-pirate software makes it less attractive to potential end users. As a result, Adobe's competition will work harder and harder to capture the sales of people who can't afford the more expensive PS, won't adopt new license and upgrade policies, or find pirating too much of a hassle. This in turn results in Adobe needing to capture more margin, which likely means even higher prices in the medium-long term*.

What I'm essentially saying is that Adobe's stricter upgrade policies, expected price increases, and move to the cloud to crack down on piracy are hurting their market share and their bottom line. I'm glad I don't own their stock.

Again, I'm not making any judgment calls about right or wrong, just an assessment of how the market is.

* Please note that higher price does not necessarily mean higher profit. Adobe could conceivably sell PS for less (smaller margins), while getting more profit due to increased number of sold units. They are essentially doing it already by selling PS Elements - the technical term is price discrimination. The problem with this is that tougher competition due to upgrade policies and piracy will make selling more units tougher.

[JBerardi]

What I'm essentially saying is that Adobe's stricter upgrade policies, expected price increases, and move to the cloud to crack down on piracy are hurting their market share and their bottom line. I'm glad I don't own their stock.

Again, I'm not making any judgment calls about right or wrong, just an assessment of how the market is.

I don't know their exact rational for "moving to the cloud" (really a move to a subscription model, but how un-sexy is that? Call it the "Cloud"! People love clouds!). Maybe the management really does think that this is the best thing for their customers. But if their primary motivation really is to crack down on piracy, it's really a tragedy. It represents a company that's out of ideas, that's gotten away from doing the things that made it successful in the first place. And rather than address their real issues, they're externalizing the problem. They're fooling themselves as to how much money they lose to pirates. Most people who pirate software do so because they can't afford it. People who pirate software software aren't going to start shelling out hundreds of dollars for Photoshop because they can't steal it anymore; they're going to go to the next best free and/or inexpensive thing (a lot of them will probably realize they never needed PS in the first place when they do this).

If Adobe wants more of their users to upgrade more often, they need to offer more compelling upgrades.

[daws]

I don't know their exact rational for "moving to the cloud" (really a move to a subscription model, but how un-sexy is that? Call it the "Cloud"! People love clouds!). Maybe the management really does think that this is the best thing for their customers. But if their primary motivation really is to crack down on piracy, it's really a tragedy. It represents a company that's out of ideas, that's gotten away from doing the things that made it successful in the first place. And rather than address their real issues, they're externalizing the problem. They're fooling themselves as to how much money they lose to pirates. Most people who pirate software do so because they can't afford it. People who pirate software software aren't going to start shelling out hundreds of dollars for Photoshop because they can't steal it anymore; they're going to go to the next best free and/or inexpensive thing (a lot of them will probably realize they never needed PS in the first place when they do this).

If Adobe wants more of their users to upgrade more often, they need to offer more compelling upgrades.

Exactly. To me the most disturbing aspect of this particular up again/down again trial balloon is that it screams Nex Gen marketeering. When a longtime creative, successful, customer-close company begins pouring resources into extracting more coins from its golden geese instead of improving its goose-feed, it's time to consider polishing your resume if you're on the inside -- and looking for another relationship if you're on the outside.

[feppe]

Exactly. To me the most disturbing aspect of this particular up again/down again trial balloon is that it screams Nex Gen marketeering. When a longtime creative, successful, customer-close company begins pouring resources into extracting more coins from its golden geese instead of improving its goose-feed, it's time to consider polishing your resume if you're on the inside -- and looking for another relationship if you're on the outside.

While I agree with you on the overall premise, it's a bit more complicated with a mature program like PS. It's already feature-complete, and there are no revolutionary recent or foreseeable developments which would differentiate PS from its competition. Content-aware fill (which GIMP has had for years) and the rigged de-blur tech demo are impressive, but are of limited use only attractive to a small subset of PS users. We all saw the marketing blitz that happened with the latest release, all for a handful of features which I bet 99.999% of PS users could live without just fine.

Adobe is left to innovate at the fringes with PS. For them to continue monetizing PS hegemony it appears the execs think it's a good idea to squeeze short-term profits at the expense of goodwill, and medium- and long-term market share. They'll be off to other endeavors in a few years time, and it will be other executives down the road who have to figure out how to undo the damage, after all.

Lightroom, on the other hand, is a rather revolutionary software, with only limited competition - I believe Aperture is the only viable alternative. There's plenty of room for true innovation for several more full versions. The question is whether LR even registers compared to PS on unit or dollar sales figures, ie. whether it is even a potential future cash cow.

[tom b]

It's Photoshop CS, the Creative Suite part is important. The vast majority of people using PS are not photographers but people working on print and web products. They use PS alongside other CS applications. Most will purchase or have purchased for them some sort of Creative Suite. The last time I had a PS upgrade the IT guy rolled up with a 24" iMac, connected my 20" monitor to it and I had the CS5 Master Collection already installed on it. There are 19 applications in the Master Collection. I have used 10 of them, some a lot and others I have played around with. The people I worked with used PS to create illustrations, cartoons, web pages, photomontages and a host of other things. There was not one fine art print made in the 14 years that I worked with them. There was only two of us out of the dozen or so other co-workers the used camera raw and yet the quality of there work was on a professional level.

Most people who use PS aren't photographers and use a number of applications to do their work. The Creative Suite part is important.

[ProDesignTools]

I don't know their exact rational for "moving to the cloud" (really a move to a subscription model, but how un-sexy is that? Call it the "Cloud"! People love clouds!). Maybe the management really does think that this is the best thing for their customers. But if their primary motivation really is to crack down on piracy, it's really a tragedy.

It's certainly not the primary motivation... but it is one aspect that management has cited on conference calls.

... but are of limited use only attractive to a small subset of PS users. We all saw the marketing blitz that happened with the latest release, all for a handful of features which I bet 99.999% of PS users could live without just fine.

Wow.  That's a pretty big statement.  Content-aware fill, Puppet warp, and the CS5 advancements in edge/masking tools typically save us several hours every month...  

Multiply that savings times a standard hourly rate and you're past the upgrade price pretty quick.  We could be alone on that, but I kind of doubt it.

[Rhossydd]

Wow.  That's a pretty big statement.  Content-aware fill, Puppet warp, and the CS5 advancements in edge/masking tools typically save us several hours every month...  
Multiply that savings times a standard hourly rate and you're past the upgrade price pretty quick.  We could be alone on that, but I kind of doubt it.

I agree with feppe that 'features' like content aware fill and puppet warp are just gimmicks that few people want. There was nothing in the CS5 upgrade for me. Small improvements in existing tools like edge masking may well be welcomed by a few users, but a reason to pay for an upgrade ? maybe not.

The second issue is just what percentage of potential upgraders that use PS can charge for their time ? or maybe more particularly, how much of that chargeable time is taken doing tasks that can be significantly shorter with the new features ?
Time saved also has to be counted against the time taken to upgrade, learn effective use of the features and adapt to any changes in the new version. I know a lot of people are more productive with older versions that they know very well, rather than having to change their working practices every two years.

[famalam]

Which means you've failed to understand that you will still be able to purchase CS6 as a standalone piece of shelfware - not based in the cloud or requiring a subscription.

If people would actually read first hand material from the vendor instead of half of any given rant on a forum, they'd be much better informed.

I know CS6 is available as a standalone product, I wasn't suggesting anything different. Seems like the only one with reading comprehension issues is you, my friend.

I am sticking with CS5, because it is likely to be the final release of Photoshop that won't have some kind of next-gen cloud system integrated into it, not because of something I've failed to read.